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00:00:03 SUJIT JOHN: The Global Capability Centers, or GCC, have today become the flagship of the Indian technology industry. We reported recently that in the last fiscal year, for the first time, GCCS hired more people than even the IT services segment, which traditionally has been the biggest hirer in Indian tech. Given the position GCCs have acquired, we thought we should look at how GCCs are addressing the issue of diversity and how they can build the next generation of women leaders. This is all the more important because GCC serve as critical hubs for delivering services and innovation to their parent organizations, and diverse leadership within these centers is crucial for global competitiveness and innovation. So welcome to this Time Techies webinar. I am Sujit John and I have with me my colleague Shilpa Phadnis. The two of us will moderate this discussion and we have with us a great panel of women leaders from GCC's. We have with us Veda Persad. Veda is country lead executive for India for Northern Trust. Northern Trust is an American financial services company, headquarters in Chicago and caters to corporations, institutional investors and ultra high net worth individuals. Veda joined Northern Trust in 2004 and has since held a number of roles within the company, including Canada Risk Chief Risk Officer, Global Head of Control for Income and International Tax and Global Services APEC Operations Practice Executive. In her current role, Veda is responsible for resiliency, statutory compliance and the talent strategy to enable business priorities of Northern Trust. Veda has been recognized among the top 100 executive allies by LGBTQ and is a passionate advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion. Welcome, Veda.
00:01:45 VEDA PERSAD: Thank You.
00:01:46 SHILPA PHADNIS: We have Lalitha Indrakanti. Lalitha is the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover Technology and Business Services India, a professional carrier has centred around strategic delivery for consulting, advisory, IT services, digital transformation and global capability centres. She has worked at companies like IBM and SP SAP. More recently, she was the global business operations for Inca Group across US, China, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and India. Inca is the company that runs most IKEA stores. Lalitha has also been the MDN country leader for Kagil Business Services India. In her current role, Lalitha is responsible for steering the strategic vision, business enablement, transformation of the operations of Jaguar Land Rover Technology and Business Services India and business capabilities and solutions across enterprise functions. Welcome Lalitha.
00:02:34 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Thank You Shilpa.
00:02:36 SHILPA PHADNIS: And we have Sindhu Gangadharan. Sindhu has been on this platform multiple times. She's the managing director of SAP Labs India. SAP Labs India is the largest R&D centre outside of SAP headquarters in Germany and is a leading hub of innovation and hotspot for talent and diversity. Sindhu started started her career at SAP Labs India as a young software developer and she's rose through the ranks navigated several leadership roles to become the first woman to lead SAP Labs India. She was recently given the additional role at SAP of heading its Global Customer Innovation service. She's also the Vice chairperson of Nasscom Welcomes it.
00:03:16 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Thanks so much. Great to be here.
00:03:19 SHILPA PHADNIS: Thanks Sindhu. Those of you who are viewing this can send in their questions to the Facebook comment box Sujitha and I will put them to Veda. Lalitha and Sindhu coming to you. Lalitha, if we are looking at leadership pathways, what are the specific strategies GCCS are implementing to create accessible pathways for women to rise to leadership positions?
00:03:45 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: So when you talk about Pathways, Shilpa, I don't think Pathways is anything different specifically for women. Yeah, it's an equal opportunity for both technical ladder and management ladder for both men and women. But it's also about fueling the drive and assuring women that whatever path they choose, that we are here as an organization to support them, right? It's all about identifying the drive, diversity, talent, building the pipeline, mentoring, enhancing the skills to help them to take up new challenges, encouraging them for that. And also for this, we need to measure the outcomes and experiences and use essentially to data to fix trouble spots. It's important that we as organisations find the data insights that will improve the women's experience in the workplace so that we create the equal opportunities for people. Data tracking is valuable only when it leads to a change, right? So it's absolutely essential for us to encourage women in technical careers as well. For example, in Juggle and Rover how we use we have ADI network that is for women in engineering and allies. So our objective is to promote, facilitate a gender inclusive environment within engineering such as everyone has the equal enjoyable opportunities and the career in the organizations. So I don't think the pathways are different. It is about how do we enable it for women, that could be different, yeah.
00:05:30 VEDA PERSAD: I think, you know, I, I absolutely share Lalitha's perspective on this as well. It's about building an inclusive culture. It's about finding the right talent in the right place at the right time. But I, I think the other piece is that I, you know, it's interesting because we're here in India. Sometimes we look and we think that our gender imbalance is an Indian phenomenon. And it's not, I mean, if we look at our and, and this is the same for many of us when we look across our global enterprise, we've got the same type of makeup starting at the, you know, from the entry level all the way up to the top where we've got a diminishing return of gender balance as we go up to the top. But I think that's not a an India unique perspective. So while we have as well as all of them, as all of us forward-looking organizations do we have a strong DENI network, employee and resource groups, diversity and equity officers that we have that are focused on this. I think what we want to make sure is that we're plugged into what is being done around the world so that we are bringing those same opportunities, those same learnings, that same perspective to our folks here in our GCCS, which let's face it, our GCCS are now, you know, anywhere between 20 and 30% of our global footprint. So what we do around the world has to be echoed in the GCC as well.
