WFH’s formalisation to help women in small cities

New Delhi: The government move to formalise remote working for the service sector is likely to help create more job opportunities for women, especially in smaller cities and towns, in the coming months, experts said. With the labour ministry’s draft model standing orders for the service sector proposing to empower companies to allow employees to work from home permanently, many IT firms are expected to hire more women, particularly in tier-2 and 3 cities where more women than men had lost their jobs during the pandemic.“The key driver to higher employment in tier-2 and 3 cities could be women on career breaks and retired employees who may want to join back employment on a part-time basis,” said Vishal Grover, practice leader, retirement and benefits, at HR consulting firm Aon India.Already companies like Tech Mahindra, Capgemini and CavinKare have started tapping into this pool.As many as 50% or more women in tier-2 and 3 cities and rural India may have lost jobs in the peak of pandemic, according to a recent survey by CIEL HR Services, a staffing and recruitment firm, covering more than 1,000 companies across the country.However, many of them are already back in employment.“In the current quarter, as India is coming back to normal levels of economic activities, about 90% of them have regained confidence and found jobs,” said Aditya Misra, founder of CIEL Services. CIEL estimates that there are about 70 million working women in non-tier 1 cities.Capgemini said it is hiring women in tier-2 and 3 cities to work remotely in its cloud and infrastructure services (CIS) team through ‘Sakhi Drishtikon’ initiative.The firm is looking at tapping into this pool for other business units as well through the initiative targeting women in non-tier 1 cities who are graduates or postgraduates from technical streams, largely freshers or with few years of experience.“Sakhi Drishtikon initiative is our attempt to make rural women independent and economically stronger thus serving the society at large,” said Radhika Ramesh, executive vice-president, global delivery centre head, CIS India, at Capgemini. Going forward, formalisation of work from home (WFH) is expected to help several educated women find jobs.CavinKare has reserved some positions especially for women in non-tier 1 cities. “Remote working has thrown open wider possibilities of accessing talent who had to otherwise stay restricted to the opportunities available locally,” said P Rajesh, vice-president, human resources at CavinKare.“Many highly talented women could not pursue their career interests.” Harshvendra Soin, global chief people officer and head of marketing at Tech Mahindra, said, “With organisations adjusting to the new normal, we expect increased focus on location agnostic. This will result in more opportunities for women, people with different abilities and retired people, enabling them to be a part of the active workforce.”Tech Mahindra has also built an external marketplace called Flex.ai that enables employers to tap into the freelance workforce and hire the requisite talent.Labour secretary Apurva Chandra said formalisation of WFH will give “a workable option” to both employers and employees. “More females will be able to get into work with this option available, as is done in the US,” he said.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2LkXLJj
via IFTTT