The Indian economy is already showing upward trends more as professional establishments and manufacturing businesses are choosing the country as their new destination. The contributions from women professionals and business owners have also increased in the last few years. The most promising part of India is its young population which ranks highest among the total population count ranging between 15-28 years of age.
These statistics also suggests that businesses should now start to create new opportunities for diverse people to join and contribute in an effective manner in order to get closer to new trends of demand and consumption. Such contributions should also come from the women workforce of the organisations.
A free hand to possibilities: Indian businesses and corporates now realise that they seriously consider strategising gender parity in the overall workforce. Women in India have grown confident about their professional capabilities. Women employees and technicians are loaded in possibilities to become an integral part of heavy industries by squaring exclusive sense of control and temerity to bring-on-board profit-yielding leaderships and new executive practices through collaborative work culture. The businesses should persuade such possibilities by creating opportunity and fostering inclusivity with the current workforce.
One such unique initiative was launched by a company in 2012 — the Pink Assembly Line (assembly line for scooters managed entirely by the women workers). Under this initiative 200 women workers received the industrial training by being on the job. The three-year programme managed to build a better culture in the company where both men and women employees can work together at the shop floors and contribute in the most effective way towards the growth of the company.
It soon became a cult in a variety of other company's shop floors where gender equity in highly skilled jobs were found to be gaining strength in the following years. Such initiative was taken against a stark and contrary treatment of not offering employment to women in the heavy industries.
Learn first, train next: Women empowerment programmes are only the first step and not an all-inclusive programme. Women in the industry should be empowered with the vision to grow as leaders and not just workers. In the new world of competent business research and highly efficient customer management, the potential of women employees should be exploited to nurture a leader of future who can take up responsibilities of various departments and divisions.
Supporting women workers and employees to learn and deliver in cross-functional jobs should be organised in order to explore and discover their natural skills of leaderships. Such skillsets including time management, interpersonal skills and customer perspectives when compared to men have been found like what chalk is to cheese. Therefore, the industry should support such diverse skills by nurturing and productively utilising it for growth and profit.
there are several companies that that flexible work hours which for example, is supporting white collar women employees to handle their domestic chores along with a highly skilled managerial job. The comfort and challenges that women face are different from men and the policy infrastructure should adequately support it. In such organisations, special care is taken by the division heads after the women employees join after maternity leave in order to ensure her health and concerns of childcare remains a top priority. A healthy mother and child can guarantee a prosperous future.
The writer is Takahiro Hemmi, Executive Vice-president, Yamaha Motor