00:07:10 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: And maybe to add to what Lalitha and Veda already said, right? Indeed, I fully, fully bind to what you said, Lalitha, that it has to be an inclusive culture, right? I mean, it has to be pathways that people pursue based on their passion, their design, what they love to do. But at the same time, I think to Veda's point, right, I think it's very important to also have structured career development programs that also tailored to that needs and aspirations, right? What, what individuals have particularly also for women, I'd say, right? I mean, we should have the very structured career development programs that cater to their very specific needs and aspirations. Because many times if I, if I just put on my SAP hat, we have this Women to Watch program, right? And the idea with the Women to Watch program is to very early on develop a leadership pipeline within the organization through mentorship, through targeted training. Because today what we have 34% of our organization are, are, are women, but our target is to get to 50%, right. So we're really going to keep pushing the boundaries and we've definitely made significant progress. And at the same time, I'd also saved data, which was also mentioned. If I give you one, one concrete data point again, right from a very early study several years back, we saw that that nutrition rate among women after having their second child, right, was very high in double digit numbers. And then we went into the root cause and investigated and realized that it was primarily because of lack of childcare support. So that also resulted in actually our in house childcare centre, which again, so the data and doing something about it. And of course young, young parents can be both men or women, but I'm just saying it for majority of the cases impacts women and to take action based on the data is also super important. Then I'd say also sponsorship is important, right? Senior leaders need to actively advocate and mentor for high potential women because they need to give, be given those opportunities, the visibility so that they can and aspire. And two, when they when roles come up, they can also take on those challenging roles. So All in all, I'd say that transparency is very important and using data and kind of driving some of those outcomes becomes very important.
00:09:43 SUJIT JOHN: Yeah, I've seen pictures of your childcare centre, the phenomenal. I mean, I've not seen it actually, but from all of us seen our pictures, I mean beautiful setups many of you have now in your centres, isn't it? I'm sure they do. We men use it a lot.
00:09:59 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Absolutely. I mean, there's saplings, which I was referring to is right on the campus, right. And so women use, young men use it too. I mean, it doesn't have to be young parents, let's put it that way. And it makes it so much more easier, especially nursing mothers and all. They can still continue work. They just step out. And so it works beautifully. I have, I have to say.
00:10:23 SUJIT JOHN: Yeah, you mentioned mentorship as well. I mean, that's something that I hear a lot. We have a column that is meant for, you know, career advice for women and all that. And almost uniformly, everybody mentions mentorship as a huge thing. Give us an idea. Mentorship and sponsorship programs and advancing women's careers. How important are these?
00:10:44 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Really important, Sujit, because mentorship and and sponsorship programs are, I would say game changers. And I'm sure Lalitha would agree to that as well. Because I mean, if you're talking about advancing women's careers become super important that you also pair experienced leaders with high potential women, right? And it really helps where you have also clear objectives where you can track progress, where a sponsorship, I think given goes a step further, right where we have senior leaders. And when you talk about sponsorship, it's not you don't say I have I'm going to sponsor 10 women. No, that that doesn't happen that way, right? Sponsors actually kind of find you right and then sponsor you at but but for sponsors to find you, you need to be in those roles. Do you need?
00:11:34 SUJIT JOHN: So what is the difference? What do the sponsors do?
00:11:38 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Well, sponsors speak for you with when you're not in the room, right, speak in those boardrooms to really say, Hey, I'd like to have a lesson doing that project, right. Whereas a mentor, you work with the mentor, you kind of work you refine the way how you learn about things or get the visibility or you you use them as a sounding board. You have multiple diverse mentors who support you can't even people from completely different organizations, but sponsors are within your organization. But in in certain roles, sponsors even can be outside the organization sitting in a common board, for example, right. So, both of these become super important, but I'm sure others have.
00:12:20 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah, if something so I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think some of the times we don't even know who our sponsors are, right? Because they're advocates for us. They're the people who have seen. And whether that's me sponsoring for someone else or someone sponsoring for me, it's because we've seen something in that person that we want to highlight. We see that value and we want to spotlight that. And so sometimes there are a few people who don't know that I sponsor them, that I advocate for them in the closed door. And I recently found out that there was someone in Ireland that was sponsoring for me, which I again, I just found that very interesting because it wasn't something that I knew. Whereas to Sindhu's point, it the mentorship is more of that partnership, shared experiences. And so you always know who your mentor or your mentee is. So I think from that perspective, they are, they are very different. And I think while we can and we do, I think all of us do have very targeted mentorship programs. I think Sujit, from, from my perspective, they're key because when you look at the three of us, we're all coming in at in very, very historically male dominated environments, right, whether it's automotive, technology, financial services and so a lot. So while I think this is a phenomenal panel that you've put together, we're also a little bit of a Unicorn in some ways. So I think these structured programs take the learnings that we've been, that we've benefited from the strides that we've taken and institutionalized it, so we can help that next wave coming through. And I think that's what's really important for us to be able to continue the momentum forward.
