A career break is no full stop

Banasree Purkayastha
Posted: 2008-02-02 23:28:37+05:30 IST
Updated: Feb 01, 2008 at 2345 hrs IST

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: the workforce. In addition, at the senior management level at domestic Indian companies, women only constitute about 4% of the total workforce. Also, many of the women employees interviewed said companies did not give enough time for maternity leave and almost no company offered flexible work schedules or office daycare facilities for new mothers.

“A career break does take one behind by a few years in the succession chart. Even progressive organisations, with women-friendly policies, find it difficult to assure the same career growth as would have happened to a woman employee if she had not taken a break. A woman employee, especially if she is very good, would legitimately expect to be pegged at the same level as her peers, so far as career growth is concerned,” reasons Ajay Kumar, general manager, HRD, Becton Dickinson India. For an organisation then to deliver this becomes difficult, considering the employee would not have worked for a couple of years in between while on break. However, if she comes back, and stays on in the organisation, there is every chance she will be able to make up for this and grow to her potential. And this is where the women-friendly policies come into play, he points out.

Becton Dickinson recently introduced its career break policy explicitly with the aim of fostering work life balance mostly among women associates, promote professional development and in the process provide associates some time out to revitalise and energise themselves. It allows associates who have completed four years of service with BD to take a two-year break from work for reasons related to maternity and adoption, pursuing higher studies, and joining one’s spouse in his/her location of posting. “With a steady rise in the number of women professionals we believe this policy will equip us in providing flexibility and retaining women associates in the future,” says Kumar. Ten per cent of BD-India’s managerial workforce comprises women associates. PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of those companies that have seen women re-entering the workforce. “However, the number of women taking career breaks has gone down in the last decade because of a number of reasons including economic reasons, women wanting a ‘career’’ rather than a ‘job’, companies offering the option of working out of home and so on,” says Rachna Nath, executive director, PwC. Nath points out that in today’s economy, specially in the sectors that are booming, with the...