We celebrated International Women’s Day earlier this week and the theme for 2021 focuses on “Choose To Challenge”.

No better theme fits the current global wave of striving in solidarity to forge an inclusive and diverse world in every sense.

As individuals, we are all responsible for our own choices, dignity, thoughts, and actions. While women are already campaigning to be equitable stakeholders at work, community, and home, the global pandemic brought additional pervasive challenges. Women have been keeping up with the blurring lines between work and home but are facing burnouts.

The crisis has already stalled their careers and jeopardized their footprint in the global job market. We are now at the crossroads of a worldwide financial crisis should the pandemic-forced turmoil continue. From an economic perspective, providing women with equal work opportunities like men can bring trillions of dollars to the world economy.

The critical factor that will determine and tip the balance is a woman’s personal preference in choosing what she expects out of her workplace. To better combat the shifting workforce landscape, organizations need to be more proactive in implementing smarter policies that address their work-life parity.

With a female co-founder at the helm, Integra has always focused on providing equal opportunities to women in the workforce, across all business functions, from operations to leadership. One of the biggest challenges faced by most corporations is hiring, and Integra is no different. Our policy to ensure 50% women representation is quite a challenging feat by itself. But through our attuned efforts, we hit the milestone of 51.4% women in our global workforce by 2020.

The next milestone is transitioning the entry-level employees with positive career growth into managerial and leadership roles. This led us to create our women-centric taskforce “WInGS—Women at Integra: Growth and Success”, WinGS spearheads special mentoring programs to nurture them to become impactful managers and pragmatic leaders.

Our genuine commitment extends to creating a support framework solution for women and working mothers to handle better their individual professional and personal obligations without any compromise. To mention a few:

• For working mothers, we have partnered with day-care facilities for kids at an accessible distance from the office premises.
• Hostel facilities near the office for women employees.
• We provide safe commute options for female Integrites accompanied by security during night shifts.
• For the physical and mental wellbeing of women Integrites, we provide regular health checks and onsite woman doctors.

Expecting mothers enjoy special privileges at Integra. Their special ID cards give them high priority accessing campus facilities like lifts, cafeterias, and parking.  The changes in Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill in recent years allow a 26-week paid maternity leave. New moms can take extended maternity leave with managerial approval and can include feeding breaks in their schedule after returning to work. These policies have ensured 85% of women Integrites return to the workforce.

Our relentless efforts have been recognized several times by coveted organizations. We won the 2020 Working Mother & Avtar 100 Best Company for Women in India and have been placed in the 100 Best Hall of Fame for having featured on the prestigious 100 Best lists for five consecutive years. We also won the ‘Exemplar of Inclusion’ award consecutively for two years in the second edition of Working Mother & Avtar Most Inclusive Companies Index (MICI). In addition, we received the DivHERsity Award 2020 and 2019 across various categories for innovative practices in hiring, policies, and women’s L&D programs.

We take great pride in championing and celebrating women by elevating their visibility, uplifting them to pursue their ambitions without any barriers.

Make every day, yours!