D Murali
“It is not enough for best-employers and HR (human resource) leaders to simply focus on increasing the ‘number’ of women in the workforce – either at the entry-level or at the mid-executive level. The priority should also be on including women in top-management positions at the board of directors, president-level or CEO-level.”
Thus reads a snatch from the ‘mandate’ of ‘Forum for Women in Leadership’ (WILL Forum), which is to hold its launch meeting on November 23-24 at the Infosys Technologies campus in Bangalore, with about 40 women business executives in leadership positions nominated from across corporate India expected to participate in ‘an open dialogue on their aspirations, opportunities, nurturing mindsets, mentoring, and harnessing the rewards of collective thinking for improving the workplace.’
The Forum’s convener Ms Poonam Barua is passionate about mentoring women in leadership and building an agenda for corporate India. “Corporate India needs to collectively move from a narrowly defined objective of increasing the number of women in key positions and short-term results – to a broader and long-term vision for setting the tone and a strong vision and sustained agenda for bringing more women into leadership positions in companies and in lateral segments of Indian business and society,” she says, speaking to Business Line about the Forum.
“As an independent director myself, I am fully convinced that there is an important contribution and great value that women directors can bring to the corporate India’s boardrooms,” adds Ms Barua, during the course of an e-mail interaction on the subject.
Excerpts from the interview.
Is there a business case for diversity?
Yes, there is. One key area that is surely occupying the minds of CEOs, top-management, and C-suite executives, as they aggressively pursue global leadership for their companies, is the critical need to create a diverse and inclusive workplace that will leverage the best skill and talent-pool both within the organisation and from expert resources outside. Given the tight talent-market, high attrition, and need for professional and cutting-edge management skills at all levels, some serious attempt is being made to understand the potential rewards for gender diversity in the organisation.
How extensive is gender diversity, in India?
Indian companies are presently only “testing-the-waters” to see if senior women executives are able to perform to the companies’ needs – without a real commitment in bringing them quickly into the mainstream of top-management positions. We are beginning to see some programs in place for identifying women on the corporate ladder in Indian companies, but there are no discernible results that companies have understood this as a true business need. As a result, the number of women in high positions has not improved substantially over the years.
Have global business players recognised the need?
In sharp contrast to the Indian situation, global companies and multinationals have clearly recognised the business case for the important role of women as customers, employees, and investors—and are already translating this into the company fabric by appointing a greater number of women executives in senior positions, including the traditional conservative areas such as corporate boardrooms, CFOs and risk-officers, corporate legal counsels, independent directors, etc. Most notable among these would be IBM, Citigroup, Shell Group, Unilever, GE Corp., E.I. Dupont -- which may also be the best employers worldwide.
What is the scorecard for India particularly for independent women directors?
The corporate India scorecard, when assessed for the number of women in the corporate boardroom, falls greatly short of the global benchmarks. A majority of Fortune 500 companies have at least one woman on their Board, and about 30 per cent of these companies have more than one woman on their boards. In India, just a handful (maybe about a dozen) of the top 500 companies would have a woman on their board.
A case of talent shortage?
No, our dismal score is not for want of talent or leadership among women executives, but is the result of traditional search for only a stereotype, be it as board director from within the company or as an independent director.
Usually the most common independent director has a background as ex-bureaucrat, chartered accountant, or an attorney – and they are usually on more than 10-15 boards as independent directors!
Surely corporate India will need to search for answers on whether the primary asset of an independent director is loyalty to the CEO or his bringing in the best ideas, resources, expertise, and best practices that will increase the shareholders’ return and build a lasting company with strong value and culture, over time.
The latter definition of an independent director – if fully understood by the chairman and the board – will open a greater acceptability for bringing in the rich sensitivity, perception, thinking process, and work experience of women executives to enrich the boardroom discussion beyond the narrow limits of legal compliance and make the company more vibrant, robust and responsive to the workplace and its customers.
What are the traits required for women in executive leadership positions and for boardrooms?
