ET Women's Forum: Is it a new normal? Women lose 'own' space in WFH era
During a panel discussion, four leading CXOs say that the safety net at work for women is gone.
By ET Bureau | Updated:
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As women workers struggle to keep work-life balance, four leading CXOs tell us what needs to change to make work from home sustainable.
As work from home (WFH) becomes a new way of life, the toll that it takes on families—especially on women who juggle domestic chores and professional life—might not make it sustainable over a longer period. At the ET Women’s Forum, four leading CXOs came together to offer their perspectives on how WFH reinforces gender stereotypes and stressed that unless there is inherent demarcation of work and domestic space, it will be unsustainable. A few things need to change for the work from home to remain sustainable, said Gargi Dasgupta, director, IBM Research India.
“That safety net that women had of workplace being their own space is gone,” Dasgupta said. “So what we need is a clear separation between work and home duties, even when we are WFH.”
Though being pushed into the confines of home became a norm for some, employees involved in essential services had no choice but to get to work. Emcure Pharmaceuticals executive director Namita Thappar had to ensure not only that she got to work every day but also instilled confidence in employees that they would stay safe during the pandemic. She was responsible along with the HR team for reassuring employees, arranging transportation for manufacturing staff and extending insurance cover. “When you truly empower the people, magic happens,” Thappar said.
Kristine Leach, MD of Jotun India, the local unit of a paint manufacturer headquartered in Norway, said organisations have to actively take part in creating an equitable work space and small steps can go a long way. When she took charge of India operations, Leach found there were no women on the shop floor. The turnaround journey began when the company started employing women on the line as well as for driving trucks. Then came parental leave, which the organisation implemented in the belief that both mother and father are important for a child’s growth. That was the rationale behind giving leave to both men and women.
“So, if we want to make women more accountable at work, we need to make men more accountable at homes, and that is why such policies are important,” Leach said, adding that her management team that is still mostly men is now implementing these policies and also sees value in having a more gender-balanced approach at the workplace.
Vinod Senthil, director and chief technical officer at Infysec, a cyber security and training agency, said his team is now slowly preparing to get back to its workspace.
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The security-driven nature of the organisation's work makes it impractical to continue working from home, as there his team works with crucial and confidential data. “We are not telling ourselves that we have to stay with this risk, and we need to prepare to get back to work,” Senthil said.
Increase In WFH Raises Cybersecurity Concerns: 5 Tips To Work From Home Securely
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According to a report released by online job portal, Naukri.com, employers hiring people to work from home has increased by 3 times as compared to the time prior to the lockdown and the number of work from home jobs has gone up by 7 times in applications and the last few months as compared to the time before COVID-19 disease.
Work-From-Home might just become a permanent fixture with many companies putting into place guidelines to maintain productivity and work-life balance. But are organisations also looking at robust cybersecurity policies for WFH?
Paul Ducklin, Principal Research Scientist at Sophos, says, “While WFH has become a necessity due to the pandemic, it’s vital not to let the precautions intended to protect the physical health of your staff turn into a threat to their cybersecurity health at the same time.” He shares his five tips for working from home safely:
According to a report released by online job portal, Naukri.com, employers hiring people to work from home has increased by 3 times as compared to the time prior to the lockdown and the number of wor..
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Many Self-Service Portals (SSPs) allow users to choose between different levels of access, so they can safely connect up either a personal device (albeit with less access to fewer company systems than they’d get with a dedicated device), or a device that will be used only for company work. The three key things you want to be able to set up easily and correctly are: encryption, protection and patching.
- Encryption means making sure that full-device encryption is turned on and activated, which protects any data on the device if it gets stolen; - Protection means that you start off with known security software, such as anti-virus, configured in the way you want; and - Patching means making sure that the user gets as many security updates as possible automatically, so they don’t get forgotten.
Many Self-Service Portals (SSPs) allow users to choose between different levels of access, so they can safely connect up either a personal device (albeit with less access to fewer company systems tha..
Read More
If employees genuinely can’t do their job without access to server X or to system Y, then there’s no point in sending them off to work from home without access to X and Y. Make sure you have got your chosen remote access solution working reliably first – force it on yourself! – before expecting your users to adopt it.
If employees genuinely can’t do their job without access to server X or to system Y, then there’s no point in sending them off to work from home without access to X and Y. Make sure you have got your..
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Don’t just leave employees to their own devices (literally or figuratively). If you’ve set up automatic updating for them, make sure you also have a way to check that it’s working, and be prepared to spend time online helping them fix things if they go wrong. If their security software produces warnings that you know they will have seen, make sure you review those warnings too, and let them know what they mean and what you expect them to do about any issues that may arise.
Don’t just leave employees to their own devices (literally or figuratively). If you’ve set up automatic updating for them, make sure you also have a way to check that it’s working, and be prepared to..
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If you haven’t already, set up an easily remembered email address where users can report security issues quickly and easily. Remember that a lot of cyberattacks succeed because cybercriminals try over and over again until one user makes an innocent mistake – so if the first person to see a new threat has somewhere to report it where they know they won’t be judged or criticised (or, worse still, ignored), they’ll end up helping everyone else.
If you haven’t already, set up an easily remembered email address where users can report security issues quickly and easily. Remember that a lot of cyberattacks succeed because cybercriminals try ove..
Read More
Shadow IT is where non-IT staff find their own ways of solving technical problems, for convenience or speed. If you have a bunch of colleagues who are used to working together in the office, but who end up flung apart and unable to meet up, it’s quite likely that they might come up with their own ways of collaborating online – using tools they’ve never tried before.
The first risk everyone thinks about in cases like this is, “What if they make a security blunder or leak data they shouldn’t?” But there’s another problem that lots of companies forget about, namely: what if, instead of being a security disaster, it’s a conspicuous success? A temporary solution put in place to deal with a public health issue might turn into a vibrant and important part of the company’s online presence.
Shadow IT is where non-IT staff find their own ways of solving technical problems, for convenience or speed. If you have a bunch of colleagues who are used to working together in the office, but who ..
