Our purpose is evidenced in how our business has evolved over the years. We deliver a New World of Communications to advance the reach and leadership of our customers and partners. It is this strong sense of purpose that is then brought to life through our culture, our people and our leaders. For us, the leadership is not defined by title or a position but our leadership signature, it is what defines our culture and guides us to the future.
We reimagined our leadership signature DRIVE to DRIVE AHEAD in October 2021 to include 6 key behaviours: ownership and accountability, collaboration, being agile, ‘can do’ attitude, growth mindset, continuous learning and skill transformation, and innovation and problem-solving. Getting our culture embedded, driving talent transformation and employee engagement has been a priority for us. To ensure our employees truly live the reimagined leadership signature on an everyday basis, we also enabled the DRIVE AHEAD dialogues through facilitators in cohorts across business units. Going forward, the focus is on implementing and sustaining the DRIVE AHEAD behaviours through regular branding, leadership communication and employee engagement to enable employees to implement the leadership behaviours as a way of life.
Our diversity, equity, and inclusion approach focuses on hiring, developing, and retaining the best people. A diverse workforce, supported by an inclusive and caring environment that respects and nurtures people, is our way to improve safety and business performance.
We welcome diversity and also actively work towards enhancing the cohesive strength of businesses, striving to create an inclusive culture for all. Our entire recruitment and promotion system is based on the candidate’s achievements, capabilities, and potential, while ensuring compliance with relevant legal requirements in different regions of the world, regarding diversity and inclusion.
We focus on the ability and work performance based recruitment, while ensuring compliance with relevant legal requirements in different regions of the world, when it come to diversity and inclusion. As a responsible business, we do not discriminate based on race, caste, religion, colour, ancestry, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, age, nationality, ethnicity, or disability.
We have in place compensation and employee benefit practices that are designed to be competitive within the respective geographies of where we operate. The benefits vary across geographies and some of them include Group Medical Insurance, Group Term Life Insurance, Group Personal Accident Insurance, parental leave, awards for employees and retirement benefits for our full-time employees including Provident Fund, Gratuity, Medical and Pension Benefits in India, and other geographies, as applicable.
The representation of women in our Company has grown from 16% in FY 2013-14 to 21.7% at the end of FY 2021-22. This increase has been propelled by a supportive policy framework, focused efforts toward diversity hiring, and inclusive talent management practices. The diversity mix among our new hires has increased from 19% to 26.4% over the same period.
The Winning Mix
At Tata Communications, we have created a strategic business imperative named the ‘winning mix’, which is based on three pillars:
1
Building an
inclusive
culture
2
Creating
a diverse
talent pool
3
Enabling
policies and
infrastructure
Since its inception, the ‘winning mix’ programme has led to the adoption of many progressive practices.
Key Initiatives
1. Flexible policies
We have consciously designed genderagnostic policies and processes, to ensure that all employees within Tata Communications feel appreciated and valued at work. Such a focus also takes into account changing family structures, and specific needs that arise due to these.
Our work-from home policy was implemented even before the pandemic, giving our workforce flexibility and empowering them to choose their work styles, based on their needs. The global caregiving policy allows all employees (irrespective of the gender) to provide family care. Employees can take family care leave in the following categories: primary caregiver leave, which includes 26 weeks of paid leave for childcare or adoption, parental leave, which includes six weeks of paid leave, additional child care and dependent care leaves. We also intend to enable men to contribute equally to their families’ needs. As a result, employees who are not eligible for primary care giver leave are entitled to two weeks of paid parental leave for the birth or adoption of a child.
Employees can choose to work fewer hours to accommodate personal or family obligations under the global part-time work policy. This policy is intended to help employees, who may find it difficult to work within our Company’s standard work arrangement/ working hours. The framework allows for 50% or more part-time employment, while adhering to legal guidelines and local laws.
Replacement hiring policy allows temporary replacements to be hired for new parents who are about to take long-term leave, thereby, ensuring business continuity. The cost of this additional resource is covered by central D&I budget.
~50%
Part-time employment under
the part-time work policy
Last year, when one of our team members had to go on maternity leave, we reached out to HR for replacement, as we work in a 24*7 shift environment. Given the nature of the job, it required someone to monitor the systems all the time, and this request was promptly addressed. It benefited the team immensely, as the replacement candidate learned the job rather quickly, and we were able to operate with 100% strength and the same efficiency. Also, the candidate got a much-valued experience, which worked out to be beneficial for her career. Overall, this is an excellent policy that ensures business continuity without the manager having to distribute the additional workload on existing resources, and also helps in creating a job-ready workforce.
Ashish Kasture
Deputy General Manager, Service Assurance Core and Next-Gen Connectivity Service
2. LEAP (Life Event Assistance Programme)
It is a digital platform that offers a targeted approach to support employees during critical life events and ensure their engagement, retention and talent management. It is designed for primary and secondary caregivers, with the objective of providing support to parents throughout the parenting cycle – ranging from pre-natal care to handling teenagers and young adults. The experience ensures that each parent can derive some benefit from the platform, be it parenting tips, self-care or health and wellness. Additionally, the platform helps parents stay connected with the organisation during their long leave and continue to receive additional support from peers/teams through a dedicated community network, thus not only making their return to work easier but also ensuring a smooth parenthood journey.