00:14:28 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Yeah. I think the only point which I will add to what Sindhu and Veda already said, Sujith, is especially in a GCC kind of an environment, it is important for us as an organization to identify sponsors for the top talent probably who's sitting here in the headquarters because where they have visibility, probably a tad bit more higher sponsors really need to. And also you need to pick the sponsors who have a good understanding of how the talent in the GCC operates and have the willingness to be the spokesperson and promote that agenda in the headquarters who has a seat at the table, right? Because otherwise a bit. Of course, now the, the, the tables are turning, we have more global rules moving to India. No, location is no longer the criteria for where your sponsor is going to be located. But do the sponsors have the seat at the table? Do they have the visibility for this stretch Opportunities becomes pretty essential aspect of it. But when it comes to mentorship, what I've seen working is best to encourage mentorship from more successful women leaders who are probably around you, right? Because it's important to foster a sense of belonging and community, kind of a feeling to reduce that stress. And more often than not, a lot of problems are not as unique as women assume them to be, right? It is a lot of us have faced it. A lot of has overcome. We had the similar kind of Rd. We have overcome that. We've broken some class ceilings. So it's about how do you take those learnings and how do you maneuver those situations and move forward? Either it is in your career or life. So mentors has to be more closer to you, local to you. People who have gone through this path and journey and sponsors are the ones who should be having the seat at the table do.
00:16:31 SUJIT JOHN: You companies tell women employees to find mentors. Do you tell them and how many of them then try to do that?
00:16:44 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Well, mostly the.
00:16:45 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry, Lalitha. I think, I think we encourage everyone to find mentors. I don't think that this is unique to just women, that's number one. But I think one of the other things that we also do is we actually encourage people to find a mentor who's not the same as them because you want so. So while there are absolutely learnings that I can take from a woman that's gone ahead of me and she's, you know, raised children while having a career and I can learn a lot from what she's done and how she's done it. I can also learn a lot from the perspective of someone who isn't in my same place. And that could be a woman who's never gotten married and never had children, that could be a man and or that could be someone anywhere on the gender spectrum that's different than me. And what I can do is I can learn about a different perspective too. So I think the mentoring program, we encourage everyone to do it. And we, we do like, we do hoping that we will do a little bit more handholding maybe through some of that process where we want to make sure that we're nurturing some of that nurturing some of that talent that might not organically grow on its own. So I think I, I would say that we're not forcing women or we're not looking at, you know, trying to get, and it's not a numbers game, but it is absolutely trying to find that talent and whatever, whatever size, shape or form it might be in that needs additional help and surrounding them and nurturing them in different ways, including mentoring.
00:18:39 SUJIT JOHN: I just want to stay on this topic. Sponsorship again, can can that be you structure it, You tell senior leaders that you must become sponsors of some employees and all that. Do you do that? How does that work? All of you are muted.
00:18:55 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: We tell senior leaders and but, but like I said, sponsors will identify. It's not that it's a matchmaking, right? Like it never happens that way. And and sometimes a board member has maybe one sponsor or two Max, right? So it's really to elevate you to different levels, right?
00:19:23 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: And that most, you know, mentorship is a lot more structured genre message than sponsorship. Sponsorship is it something has to work out. And we, we can only nudge the senior leaders. We can only nudge them and tell them, hey, have you looked at so and so? Have you considered if you have a stretch assignment, would you want to consider so and so and that kind of just bringing them to the table together? Then it's a structured program.
00:19:52 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Yeah, I think sponsorship also is built on trust, right? You've already proven somebody knows you. You've always been somebody who delivers diligent and that's built over time. It's not some of people.
00:20:07 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah, and while and I absolutely agree, it's not matchmaking, it has to happen. It's got to be done through proven delivery and and performance. One of the things that we can do is we can encourage senior leaders to say sponsorship is something that's very important for us to build future leaders so that they become aware of the folks that are coming up in the organization and they can find those people that they want to sponsor because they know it's the right thing for the organization. So I think that's how we would kind of encourage sponsorship, would be educating people on the benefits of finding and sponsoring someone.
00:20:54 SUJIT JOHN: OK. OK, Shilpa, I just wanted to ask this other thing on mentorship. So when you structure mentorship, what they you ask the mentor to spend a certain amount of time, how does it work? Do you structure some of those things that within in a month you must spend this much time? Anything like that? Any of you, I don't know how how do this the process?
00:21:19 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: They want a structured program, Sujit. So, we actually list out the people who are seeking mentors. So there's a mentorship program. I'm just talking about SAP now. And we also train the mentors, right? Because mentors also need to conduct the conversations with peer goals and outcomes. Because a mentee also needs to be prepared to go in there and say, hey, what do I want to achieve out of this conversation and this relationship? What is there? And so to come prepared, it's not just so let's go for a coffee kind of a conversation. That's also good. Of course, we can do that. But so that yes, training for mentors is very important, right? And so that you can effectively guide and support your mentees. And that's crucial because many times it's also important, right? As mentors, you also need to have training on unconscious bias, active listening, right? And also providing constructive feedback. That person is seeking for input, right? It's not about saying, oh, it's all great. So indeed and that is important. And also we integrate these programs with overall talent management, succession planning processes to make sure that it's aligned with our overall diversity and inclusion goals as well. So there is larger organizational outcomes as well that we are trying to achieve with these very structured programs now.
