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| Indiwo, India’s leading women-oriented portal, interviews Anand Iyer, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Jobstreet.com on Diversity & Inclusion initiative by Jobstreet India & PepsiCo |
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In today’s corporate world, Equal Opportunity and Diversity/Inclusion are increasingly visible “mantras” in organisations. Interestingly, such programs evolve out of socio-economic situations as well as competitive market conditions.
Just like the latest initiative to attract women, who have left their jobs for family and personal reasons, back into the workforce! Jobstreet.com, a leading online job search portal, has partnered with the Indian arm of global MNC PepsiCo to communicate the latter’s Diversity Initiative to appropriate audiences.
Anand Iyer, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Jobstreet.com elaborates, "Far-sighted employers like PepsiCo who value talent and skills, are likely to reap the rewards of being first off the mark with such programs. Not many companies today show interest in qualified, experienced, skilled women might want to re-join the workforce after a break. Moreover, Indian business is overall is reporting a general shortage of talent. Such initiatives could be a great solution.”
How did Jobstreet come to the conclusion that women looking to join back work could be big pool of talent?
“Over 80 percent of population on job portals in India is male! Now if that is not a lack of diversity, what is?” quizzes Anand. That's what prompted JobStreet.com to think of a solution.
"We spoke to multinational company HR executives in India and asked them if they really had any programs supporting Diversity. Delightfully, some of them did have programs and were looking out for the right vehicles to broadbase communication of such programs. PepsiCo is a good example. When they saw we were serious about Diversity, they chose us as their partner to create and communicate their message to the target audience.”
“We also have seen that several leading MNC operations in India remain true to their international HR practices – as a consequence workplace diversity is considered an important parameter in hiring. This has definitely had an impact on Indian work ethic. Women are increasingly seen as assets to their organizations – stability, soft skills, flexibility and ability to multi-task better – seem to be their strengths!" explains Anand, who is confident that more employers in India will embrace this new cohort of skilled workforce.
In short, this is an exciting time for Indian women, who had taken a 'career break' for personal reasons and would now like to “get back to work”!
Anand hopes that the Diversity and Inclusion message reaches far and wide. Apart from the registered jobseekers on JobStreet.com, the Network 18 media strength will reach out to a wide audience on the web as well as TV, to deliver the message to millions of potential entrants into the workforce!
What will the Diversity Initiative explore in the future?
"I think getting more women attracted into the workforce is a challenge by itself. But I think we would like to explore diversity beyond merely the male/female classification," Anand stresses.
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