Gender Diversity and Women's Networking Initiatives

Corporate India has latched on to gender diversity and doing more than it has ever to attract and retain women employees. The benefits being rolled out include flexi time, extended maternity benefits, safe work environment, affirmative action and establishing women's networking chapters.

The idea behind the women's networking chapters is to have a platform for women employees to gather, network and also learn from each other. Some organizations like GE, Deloitte and Microsoft have really taken their women’s networking chapters to new levels and leveraged them effectively to manage their diversity and talent management initiatives. Take a good look at the majority of the organization which are trying to do better on this and you will find that what helps is: -

Having a clear focus or vision for the chapter
Top / senior leadership championing the chapter
Making it local and relevant
Leveraging it as a communication and feedback channel

While having hooks in the beginning like networking lunch, fashion shows and rangoli competitions will help drive participation the true value of the women's networking chapter will be felt if it goes beyond these hooks and provides a channel for feedback, development and refinement of talent attraction and retention initiatives.

Contradiction???

Last time when I blogged about how to get though the first few weeks in your new job listening more and talking less, a friend of mine questioned "so how do you make a good introduction without sounding too verbose?". Her view was that while you don’t need to talk a lot and give complete details of what you did in the past, one has to have a introduction akin to a "elevator pitch" that is so popular across the world.

So what is an elevator pitch and how to make it, well I did some goggling and came across this link.

http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Your-Personal-Elevator-Pitch

Mass Career Customization

The other day I was reading an in-house magazine of Deloitte and came across this article on Mass Career Customization. (quite a mouthful isn’t!)

Here is a quick lowdown on Mass Career Customization:

MCC is a model that has been designed to respond to the new workplace trends which include more women at workplace, gap in demand and supply of knowledge workers, changing expectations of men, evolving expectations of generation X and Y and increasing impact of technology. Developed by Cathy Benko and Anne Weisberg, both principals at Deloitte.

The model is based on the premise that there would be no normal career path (meaning straight climb up the ladder) and careers would be multipath and built around people’s needs over time (like balance of work-life). The authors coin the word “career lattice” to describe how careers would be an undulating journey of climbs and lateral moves. . The model is being tested out in the few organizations namely Deloitte, along with SAS, Ogilvy & Mather, and law firm Arnold & Porter. Read more about this model at www.masscareercustomization.com

While the model itself is exciting and may be really the cutting edge practice in career development and management, it might be a difficult proposition for smaller organizations that do not have the different roles / career options to implement this model. The success of this model will largely depend on long-term commitment of the organization and employee. And since the success of career development and management programs can only seen over time, only long term players will buy the model and its approach.

Don't talk, just listen for the first few days in your new job

Yes, curb the tendency to talk about how great you are and the big shot you were in your previous job. Stick to talking about your previous responsibilities in a brief fashion and you could add the learnings you had.

This will help you in: 1) people will not be prejudiced about your interest in this new job 2) expectations will be moderate and not very high 3) you will not come out looking like someone who brags 4) will help people open up and talk more about themselves as they wont feel any lesser then what you are.

The key is to listen, probe and figure out the dynamics. But this does not mean you clam up, just ensure that you have a brief description ready when people ask you where you are from and what you were handling in your previous job / company. Focus for the first few days / weeks would be to understand people and "how things get done here" and therefore listen more and talk less!

Do we know the real reason behind an employee exit?

Most times we don’t as people never like to tell the truth and especially if it’s going to be a bitter one. Most people I have interviewed during my experience have cited various personal reasons for leaving the organization and when you flip the question and ask why did you look out in the first place or what were your drivers for looking out, I have seen a clearer and more truthful answer emerging.

What someone is leaving now for might be very different from why he / she thought of looking out in the first place. Case in point might be a employee who is unhappy with his team environment and decided to look out and now has a job with a 40% pay increase.

Also sometimes having a third person talk to an employee is more effective, especially if there is fear of retaliation or defensiveness that the employee perceives from the organization.