00:22:45 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: That's usually structured and most more often than not the people chapter or the HR is kind of setting the construct and guidelines and you know, monitoring once in a while if I can say so.
00:23:01 VEDA PERSAD: Yes, and we do the same. It's structured and we almost do a little bit. You know, when we talked about sponsorship isn't matchmaking, mentorship is. So I'll put in that I want to learn more about cyber or I want to learn more about fraud and mentors will put in things that they're really good at and they can mentor with. So we, we do do a bit of a matchmaking and one of the things, well, we absolutely do the same thing at Northern Trust where we train our mentors. We also do let people know it's the mentee that drives that relationship. So as a mentor, if if I'm being mentored or I'm mentoring someone, there's a certain amount of hours and time that you say that you're going to commit to that relationship. But as far as driving the agenda when we meet, setting up the meetings, we put that in the hands of the mentee because we believe that each person owns their own career, owns their own career path, and therefore it is them that needs to drive their own journey forward.
00:24:11 SUJIT JOHN: So how many women come forward to be, I mean, asking for a mentor? Is it still a small proportion or?
00:24:19 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: No, several hundreds.
00:24:21 SUJIT JOHN: Really, it is.
00:24:22 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: It is, yeah. OK, OK.
00:24:29 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: In Fact. I think the mentors are not just for women, right? I think that was already said.
00:24:36 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Everybody needs to see.
00:24:37 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Mentors because it's, it's also a brilliant way to learn from another person's experience, right? And it can be similar, can be or rather it should be very diverse as well because then you get a totally different perspective. So having also a diverse set of mentors is something that I always encourage and I also have.
00:25:01 VEDA PERSAD: Well, and you know what, Sindhu? That's a really important point that you made because people are always surprised that, you know, the, the level that we're at right now, the amount of years of experience that we have, where we've gotten to in our organizations. And when I tell people that, yeah, I have 3 or 4 sponsors at any given time and I am, you know, connecting with my so, my mentors and my sponsors, they don't, they seem sometimes people think you hit a certain level and you don't need it anymore, which I find is also quite interesting. So I'm glad that you brought that up as well.
00:25:40 SHILPA PHADNIS: We get to hear of many organizations who are chasing the diversity ratio. They've called it out, 2025 goals, 2030, whatever be, but there's a structured road map that they've all called out. So I just wanted to hear from each one of your experiences, one in your own companies. How are you really reviewing these across levels? It can be the junior, mid and senior level and successfully elevated each one of them, handheld them to really see them through to the next journey. And what are some of the cultural challenges that you've seen when it comes to, you know, some of the women leaders, aspiring women leaders, you know, that they've expressed to you individually?
00:26:25 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: You'll have to pick a speaker as we all start speaking at the same time.
First, yeah, then yeah. And others, yeah. You talked about cultural barriers, right? I mean, if I just look at the demographics first, right, Shilpa, today, what India has 1022 women for every thousand men in the country, right? So I think fundamentally every business has understood that we cannot progress as the business or even as nations without 50% of our population of workforce. It's as simple as that. It's becomes a business imperative, right? First of all, so it's, it's not just about, hey, how do we monitor the numbers and get, but every business has realized that that's what it needs. But if you just look at India again, India's clearly topping the world when we talk about highest number of female STEM graduates, 43%, right? But again, when you look at the same numbers when it comes to employing them, we rank at the 19th position. So which means if we there is structural changes that need to happen and everybody like I said understands that that kind of if you're looking at progress on multiple fronts, it can't happen without women. So if you look at some of the challenges, right, we lose brilliant, particularly in the mid carrier level technologists and leaders many times to some unfair practices at work. Like I said earlier, unconscious bias, a lack of equal opportunity. And hence I'll reiterate what I said earlier to we need to tackle this through regular training sessions, right? And training for, I mean, we talked about training in the context of mentors, but also on unconscious bias. We need to have the gender sensitivity for all employees right into at all levels, including the leadership levels, right? And and raising awareness as well about biases. And also having that as one of the key points when you talk about decision making is, is very key. So which means it translates to also making sure that you're reviewing and updating your organizational policies to be also very inclusive and also supportive for women, right? Beat pay policies, maternity of paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, anti harassment measures, all of this need, I think it's a given, right? It's expected and has to be in place top down as well. That leadership commitment is also crucial, right? Because many times it has to be the voice from the top because leaders who come out then promote and talk about diversity and inclusion initiatives also help hold themselves accountable for progress, right? And so the end people know, hey, this is an organization I want to be part of and the there's a clear focus, right. So that that I think is is very important. And what, what we've also done is lot of these, what we call as network, so employed resource groups as and also giving a platform for women to also connect to also what you mentioned Lalitha earlier on, right, people who've gone through a similar path. So we have business women's network is one example that immediately comes to my mind where you really have women with come together, support each other and also have successful women leaders come in role modelling as well, demonstrating also how that leadership positions are are retainable, right. And, and then, like I said, having very concrete looking at the data and implementing concretely some of the things that you need to have in place, beta on site childcare or having Wellness programs, all of this becomes super important. And then going back and, and also regularly monitoring and reporting on, on many of the metrics, right, Because people know, hey, OK, that's, that's what the data is showing, which means we need to do more. And so that those gaps can also be addressed. So it's really a collective of all of this, I'd say. So that if there are like many times when I talked about unconscious bias, just because woman is at her midpoint of her career taking on a role in a different country, you don't need to assume, hey, she might not be able to travel or whatever it is, right. So that that's what I mean by it's very important that you take the decision you based on the business, nothing about the individual. That's for the individual to come back and say if if she or he's able to do it, right. So I think it's it very much ingrained into the core culture of the organization, right. So yeah.