The basic traits will be of high integrity and a record of accomplishment -- for which there is no substitute. It will also require convening the trust and respect of your peers and contemporaries, capacity to take courageous decisions, innovative thinking, and a reputation for maintaining high benchmarks without compromise -- in all areas of work. Specialised skills in areas of finance, HR, and others – and the commitment to work hard – these come only after the above.
As you will note, these are traits that also apply to male counterparts for leadership and board positions -- which is precisely the argument of women executives, that there is “no special or different” skills required for women, and therefore no real explanation to account for the lack of women in key positions and boardrooms, except a traditional mindset that does not want to go beyond its comfort-zone.
That makes mentoring for corporate Indian leaders more important today. The challenges are not on the “supply side” for smart women executives, who form almost 50 per cent of India’s demographics!
Do you see a “cultural block” among women to move into leadership positions?
This is unfortunately true -- as a part of their upbringing and the male role models as top-executives of large companies, which they are used to seeing. It is also partly due to the emphasis on male-hereditary traditions of a large part of Indian families and family-owned businesses -- with of course notable exceptions, which must be complimented.
That underlines one of the critical objectives of the WILL Forum -- which is to raise the level of aspirations of women in the workplace, partly by networking with successful women executives, identifying role models, providing ideas on how to enhance their skills and training, understanding that they will also help their families and raise their children as better citizens in the process -- and that there is no conflict between the two in maintaining work-life balance.
How can women maintain work-life balance?
There is only one way to do this -- and that is to redefine the value of “time” for ourselves. Time is not a limited commodity -- but as we all know, it is an infinite commodity and it is the limitations of our human minds that limit the “definition” of time. This involves the whole concept of working through many tasks during the day -- and extending and stretching the skills women possess across their homes and their families. Once this is recognised, the whole question of work-life balance will dissolve -- and there will only be the question of “optimising time for society as a whole.” This goes beyond the individual --and sees “families” as a larger part of the community in which we live, and both men and women -- have an equal responsibility to balance the community as equal stakeholders.
What is the trigger for you and your passion for women in leadership?
I am fully convinced that we have little time to make a difference to the society in which we live -- and there is no better use of the knowledge, accomplishments, and skills that we accumulated overtime, if we cannot make an impact towards this mandate.
Also, through my own experience with both Indian and global corporates, I have found that there is a universality of opinion among women executives across countries and across regional boundaries -- that it is doubly-hard for women to achieve the same stature and receive the same respect.
Many women at conference and seminars and in close conservations and confidence have asked for guidance on how to get to leadership positions, how do I manage my home and family, how to respond to roadblocks in the workplace, how to stay firm and steady in the face of high competition from peers, how to crack the boardroom -- and I believe that is time for us to make the contribution to mentoring these wonderful women in the workplace.
Do we need to orient our HR heads differently?
We definitely need to. Because the corporate HR directors are the custodians of driving the important change, of bringing more women into leadership positions in organisations. HR directors often need to be mentored into nurturing the company culture and their own mindsets to think “differently” when hiring or reassigning executives into key positions.
Despite the best intentions of HR directors – and diversity programs/ debates in corporate circles – they still seem to be hiring people “just like themselves” to fit into clearly defined personality-types that will surely regress innovation and creativity that are the “heart” of fast-growing and sustained best performing companies.
There is an urgent need, therefore, for re-training the HR directors in Indian companies to bring in greater creativity and innovation in hiring un-tapped sources of women executive talent, and nurturing mindsets into moving away from stereotyped traditional definitions for key positions, in the interest of growing the company.
Companies need to openly reflect in a very positive sense, if there is indeed a “novelty-aversion” in the hiring process and for stepping outside their “comfort-zones” to respond to what may be in their companies’ best interest for talent and leadership. Companies will need to make a transparent assessment to see if the HR director has a real understanding and passion to find the best talent, irrespective of how different it maybe from their own set formats of company HR image and policies.
