Business

Piloting 400 organizations for constructing equitable workspaces

Prittle Prattle News in conversation with Dr. Saundarya Rajesh, Founder & President of Avtar Group
The country’s largest DEI analytics study – Avtar & Seramount Best Companies for Women in India is what provides the rigor of the journey that we have set out in. Women’s representation in the 100 Best Companies continues to increase –average representation is 34.5% in the 2021 study, which is up .5% from 34% in 2020. It must be noted that it was at 25% in the year 2016 when we launched the study.

In the Top 10 list of the 2021 study, the average representation of women is 39.1%, while the 2021-100 Best companies put together employ over 5.6 lakh (more than half a million) women.

Dr. Saundarya Rajesh‘s journey is with no pre-defined routes and destinations, but there are milestones. Gender-balanced workforce, equitable workspaces for the underrepresented talent group, increased awareness, and young underprivileged girls empowering themselves to white-collar jobs, to name some. She is not alone on this path.

She travels with hundreds of companies that have set themselves to change this world and make it a better place for everyone to be their authentic self and rise to the fullest potential.

She has witnessed painful truths that numbers spoke; heartfelt acknowledgments of women returning to their careers as tax-paying citizens; data from companies capturing the tools and techniques they have adopted to correct anomalies; signs of systemic changes across industries; and the hiring numbers that are growing in large. As they say, proof of the pudding is in the eating.

How did you come up with the idea of employing women and giving them a second career option?
One of the biggest myths about women wanting to return to the workplace is that women choose family over career. This is not true. The truth is for women, the choice isn’t there in the first place. And why choose at all! What women professionals faced two decades ago continue to encounter similar
situations even today. Indian women, as of today, comprise 48.5% of the 1.3 billion population. And, out of the total working population among women, 49% of them offramp from their careers due to the unavailability of an enabling ecosystem for their career continuum. In the year 2006, we ran a recruitment drive for Scope International, wherein 148 second-career women were hired.

This was the first instance of on-the-spot employment opportunities for women in India. The success of this encouraged us to take bold steps reaching to larger organizations enabling them to hire a diverse talent pool. Now, after 21 years of being in this space, Avtar has enabled over 75,000 women with employment. We work with more than 400 organizations guiding them in their journey of building equitable workspaces.

What/Who is your inspiration behind this setup?
So, Avtar is a social enterprise. The birth behind any social enterprise is a personal emotion. An emotion that is deep-rooted. When I was faced with the anomaly of not being able to break the barriers to re-enter the workspace after a legit break for my familial commitment, I realized the need to correct the inequity.

I wanted to contribute to the country’s GDP. The workplaces were not ready to welcome a woman with a break in her career. When I met this very reluctant hiring manager, I casually asked if I would be enabled with “flexibility in working hours” since I had a small child at home. Not knowing the benefits, not realizing the possible outcomes of flexible working, this hiring manager simply shut the doors – for me and also the organization.

That saw the origin of Avtar Group to influence businesses in building diverse, equitable, and inclusive workspaces. We began talking to organizations on enablers typically that women like myself need to maintain a career continuum. Enablers such as Confidence, Skilling, Opportunities, sensitive managers and workspaces, mentors, allies, and so on. While soft skills such as passion, dedication, and commitment are super critical, that alone is not sufficient. Women, as such, also do require hard technical skills.