00:31:25 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: I think I'll only add to what you said, since if you can't see it, you can't be it, right? So that's the reason why role models become so much more important. But I think, you know, to this point, essentially just by the nature of working in a GCC, we always have a culture mix, right? It's about creating the right mix of, you know, representing the headquarters, brand identity, corporate philosophy while looking into the country where the GCC is based on celebrating the local cultural differences. So by design most GCC are heterogeneous and it could be because of the countries that are operating your stakeholders are global. So there is certain level of diversity that already exists from the business itself, right? And that because of that, we are probably able to create some of these policies about the flexibility we can bring into work based on the different time zones. It could be things in terms of the inclusivity, essentially the kind of policies that will help us. That is the kind of the things which people get benefited from, you know, the dismantling the traditional barriers that may have impended the men for participating in the past, right? So adopting the flexible work environment is not just contribute so more diverse workforce, but also it could be a heightened level of engagement among the talent both for men and women. It's not necessarily just a women thing, but whoever needs flexibility, we are able to create that kind of flexibility, different time zone working and a lot of these things as a part of policies that helps us.
00:33:11 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah. And I think, you know, just going back to your original question about, you know, the gender mix and, and is it targeted? I think all of us and you probably heard this come out in a lot of different ways. We are looking at equal opportunity. And so when it comes to hiring, one of the things that we want to make sure that we do is that we get an, an diverse slate of candidates. And then to address the, the, you know, the, the concern that Sindhu had raised as well, we make sure that our interview panel is diverse as well. So anytime I see and I see you're doing the exact same way. So a lot of those things, because we know we're human beings, we are going to have bias, we will have affinity biases and be attracted to people who are more like us. So we need to make sure that we have panels that are diverse, making sure that we are demanding and we demand this from our talent acquisition team that they provide us with a diverse slate of candidates. And I think from that perspective is how we want to make sure that we are doing the right thing for the organization, getting the right talent and not basing that on a gender preference one way or the other. I think one other really quick things that we do and I mean again, I am sure Lalitha and Sindhu you do these things as well is throughout the year when we're ever we're going into a performance cycle or an the increase cycle, we take a look at our entire database. We look across levels, we look across genders and we make sure that from that perspective when we're looking at like I'm not going to look at you know, 8000 people's, you know, performance rating. But when I take the step back and we take a look at what is happening at each level, we also want to make sure that we've got equal balance and proper representation of people moving, people being promoted and, and the ratings that they're getting as well. And we've got the right representation of those of that population. And I think that's something that we, that we do at Northern. And it's, it's not an easy exercise. It, it is quite onerous to do, but it's important. And, and because everyone knows that we do it as well. I think there's a certain amount, you know, Sindhu, as you were saying earlier, there's a certain amount of trust that comes with those types of practices as well.
00:36:03 SHILPA PHADNIS: Yeah, right. I mean, just that, you know, we were looking at the change in the reporting structure, especially after Black Lives Matter. We really saw disclosures around leaders who made it from those communities. So we were just wondering as to from a media standpoint, India is the growth engine for many companies and the disclosures are still not there. You know, it still has to evolve to call out India as an integral part of the journey and also disclose diversity ratios. We've not seen that happen yet. Hopefully it should happen in the future.
00:36:36 VEDA PERSAD: Well, it's interesting though.
00:36:38 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: As a future organization, we are always, we are out there, right? It's not there for everybody to look at it.
00:36:45 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah. And it's interesting because I was just about to say the same thing. I think whenever we're having a due diligence visit, we have clients coming in and visiting us. That's probably one of the one of the the metrics that they like to look at as well to understand what are we doing as an organization. And so it is a very open conversation that we have. We talk about it at our all partners Northern Trust employees are called partners. So all at our all partner town halls, we also we we talk openly about it as well.
00:37:19 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Specifically a jailer also we track this and internally we have a network called reach rate, ethnicity, diversity, you know, all kind of diverse angles. We look at it globally, not just here, right. So we definitely do focus on it.
00:37:39 SUJIT JOHN: Shilpa was asking do you set targets and then you try to see whether you meet those targets and all that. Do you do that?
00:37:46 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Absolutely. Usually gender diversity ratio, definitely There are targets are sort of every organization, there are targets, yeah.
00:37:54 VEDA PERSAD: Correct.
00:37:56 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Because you can't. You want to improve what you can't measure, right? So that's so important that you need to have the targets.
00:38:03 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah. And we've seen the math, right. So just like we were talking about what the population, the overall population is like and what the graduate composition is like, but yet in GCCS, you know, 1.9 million employees in GCCS and only 5,00,000 women. So we've got some work to do. And if we're not purposeful about it, if we're not intentional about it, we're not going to make progress.
