Women leaders for better business outcomes?

Ashok Pamidi

Globally and in India a lot has been written and debated about the importance of women leaders in the industry. History has consistently proven that women can perform exceptionally well in domains that have traditionally been considered male bastions: politics, business and sales. Can technology company be left far behind?

The IT companies have already recognized the fact that most compelling drivers for having women leaders is not about compliance or being a preferred employer of choice- but about achieving better and faster business outcomes. A woman leader enables a company to access wider talent pools. She is a role model and thus young talent gets motivated to join a trusting and inclusive workplace. She also enables the company to tap new markets and acquire new customers. The BPM and animation industry is a classic example of how women power has demonstrated the lateral thinking capability, bringing workplace harmony, workplace efficiency and bringing down attrition.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the positive correlation between gender diversity and business outcome, e.g. the 2011 Catalyst study found that fortune 500 companies that sustained high board representation of women, significantly outperformed those which sustained low representation by 46 percent ROE(Return on Equity) and 60 percent on ROIC(Return on Invested Capital). Women board directors appear to have significant effect on increasing the percentage of frontline mangers, which is critical for women to advance into C-suite positions.

Innovative approaches are being adopted to enable women grow faster in their career: women leadership councils, mentoring, leadership programs, role model sessions and job rotations to name a few.

Business agility and efficiency are the key priorities for the industry. Women leaders are well suited to make a mark in niche areas like design thinking, user experience and cloud computing- leading the digital evolution and disrupting delivery models and offerings.

It is also recognized that in the right corporate environment, diverse groups foster greater creativity and innovation than homogeneous groups.

Diversity + Inclusions = Improved Business Outcomes.

(The author is regional head, Karnataka, NASSCOM)

The views expressed in the article are personal