In today’s highly competitive work culture, there is a definite shift in the mind-set, towards inclusivity and flexibility. This is a progressive and welcome move for the large percentage of the female workforce. Though women have accomplished incredible things, they have remained underdogs when it comes to economic value creation, and more often than not, they end up playing supportive roles.
MulticoreWare, as a company, has always been vocal about inclusivity and bringing more women into the workplace and in executive roles.
Today, this trend is definitely picking up, and organizations are moving towards following the boardroom agenda of diverse cultures, where companies across sectors are improving equality in their recruiting practices to ensure diverse long lists focusing on relevant skills, capabilities, and underlying competencies.
Such practices enable organizations to increase diverse talent from within and build an inclusive environment. These include designing unconscious bias training which is imparted to teams to stop using phrases like “sales guys”, “thank you, gentlemen”. These are being given more importance and are considered to be essential elements of creating and retaining a diverse workforce.
From a business perspective, the negative impact of a lack of gender diversity and inclusion can be all-encompassing, affecting everything from financial performance to customer insight to collaboration to innovation. Study after study reinforces the benefits of having greater women representation, women in leadership positions and on boards, and of instituting policies that support gender diversity and inclusion. And the key word here is flexibility. Flexibility in working hours, working in a hybrid model and taking time to balance work and home-life is critical to retain women in the workforce.
McKinsey’s 2020 Women in the Workplace report, conducted with LeanIn.Org, revealed a startling statistic: one in four working women in North America said that they were considering downshifting their careers or dropping out of the workforce entirely. For working mothers, and particularly those with young children, the number was one in three.
The pandemic played a huge role in the lives of working mothers. It was a double edged sword in many senses. Working women have always straddled multiple roles, of household responsibilities leading to mental health challenges, a more difficult remote-work experience, and concerns about higher rates of unemployment—particularly among mothers of color and single mothers.
Decades of research show that women do significantly more housework and participate in childcare than men. Now, women, and mothers in particular, are taking on an even heavier load. Mothers are more than three times as likely as fathers to be responsible for most of the housework and caregiving during the pandemic.
In fact, they are 1.5 times more likely than fathers to spend an additional three or more hours per day on housework and childcare. Single mothers have faced even greater loads—10 percent more single mothers report spending an additional three or more hours per day on housework and childcare than mothers overall.
On the positive side, the pandemic also gave birth to the hybrid work model which is enabling women to balance their personal and professional aspirations better. The hybrid work model which is enabling women to balance their personal and professional aspirations.
The McKinsey research also showed that:
- Inclusive organizations are twice as likely to meet or exceed their financial targets.
- Company profits and share performance can be close to 50% higher when women are well represented at the top.
- Companies with higher levels of gender diversity and with HR policies and practices that focus on gender diversity are linked to lower levels of employee turnover.
- Gender-diverse and inclusive teams outperform gender-homogeneous, less-inclusive teams by an average of 50%.
- Senior-level women influence company culture in positive ways, particularly when it comes to championing diversity and inclusion and mentoring other women.
- Organizations with inclusive cultures are six times more likely to be innovative and agile.
- From a diversity of thought standpoint, gender diversity supports cognitive diversity as well.
Firms are embracing the family-like culture, by sharing responsibilities, providing more flexibility to female employees (like maternity leave policies) and sharing a learning environment to foster team growth along with individual development.
At MulticoreWare, we have always believed that inclusivity means greater growth and faster progress. We have supported our women associates by allowing them to balance their family life, especially during the maternity and postpartum phase, allowing them to gently ease back to the work routine.
Full-time working from home or taking long leaves of absence (upto a year) have been offered to our new mothers. Once the family and the new mother have settled down, they have started working from home on a part-time basis. They are given the freedom and flexibility to resume work in full force when they wish to.
At MulticoreWare, we believe that if organizations respond well by building a more flexible and empathetic workplace, they can retain the employees most affected by the pandemic and nurture a culture in which working mothers have equal opportunity to achieve their potential.