00:38:31 SUJIT JOHN: So what is the big starting block there you think?
00:38:34 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: But the biggest thing is in terms of the number of women who are in STEM, right? It is if you look at for us, especially if you look at recruiting from Ivy League kind of universities for engineering graduates, they're only at about 10:50 percent women. That becomes the biggest barrier for us in taking the equal 5050%. So I think the change has to start much deep rooted and try to bring the inclusion ratio even if you don't look at just Ivy League, even if the engineering, if you look at I think the numbers are something around 28.7% women in the engineering.
00:39:12 SUJIT JOHN: Courses, right. So overall, is it?
00:39:13 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah. So I think it is. We still have a lot of work to do in that area because if you don't.
00:39:22 SUJIT JOHN: Have it. It is really low and I think they're also trying to improve it. Even below that. So, you're saying the numbers?
00:39:28 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Are, yeah, it's around 30 to 40%. Sometimes it depends on the year that you look at, but it's not definitely at 50%.
00:39:36 VEDA PERSAD: So, and I think what I think what we're all saying, Sujit, is we are, we are as we're bringing people into the organization, especially at that entry level, we try to get as close to 5050 as we can. Then we know in any country there's leakage as you go up the the hierarchy. And so all of us are putting programs in place to try and stem that leakage. I think that's probably because what you don't want to do is you don't want to get a perspective of tokenism. Because that's the, that's the backlash that can happen at times as well. So if you're hiring at equal opportunity, you are providing people the equal opportunities, equal training, equal access to mentors, equal and access to stretch assignments, then that will naturally create a hopefully the same type of proportion as you go up. But then it's things like, and I love the term saplings. Oh my gosh, that is such a fantastic term. But you know, when it's doing programs like that, but help help our young parents to continue with their careers. And so I think if we're doing all of those things, it will or it will organically happen and also purposely because we are focused, right, just like Lalitha said, you measure what you want to improve.
00:41:21 SUJIT JOHN: Marriage and kids, I imagine, are the biggest reasons when they fall off. I mean, what are the best strategies there, you think, to keep them even if it's a break or whatever? What are the strategies that have worked best for you?
00:41:37 VEDA PERSAD: Well, for us, we provide daycare doesn't matter. Again, it's, it's gender neutral that we do provide daycare. And we, and while I, I do love the fact of having a daycare in on site in the building, we have them in our, in our tech parks and the tech parks that we're in. So what we've done is we've done tie ups with those tech parks, but to give some people flexibility because some people don't want to commute with their child, right? So some people don't want to have to do that or if they're working from home, they still want to put their child into daycare. So we give them the flexibility for daycare where they would like and we provide and we provide coverage for that.
00:42:26 SUJIT JOHN: Sindhu, What are the best strategies for you?
00:42:31 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Many depends on where women are in their career as well, right. And I maybe I'll call out one thing which which where the leakage because we talked about leakage earlier on, right. So we have this SAP return ship program. It's a program which is also it's made it to a Harvard case study, all of that our DNI practices at SA PS in general a Harvard case study and the Returnship program particularly is is targeting women. So that where I mean for various reasons, be it for caregiving or childcare, whatever it is when women take a longer break, right. So it's a very structured program where there is ways where you don't need to of course, do your regular work, but still have that intermediate times in a week where you connect with the team. There's a person who's always there to to work with you and it's just keeping you abreast of everything that's happening at work. So because there's a lot of anxiety on both sides, right? So it's not just for it's, it's also been when you have a high potential, who's on the break, there's anxiety on the employer side as well that we want to retain that that person and make sure that the person feels absolutely comfortable during that break to come back fully empowered to take on the role. Right, whatever and that's particularly targeted in this case for for our women, right. So the Returnship program in this case is, is actually only for women. I have to admit, because we saw again from the data that that's where we tend to and these are high performing women who we definitely want to make sure that they come back, right? Because many times it's people are passionate about topics. It's they don't necessarily are are at the workplace just for the compensation or anything, right? So, and we want that kind of passionate people to be back. Of course, pay equity and all that is definitely something that we is a is a baseline, but but I'd also say few things which we shouldn't underplay is also, I mean, we talk about retaining talent regularly. Also having a culture of acknowledging contributions be through formal processes or simple shout outs. I mean, that's a culture. And I'm sure, I'm sure all of us do that because many times it's also about boosting the morale and encouraging that long term commitment to the organization, right? Because making people, I think in general, if you, if you may show people that they're appreciated, they're seen, you recognize what they're doing, I think goes a very long way, very, very long way. Totally.
