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A recent Gallup study, titled “Gender Diversity, Business Unit Engagement and Performance”, had an interesting observation to make: Gender diverse workplaces and teams make better bottom-line business sense. The study emphatically states that gender diversity in workplaces is an imperative not just because it is a laudable goal and sounds politically correct, but because it improves a company’s financial performance.
Corporates are increasingly seized of the benefits that accrue from gender-balanced teams, and some of them are taking innovative steps to improve the gender ratio, without compromising on merit. Ericsson, the world’s leading telecom equipment-maker, is a case in point. The Swedish giant is breaking new ground in India by aggressively hiring women in its core operations, a function that has been male-dominated for decades. What is even more interesting is the company’s sourcing strategy and the roles it envisages for women. As part of its on-going initiatives to improve the gender ratio, this year, the company expanded the roles for women employees by hiring them for field roles, previously a male bastion, and hired the requisite talent from the armed forces, a move that has challenged status quo big time.
Tough job? Defence forces to the rescue!
Even as India remains a fast-growing market for most global companies, attracting talent from a gender perspective can be quite challenging, especially for roles that are not typically perceived as a key domain for women. Ericsson too faced similar challenges, but some innovative thinking came to the rescue.
Speaking to Biz Divas, Sameer Khanna, vice-president and HR Head of Ericsson, says, “Having decided to explore the unconventional, and broaden the scope for women in our company by hiring them for managerial roles in Field Operations, we looked at a pool of female talent in the armed forces. Not only have we been able to attract a strong pipeline of talented women, we have also expanded our diversity footprint in roles which were never thought as suitable for women. We have made considerable headway in enabling a diverse ecosystem by providing opportunities for women in remote locations, away from Delhi and Mumbai.”
Such out-of-the-box thinking has not only made the Ericsson workforce diverse beyond just gender, it has also opened new possibilities for other corporates to draw talent from unexplored pools. Explaining the unconventional hiring pattern further, Khanna says the move arose out of necessity. “For field roles where certain toughness is needed, besides technical skills, we asked ourselves: Who can do this well? As an answer to that, this year we increased our gender diversity by adding young women in Field Operations (manager) roles. Traditionally, these roles were filled in by men. It was a challenge to recruit young women, especially considering the tough environment and harsh terrain in which the operations happen. Thus, we created a unique strategy to on-board skilled women that involved looking within the defence forces.”
The female talent drawn from the armed forces will mostly be involved in field operations, including 3G and 4G network rollout and deployment, resource allocation and logistics management. Notably, women engineers in Ericsson India, including those not drawn from the forces, will, for the first time, be involved in mainline consulting and systems integration, and network rollouts, network design and optimization. They will also be working closely with Ericsson’s managed services business teams.
The induction of women engineers and ex-defence services professionals in operations and support roles has enabled Ericsson to address a broader variety of customer needs in view of its transformation from a telecom infrastructure provider to an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) player.
The company’s innovative hiring practice has not only paved the way for other corporates to follow suit, its decision to increase the presence of women across domains has also challenged the notion of specific roles not being gender-neutral. A very welcome step, indeed!
