Organizations need to foster a more inclusive leadership style   

Anita Kukreja, Head - Marketing and Channel Sales, IceWarp India

“Despite the increasing participation of women in the traditionally male-dominated business, women professionals continue to struggle to obtain their desired objectives. While the government's regulations and progressive policies toward women in the workplace have been vital in increasing the diversity ratio in firms, there remains a long way to go until organizations of all sizes fully adapt to these important regulations.

Today, companies must do much more to maintain momentum and improve diversity ratios in order to address the unconscious and conscious bias that is still pervasive and can be a barrier to offering equitable opportunities and impacting the career development of the varied talent pool. Organizations need to consistently reinforce and foster a more inclusive leadership style. Many Indian corporations are yet to develop a defined succession management framework for future women leaders. As a result, the female talent pipeline continues to be very thin when it comes to filling C-suite positions.

The pandemic resulted in a large majority of employees working from home for an extended period of time. This change in location gave many people a work-life balance they didn’t know was possible before, making it much harder for some to come back to the same old office routine. The entire notion of work, workforce, and workplace has evolved considerably, and this has influenced employee perceptions of what the employer value proposition would look like. While hybrid and entirely remote work are fairly common concepts in the West, they were until recently viewed with scepticism in India.”