00:45:22 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: Yeah. I think the only point which I would add there's to what they've already said is, you know, somewhere we need to disassociate the age of factor in terms of especially when women take a break, right? Because if you look at it when they start the careers, if they choose to take a break in between and when they come back to work. When you look at somebody with 15 years of experience, a man and the kind of the roles they've done under 15 years of experience of a women, the kind of roles, somewhere there is a age bias that creeps in. It's all part of our unconscious bias, right? So I think we somewhere need to separate the age angle and look at women's ability to take on a leadership role, either younger or older, right, as long as they fit the requirements. Can we do we have as an organizer's the ability to disassociate the age bias and the experience biases and look at people for that role? So, and as Sindhu's adding in terms of from a challenges perspective, a lot of it's also about encouraging the women to just stay put. It is it is so easy to give up. So it's about telling them that it's OK. We're all here with all the flexibility, keeping that excitement going, keeping that, you know, the fire, what I've talked about earlier in terms of giving the confidence. And that is the reason why what Sindhu said makes a lot of sense in terms of giving those opportunities, giving that sponsorship and you know, proactive approach for that is very, very important.
00:47:07 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah. And I think, the only thing I think I would add to that is just like, just like Livita was saying, every organization is slightly different, right? Everybody's like, just like every person has their own personality. Culture is the personality of an organization. And so I think one of the things that each of us also do is we listen to what our our teams are saying. So I'm sure we're not alone. Northern Trust isn't alone in this. We do an engagement survey, we send this out, we slice and dice it so we can look and we can see what are people at different generations thinking? What are people at different levels in the organization thinking? What are people of different genders thinking? And one of the things that we we've done is we did look and we saw that last year that we did get some lower scores in certain buckets of in from women where there were a lot of different things that we did. But this one cut the action that we took was that there were two different buckets of women who felt like their careers weren't being nurtured as much as they would like. So we put in for senior women and for that budding manager, we put in a special focus program to help them through the that next phase of their career as well. So I think I think all of us are doing that in there in different ways because we're all different organizations as well. So listening to our folks doing what's right for us and while there's some best practices that are all of us are doing, I think we also just need to recognize that it needs to be tailored for every different organization.
00:49:01 SUJIT JOHN: Yeah, absolutely.
00:49:03 SHILPA PHADNIS: Yeah, when you look at culture, you know, do you think with employees coming back to work, it's easier not only to engage them, also to sensitize them culturally? Because an online first experience, it was very different. So many of them had really not stepped into offices. They're already 3-4 years old and the entire mix would have changed. So I just wanted to hear from each one of you as to do you think a hybrid model helps you, you know, integrate them better culturally? Lalika, you want to go first?
00:49:33 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: It does, right? I think a lot of the times what I've seen in my career is how much ever you do classroom trainings or just online trainings and sensitization or unconscious bias it, it really never hits home as much as you do a role play or put people, give them scenarios, make them sit together, promote a kind of a dialogue, if I can say so in a room, right? That is the one. Especially when it comes to subjects like, you know, diversity related topics and sensitization. All of this. It is best done in a physical environment, Shilpa. So returning to work or the hybrid work environment where we do this workshop and other stuff in person definitely would help. Much better in integration.
00:50:27 VEDA PERSAD: Yes. So we and we very quickly pivoted to so we did our we're hybrid as well. All of our new employee onboarding we do in person also for the fact that they can come in and they pick up their laptop and get the most selves all set up. But I think to your point, Shilpa culture isn't something that you can teach. It's almost something that you have to feel and live and experience. And, and so for the new, new people who are joining an organization, I do believe that them coming in and spending that time with their managers, their teams, and maybe it's not their whole team all the time because we're all hybrid. So it's going to be moving and shifting a little bit. So we always just make sure that we've got management on the ground for that team all the time for people who are new coming in so that they can experience it. Because Lalitha is right. That's not something you can teach. You've got to live it.
00:51:33 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Yeah, all, all said, right. Because when you look at some of the key skills, strategic thinking, negotiation, executive presence, I mean, you have to live it, right. You don't sit in a classroom and learn. Of course, continuous learning as an organizational culture, something we all instill and drive. And for continuous learning, of course, we use online tools and all of that. But for some of the topics we are talking about here, you, you have to live it right. So yeah.
00:52:04 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah, and I think the, I think the best learning, honestly, I think the best learning is if I'm sitting and I can overhear Sindhu and Lalitha's conversation, I'm learning something about how do you present yourself? How do you present your case? How do you interact with other people? Those are the types of things that you can't learn watching your and, and it's that it's to your point, Lalitha. It's that experiential learning that we provide in office that I think is important to developing the culture.
00:52:38 SUJIT JOHN: Absolutely on this point of unconscious bias that all of you spoke about. I mean, give us another man. I think I'm UN not biased, but I'm sure he probably gets reflected in some ways or the other. Give us a yeah. How, how widespread do you think, especially among men and all that, this unconscious bias, subconscious bias, how how widespread is it in?
00:53:01 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: You know, let me, let me just say Sujath, it's not man, it is even women, right? It's every one of us. If all of us have unconscious conscious bias and it is one of the biggest barriers in my opinion is unconscious bias. And as much as you invest and do the trainings on it, it's never going to be enough. It's a constant learning. It's a, it's a years of DNA according for us, right. It is, it is definitely, it's a, it's generations of DNA coding that has to change. And it can only be done where you hammer it again and again and again and show examples, call out on people, tell them this is how what they are showing is bias. And I would also say that even we have unconscious bias, right? So it it's not a man or woman thing. It is there and it's very deep.
