India Inc to rope in more women for top roles

MUMBAI: India Inc is said to be casting the net wide to hire women for leadership roles. Specific mandates are being given to executive search firms to look for women candidates for top-level posts. Such mandates were earlier given by organisations for mid-level roles to boost their gender diversity ratios.

While the number of women who enter the organised workforce is almost equal to that of men, they drop out at mid- to senior-levels due to various reasons, including critical life stages like maternity. The pipeline thins down further as one moves up the hierarchy, which is why women in leadership roles are far fewer today. But this might just change with companies giving specific mandates to hiring agencies to bring women candidates for top-level positions.

Hunt Partners managing partner Suresh Raina said, “A multinational company recently gave us a mandate specifically to hire a diversity (female) candidate for CEO succession planning. The candidate has joined the said company and is slated to take over from the incumbent after a pre-defined period of grooming and transition. Even though the candidate pool still remains small, such mandates are increasing by the day.”

According to Executive Access India MD Ronesh Puri, one-fourth of the searches the firm conducted in the last three-four months reveals a strong preference for women candidates for leadership posts as also boards. This, Puri said, is predominantly in the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), consumer durables, BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance) sectors and consulting space.

Many companies have designed programmes dedicated to mentor and groom women for leadership roles. At Maersk, which has diverse talent — from seafarers to digital experts — ‘Back2Work’ is a pipeline into senior roles where the company has specifically hired women talent in earmarked roles like financial controller, business relationship manager for operations and IT project manager.

Maersk Global Services Centre senior director (HR) Pratap G said, “In India, women constitute nearly half of the working age population, and we want to be able to access that talent pool, especially at leadership levels as one way to fulfil our goals. We have targets for women at leadership. However, we have consciously kept away from ‘quota-based approach’ to diversity and instead focus on inclusion levers to drive it.”

As to whether Maersk has given specific mandates to hiring agencies to look for the right-fit women candidates for leadership roles, Pratap responded in the affirmative. “We have given mandates for targeted searches in select roles for specific right-fit women leader profiles. Some such are currently under way. Such mandates were in our new digital capability centre, where the BI (business intelligence) practice and site leader role is headed by a woman, and functions like HR,” said Pratap.

Search mandates are also on the rise for women directors even in companies that already have a woman member on the board. Puri said, “Over the last three months, we have done 75% board positions for women candidates. These include several companies where there was already a woman board member and they were looking for an additional candidate.”