Eligibility criteria: Women must form at least 10% of the workforce; minimum 70% of the women, and all employees must share a positive perception of the workplace; and the organisations must meet the minimum qualifying criteria on the assessment of their people practices, evaluated through a proprietary tool. To pick the Top 15, two-third weightage was given to the experience of women employees and one-third weightage to people practices specifically for women employees.

(Listed in alphabetical order)

HP

• Industry: Information technology

• India HQ: Bengaluru

• Sumeer Chandra: Managing director, India

• Sowjanya Reddy: Director, HR, India

• Employee strength: 7,469

To address the dearth of female leadership, IT product, solution and service provider HP has initiated a programme called Disha. This is to ready women for leadership positions, through a structured six-month blended experience. Disha is in line with the global D&I charter, to establish a positive correlation between the representation of women in leadership positions through business performance measures such as market share and return on investment. This six-month programme aims to develop the participants’ management skills, enhance their leadership capabilities, increase exposure and help advance their career. The programme helps women to pick up skills such as growth mindset, business and financial acumen, design thinking and methodology, influencing through collaboration and communicating with impact. All participants are also attached to specific business critical projects, which is monitored by project mentors. Post the launch of Disha, the company has bagged a spot in the top 100 best companies for women from Working Mother Media in India in 2016 and also made it to the top 50 India’s Best Workplaces in IT and IT-BPM in 2017.

Inorbit Malls

• Industry: Retail

• India HQ: Mumbai

• Rajneesh Mahajan: Chief executive officer

• Urvi Aradhya: Chief human resource officer
• Employee strength: 170

K Raheja Corp and its subsidiary Inorbit Malls strive to ensure that every employee, particularly woman employees, develop the confidence to achieve career goals. A key focus area was to combat prejudice or unfairness that women, in particular, have to deal with. This required training and counseling for male colleagues on how they can and must play an integral role in women’s advancement at work. The leaders also focus on constant engagement with women in their workforce to understand their requirements and weave policies accordingly. An example of this would be its two-pronged maternity policy — Aanchal and Saheli, which was formulated by taking inputs from female employees. While Aanchal provides reduced working hours, transport allowances and a 26-week maternity leave, Saheli ensures there is a friend from the employee’s team who keeps her updated with everything going on at work, to ensure she stays connected to the organisation even during her break. Inorbit also has an adoption-assistance policy to financially assist employees and grants paid leave to adoptive parents and has tie-ups with daycare centres in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Consequently, the company boasts of a more committed woman workforce and 100% success in seeing mothers return to work after childbirth. At present, women form 24% of the workforce. Interestingly, to promote women entrepreneurs within and outside the company, they run a start-up launcher called Inorbit Pink Power. This allows women entrepreneurs to extend their business in shopping malls by utilising free retail space provided by the mall for a period of six months.

Intuit India

• Industry: Information technology

• India HQ: Bengaluru

• Sanket Atal: Vice president and managing director, India Development Center

• Somnath Baishya: Head, HR, Global Development Centers

• Employee strength: 974

At Intuit, through their programme Intuit Again, the talent acquisition team and business team identify roles for women who want to come back from a career break. After completing the six-month programme, Intuit absorbs women into full-time employee roles. Moreover, to make life easier for working mothers, the company has partnered with daycare service providers such as Klay Prep-schools and DayCare. It has blocked ten seats at discounted rates to enable moms to be closer to their child while at work. The company has also allotted special parking space and a dedicated cab for pregnant women employees. Also, lactation rooms have been built on campus. It had a six-month maternity period, even before the government made it mandatory for all women. The company is already enjoying the advantages of creating a good working environment. “We committed ourselves to creating an environment where trust, pride and camaraderie are valued so that our employees can do the best work of their lives. This success has increased our investments in India and catalysed the same into other global locations. Being a great place to work has also helped us create winning connections and partnerships with the overall ecosystem,” says Sanket Atal, vice president and managing director, India Development Center, Intuit.

This is Part 2 of a five-part series. You can read Part 1 here.