00:53:53 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah, I, I really What? Sindhu, something you said earlier really resonated with me because I found myself falling prey to this. When a woman returns back from maternity leave, do I think about, oh, well, that job it's really demanding or that job sometimes really requires stretching into the night or that job requires a lot of travel. And so I hesitate and sometimes I don't even offer her that as an option when I mean and shame on us, right, because we're making choices on our perceptions as opposed to her choice. And so I think and we think we're being compassionate and empathetic and you know, we're not going to, but I just think that that's the wrong thing to do. Put it all out there and let that person decide what choice for them. That's and so I completely agree with you Lalitha we all I I know I have it. I have completely I have to challenge myself daily decline and.
00:54:59 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: And your mentors will have it too. And I can just, if I get half a minute, right, one of my most trusted mentors, I won't quote the person, of course, but who I would always go for. I mean, still go, but there was this one role that I was considering taking, right and actually where I just wanted the my mentor to tell me, go for it. You can do it, right, That that's what I was expecting. And, and he told me how you need to think about the work life balance. And I was like, wow. I mean.
00:55:37 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: The only thing which I tell the people I work with is please don't ever resume how much of a basic it is, how much of an apparent obvious it is. Please ask, give her the choice, right? I think that is that is my tagline. Always give her the choice you know, however obvious, please ask, right? That's the only way to figure it out and which is there is no right and wrong things, right, because everything is very different for individuals. There are people who would want to take aggressive roles, people who would want to come back, who would want to go there. And there are people who would want to take it light, who want to focus. So there is nothing always a right or wrong thing. It's about what do what does she want? And are we giving, are we enabling that? Whether it's lighter, higher, short term, long term, it's OK, right? It's it's about asking for it and providing what the women want.
00:56:34 SUJIT JOHN: Absolutely. Give her the choice. Yeah, Sindhu, I guess that mental would not have said the same thing to them, to a man, I guess.
00:56:40 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: I'm sure, I'm sure I had.
00:56:43 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: I would rarely doubt men telling each other. Think about your work.
00:56:50 SUJIT JOHN: No very true Sindhu. Anything we covered?
00:56:57 SHILPA PHADNIS: Quite a bit. And also if you can give us some examples of global leaders, women leaders sitting out of, you know, offices in India, getting a direct FaceTime with the boards and managements. So if you can help us understand, has that funnel grown and is there a conscious tracking mechanism so that there are more, be more visible examples of leaders?
00:57:21 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: I can go ahead. Go ahead please. I can only talk about it Shilpa is it is a lot of unlearning and relearning, right? Because especially as global women leaders, when you're sitting out of India and managing teams in different regions, for me, I had to. We all think we speak English, but we all speak very different English. What it means in one culture could be very, very different in what it means in other cultures. So it's a lot of unlearning, relearning for sure. So visibility to board and other stuff definitely, it all helps us to bring the diverse decision making which will help us to grow the teams right and globally. So that's all I would say.
00:58:13 SUJIT JOHN: Yeah. And we're almost out of time. Just your last messages to young women in in your companies and in GCC general in India in general, any last message that you want to share.
00:58:27 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Yeah, I just say not to have any mental blocks about your abilities, right. Give it your all. Go behind what you truly, yeah, passionate about. And but not to forget there's a put in your hard work. There's no compensation for the hard work passionately.
00:58:46 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: I always said one of the most important thing for women to be successful is guilt management. It's about we're always prone to guilt trips, whether whatever we choose, we are guilty, right? Whether we choose to be at home, we are guilty. We choose to be at work, we guilty. So it's guilt management is one of the most important aspects that one needs to manage. And the whatever choices you make, be OK with your choices, right? I think that is the that's the only key mantra that I have.
00:59:16 VEDA PERSAD: Yeah. And I think related to that, Lalitha, what you said and Sidhu, it resonated with me. I say, I would say the, the one thing that I say to young women is absolutely, they're your choices and you need to understand the benefits of those choices and the cost of those choices as well. And the other. So while we we want to be able to say you can have it all, absolutely you can have it all. You might not be able to have it all at the same time. And so being able to have that balance and know that sometimes I might have to put my parents in front of my career, I might have to put my children in front of my career. And knowing that that's OK because that's my choice and being good with that and know that when I'm ready to come back, and when you're ready to come back as a young woman, then that all that experience that you have will be able to continue your career forward.
01:00:29 SUJIT JOHN: Absolutely fascinating discussion. You know, I often tell people GCCs are the gold standard in a number of in the Indian corporate industry in general. I mean, you just recently read about stories of a global factory company which refused to hire married women and all that. I mean, that context, GCC is really are the gold standard in a number of areas and especially in HR. I think you've been a gold standard. But like all of you said, there's much yet to be done. And all of you gave us some excellent ways in which women can become 50% of all our organizations. So thanks so much for a great discussion. Sindhu Ravita Veda, it's been really a pleasure having you and great stuff. Thank. Thank you so much.
01:01:23 SINDHU GANGADHARAN: Thank you.
01:01:24 LALITHA INDRAKANTI: I think I've enjoyed as much as he's talking to everybody else. It felt like a friends at the table grouping about things right sometimes. This is wonderful. Thank you so much.