New global Indian companies will need new kinds of globally-thinking HR directors, and this may be a good time for corporate India to re-assess and re-train their own HR leaders. Staying on the “learning-curve” is the true-test of a best performing and best practice company and this must translate into having an HR director who continues to remain open to new ideas, learning, and growing with the new definitions of HR.
Some of the best HR directors in Indian companies – who are to be found in Infosys Technologies, Wipro, Saytam Computers, Dr. Reddy’s Labs, Mahindra & Mahindra, TVS Motors, Reliance Retail, GE India, Agilent Technologies, Ford India, Pfizer India, Citigroup India, and so on – are benchmarking with global HR directors for perspectives and responsibilities.
In fact, the corporate HR function is being quickly redefined as a broader ‘strategic workforce management’. HR directors must be encouraged to work more closely to align with other department head in the company for an inclusive dialogue – including the CFO, risk-officers, ethics counsellors, information-technology engineers, corporate communications – instead of being the sole designers of company hiring, training/ coaching/ and personal policies, as this will be in the best business interest of the organisation.
Are there bottlenecks at the top?
Most bottlenecks are the top. And, so, mentoring the CEO will be key to success for women in leadership in corporate India, as the CEO is the custodian for setting the tone for best practices and best performance in the company
In addition to the HR director, the CEO will be the single most important driver of excellence in business execution and of building a company that is responsive to the global marketplace.
Most CEOs in Indian companies are already deeply sensitive to the need for tapping the talent-bucket in all areas – which includes hiring the best executive-search firms/ consultants to bring in expats from outside India, hire from diverse sources, and make their already top-heavy compensation and benefits more competitive.
But the most rewarding way for building a talent-pipeline for a sustained long-term strategy – will be to (a) look for talent in areas that remain untapped in the company – of which the senior women executives are a large majority, and (b) focus on promoting better education programs at the primary and university-level, and on building world-class universities.
The CEOs will be rewarded to take some time from their executive business functions and allocate it towards building a more responsible organisation that sees the larger picture for global leadership. This is a task that cannot be relegated to the HR director or corporate communications head or CSR – and is a priority area where CEOs are spending much of their time in leading global companies today.
How does WILL propose to handle the challenge of bringing in some change among Indian companies?
This will take some time, and the first task will be to put together the independent ‘Forum for Women in Leadership’ or the WILL Forum that can bring together senior women executives from diverse companies across India – private, public sector, multinationals – to meet 3-4 times a year for an open dialogue on their challenges, experiences, learnings, and ideas for making progress on this important subject. There is so far no such independent forum that caters to an open and “sustained” dialogue for top women executives and mid-level managers in India – and this important subject is usually relegated an another sub-committee of other forums.
The second task will be to guide the goodwill of the CEOs, HR directors, business leaders, CFOs, and top-management in corporate India to engage with the Forum by widely distributing and outreaching the discussion agenda, hot-topics being discussed, sharing the women participants’ challenges and perceptions. This will sensitise them to the issues and tasks involved – and also make the dialogue more democratic, inclusive and participatory.
The third task will be to establish widely based technology networks and websites for responding to the women executives’ questions and helping them find answers to their issues in the workplace. WILL Forum will take this up as a key priority so that the rewards can be beneficial to women from across India who are unable to physically participate in the meetings.
The fourth task will be to undertake some serious research studies on women in executive positions and boardrooms in Indian companies, what skills they possess, what mentoring they will need further, and what they can learn from similar global women’s forums – to guide managers, CEOs, and all stakeholders for direction and accomplishment.
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Bio:
Ms Poonam Barua is Director, Public Affairs Management based in New Delhi, and Regional Director-India for The Conference Board, which is world’s leading global business knowledge network for top management. She leads The Conference Board’s senior executive forums such as Human Resources Council–India, Council on Corporate Governance & Risk-Management-India, and Council on Community Involvement. Ms Barua holds visiting fellowships at Johns Hopkins University and Salzburg Seminar, and teaches at the Maribor University in Slovenia during her spare time.
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