What all challenges did you face during your journey?
The challenges were manifold – individual mindsets, corporates’ desks at the policy level, societal mindsets, and so on. The goal was and is of real transformation. We are on a mission to break the age-old barriers, bring individuals out of their comfort zones, question their beliefs, discover their potential, and carve a path that takes them to be the tax-paying citizens of the country. India Inc has warmed warm up to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). We see that DEI is no longer an esoteric concept that exists in business silos. Banking on the cutting-edge research on diversity experience at India Inc., we have laid the foundation for companies to create inclusive workspaces with periodical work culture assessment, appropriate training, and intervention for removal of biases and so forth.
Brief about your partnership with Google.
As part of the work that we do at Avtar, we noted through our research that women in India and the world over are concentrated in lower-order skills making their jobs most susceptible to disruption. As per the research statistics from ILO, the skill deficit in India is growing, likely to get to 29 million skill-deficit by53% of businesses in India find it difficult to identify people with the right set of skills. In the absence of indigenous, industry-led skill development programs for talent, this can prove to be a significant deterrent to economic revival.
This accentuates the need for specially curated skilling programs for women to gain equitable access to job opportunities. We partnered with Google and India’s premier business school – the Indian School of Business (ISB), which delivers DigiPivot, a curated skilling program in digital marketing exclusively for women. This is a 22-week virtual learning engagement that enables participants with digital marketing knowledge as well as mentorship on strategic leadership skills.
Digipivot, through the last two editions, has established an up-skilling model that can be adapted by a cross-section of industries. Built on the foundation of industry-academia partnership, this up-skilling framework is constituted by the triage of domain skills, strategic leadership skills, and mentorship. When replicated to scale and scope, this holds the promise of enhancing employability and creating career opportunities for over 11 million women professionals in India. Such skill-building initiatives hold the potential to rewrite the narrative on women’s workforce participation in the country.
In fact, employers, all of us must take on the responsibility to promote and support skill training and development among the underrepresented talent groups, not just women. If you are not on the journey already, then July 15 th is a great starting point – the day that is being celebrated as the World Youth Skill
Day.
Tell us about your recognitions and titles earned during your journey till today?
As a women’s career evangelist and for the work in this space of DEI, some of the honours that have
been bestowed upon me include —
The Standard Chartered SCOPE Woman Exemplar Award in 2006
The Yuvashakthi woman entrepreneur award in 2007
The CavinKare ChinniKrishnan Innovation Award in 2011
TiE Stree Shakti, the highly prestigious, Entrepreneur of the year award in 2011
FICCI FLO Woman Entrepreneur of the year award in the year 2012
Naturals Extraordinary Woman in 2014 on the International Women’s Day
The Jeppiaar Icon Award in January 2016, by the Jeppiaar Engineering College, which is affiliated
to Anna University.
#100Women Achievers of India in a public voting selection process and had lunch with the
President of India.
Listed in the Top 25 Women Transforming India, by NiTi Aayog
Changemaker Award by Accenture on the International Women’s Day in the year 2017
SRM CURE award for Empowerment – Oct,2018
ESSENTIALLY YOU – Feb, 2019
Golden Aviator Award – Aspire Systems – March, 2019
Chennai Carnatic Women Empowerment Award – Rotary Club of Chennai Carnatic – March 2019″WebWonderWomen” Award from Ministry of Women and Child Development in collaboration with Twitter India and Breakthrough India for using the power of social media to run a positive campaign to steer a change in the society on the International Women’s Day 2019.
One of the 35 Global leaders featured in the prestigious photography exhibition in London to celebrate leaders who are determined to overcome humanity’s most pressing problems. TheChevening Changemakers: 35 visions of the global leadership program is an exhibition that recognizes international ties forged through 35 years of the UK Government’s CheveningScholarships program by featuring specially commissioned portraits of leaders from across the globe.
“Winds of Change Award” – in the individual category conferred by The Forum on WorkplaceInclusion, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA – April 2019. Dr. Rajesh is also the first International Awardee to win this award for her work on empowering women and young girls in India; for her influence on the entire country through her different initiatives and for the humungous effort that she has put to increase the women’s workforce participation across India. Inspirational Global Women Awards event, South India’s premier award, on November 1, 2020, in Chennai. The IGWA awards are an annual opportunity to come together, Honor inspiring women, bring the community of empowered women together and share success stories with the world. Dr. Saundarya Rajesh received this award under the Social Enterprise category
About Dr. Saundarya Rajesh, Founder – President, Avtar Group
Dr. Saundarya Rajesh’s social enterprise, Avtar, is India’s only organization that provides both strategy and implementation solutions in Diversity & Inclusion. Dr. Saundarya’s work in the space of gender diversity & inclusion in the workplace is unparalleled in India. Not only is she among the earliest and
most impactful voices on gender inclusion, but through Avtar, she has also helped hundreds of companies hire thousands of women professionals. An inspiring speaker, an author, and a very sought-after DEI strategist, Dr. Saundarya’s vision are to see young girls from underprivileged families create empowering white-collar careers for themselves. This she influences through Project Puthri.Dr. Saundarya’s work in the space of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the workplace is unparalleled in India. Dr. Saundarya’s journey toward creating inclusive and equitable workplaces is inspirational, and
she aspires to continue helping organizations, communities, and societies harness the true power of diversity!
This article is drafted by Prittle Prattle News in the form of an Interview.
Must Read – Andhra Pradesh
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