3. Creating a Diverse Talent Pool
Aspirational diversity targets (hiring and overall representation) are set and achievements against these goals are tracked through a monthly dashboard and a quarterly infographic that is published to all senior leaders. To address the issue of cognitive gender bias in the very initial stages of attracting talent towards the opportunities in the organisation, we have implemented an AI-enabled Masking Tool in our screening process. The tool masks the gender-related information when an evaluator receives the resume for screening. Once a candidate is shortlisted for further evaluation (face-to-face/ telephonic), the details are made available to the evaluator in an ‘unmasked’ resume.
4. Managing diverse talent:
Learning through role models
We have initiated the ‘Aspire to Inspire’ monthly role model series that features women employees across the organisation. We interview women leaders about their career graphs and aspirations and post their interviews on the Company’s newsletters, Yammer, LinkedIn, and others. This helps to create role models that other women in the organisation can identify with and learn from.
Mitigating unconscious biases
We have introduced several programmes and initiatives to mitigate unconscious biases. Most recently, we developed the inclusive leadership learning journey, a webinar/e-leaning module, available for all people managers. This focuses on creating a winning mix and leveraging the power of diversity and innovation to optimise talent and employee experience, which are key enablers of both organisational and personal success. As part of our effort on D&I, one of our largest business units launched the #IncludeUs campaign aimed to harness individual talent and personal experience. This was done through a series of engagement activities that included thought-provoking communication to sensitise all employees through real-life examples of inclusion dilemmas faced at the workplace, allowing discussions and reflection on unconscious biases and prejudices in the workplace.
Women development interventions
As a Tata Group Company, we participate in the Group’s efforts towards increasing women representation at middle and senior levels, through a suite of offerings.
Take the Lead is a leadership journey designed for women who are at the mid management level. This programme helps participants address the unique challenges they face in their personal and professional life and gain perspective and insights to effectively deal with them. It is a four-month programme with a blended learning approach which combines classroom, webinars and experiential learning along with one-on-one coaching. Another such programme is Leap Ahead, designed for women who are at the cusp of early senior management level roles. It is a multi-phase learning experience to help women make purposeful choices and enhance their individual impact within the organisation and beyond. This programme is designed to be a reflective space leading to introspection of strengths and challenges.
At Tata Communications Transformation Services (TCTS), we launched the third edition of the Women’s Leadership Development (UDAAN) programme to ensure that we create a healthy pipeline of women leaders for the future. The four month programme includes a two-day experiential learning workshop, virtual learning and action learning projects, designed to help participants understand, transform, and challenge themselves. For the same BU, we also introduced the Success DRIVErs programme – focusing on sharpening interpersonal skills and shaping future leadership capabilities among a selected set of women employees at junior levels. The programme offers an online blended learning journey to our participants comprising of a curated workshop involving various inspiring leadership videos, gamified learning platform, and experience sharing sessions from seasoned leader/s of our organisation. Through this programme, participants also get the opportunity to complete an Industry recognised certification which is handpicked. The fifth edition of the Mentoring Programme has also been launched for women of TCTS to help them overcome various road-blocks (development/growth/personal) they may face and prepare them for further greater responsibilities.
Given the challenges that at times this Industry presents, we have introduced a programme specifically designed to manage ‘Women in Tech’ domain focussing on their hiring and development within the cloud and technology business units. This programme had several key outcomes including (a) identification of open positions more likely to be staffed by women candidates; (b) reconnecting with Tata Communication – monthly alumni mail of job opportunities within the business unit with direct links for each opening, and (c) customised learning interventions.
Talent attraction, retention and development are the three main pillars of the ‘Women in Tech’ initiative
Intentional career pathing
We continue to create an Intentional career pathing for a focussed set of women employees for their targeted development through various interventions including executive group coaching for senior leaders, leader shadowing, project marketplace for cross functional learning, increased exposure through group action learning projects. Women leaders continue to participate in Tata Group’s Women Networking platform launched for women employees. We also ensure their frequent participation in various external forums to help them create an external network and continuously build their thought capital.
Notable recognitions received for
diversity and inclusion practices —
2021-BCWI (Best Companies for Women in India) Award by AVATAR group and Working Mother Media, for the sixth time in a row
Recognised as India’s Best Workplaces for Women by GPTW for the third time in a row
Recognised as Economic Times Best Organisations for Women 2022
Benchmarking employee compensation
We conduct a detailed compensation benchmarking exercise globally before commencing the annual compensation review process. This exercise helped us create salary ranges that are market competitive, and are also aligned with our internal metrics. The internal metrics include attrition, new hiring averages, offer acceptance ratio, along with existing salary averages, and are regularly monitored and assessed. The salary ranges are finalised with business inputs and strategic direction of the organisation in focus. The salary ranges are used for both increments of existing employees, and for deciding compensation packages for new employees.
We conduct a detailed compensation benchmarking exercise globally before commencing the annual compensation review process
