How Can Personalised Skill-Building Programmes Elevate Women’s Careers?

In today's ever evolving job market, skills gap have become a significant challenge for both employers and candidates. 

A study by IMF shares that two-thirds or more of the world’s young people fail to reach the minimum skill levels required to compete in the international economy. Today when the percentage of women who are graduating is increasing, equipping women with employable skills is a bigger challenge, as most women in India work low-skill and low-paying jobs & that too in the informal or unorganised sector. It is a gap that needs to be worked upon on high priority so as to increase the employability of women & hence their participation in the workforce. 

Despite significant strides towards equal opportunities, women often encounter unique challenges in their professional journeys. As organisations strive to create inclusive environments, the need for targeted professional development for women becomes increasingly apparent. This tailored approach is essential not only for addressing specific barriers faced by women but also for fostering their growth and leadership in diverse fields. By customising professional development to better support women, organisations can unlock the full potential of their workforce.  

Globally there are predominately three concerns for the skill gap: 

Women Underrepresentation: Women are underrepresented in many high-growth and high-paying fields, like technology, engineering, and leadership roles. 

Women Educational Attainment: Women are less likely to pursue fields that lead to high-growth careers

Workplace Barriers: Women often face barriers such as discrimination, lack of mentorship, and limited access to professional networks. 

As per Indian Census figures from 2011, there are 587 million women in India, accounting for 48 per cent of the population. Despite this, only 29 per cent of women over the age of 15 participate in the labour.  India’s workforce is predominantly male. For India with the largest working-age population in the world—expected to touch nearly 70 per cent by 2030—we simply cannot afford low participation of women in the workforce anymore. Women’s representation across different sectors in India varies significantly.

In summary, while women are increasingly entering various sectors in India, they still face challenges in achieving equal representation, particularly in senior leadership and technical roles.  

Understanding women representation across sectors in India is vital to build women workforce to contribute significantly to the economy. With the objective to build the women workforce (especially in senior roles), it is essential to adopt a custom-made approach focusing on women development. To ensue effectiveness and impact of women development programmes, it is vital to avoid: 

A one-size fits all approach:  It is essential to address the diverse needs of women hailing from various backgrounds, sectors, and career phases. The programmes need to cater to the unique experiences and requirements of each participant, fostering a more inclusive and empowering environment.

Inadequate Mentorship Opportunities: Despite mentorship's crucial role in fostering leadership skills, many programmes fail in delivering impactful and consistent mentorship experiences. 

Inadequate Preparation for Work-Life Harmonisation: A common concern among women leaders is inadequate readiness for achieving work-life equilibrium. Women's leadership development initiatives ought to be sensitive to this aspect, focusing on enabling work-life integration. 

Unique development journey: Customising programme content to participants' needs and aspirations, enhances engagement and relevance. 

Networking Events and Online Platforms: Providing opportunities for participants to connect through networking events, online forums and social media platforms, can enable women development though peer learnings.

Understanding the criticality of having tailored programme focusing on women development, we at ICICI Lombard, as part of our DEI journey realised the need to not only increase women representation but also ensure equal representation across levels – especially leadership levels. A key concern for ICICI Lombard was to ensure strong women representation in the middle and senior levels. A vanilla approach was definitely not the choice. 

Therefore, at ICICI Lombard we focused on two programme designs. The first programme targeted women at the cusp of middle to senior management. This programme focused on identifying and assessing women talent with leadership potential. Effectively accelerating women development was of prime importance and so we engaged and equipped these women to become future ready leaders. A multi-dimensional journey with a personalised approach which involved identifying and unlocking potential, starting with deeper self-awareness of their needs and sharpening their career identity. The programme also involved, identifying environmental headwinds to help women leaders revisit their drivers and aspirations. During the journey, these emerging women leaders explored alternative mind-sets and worked towards breaking the "inner glass ceiling “. At the core of the journey was igniting energy, curiosity and encouraging the women leaders to think about different possibilities, discover skills, tools and strategies to manage and lead in a complex environment. 

The second programme targeted women at junior to middle management level. These women are being groomed for transitioning to the middle management levels.  The programme involves close to 200 women across different profiles / departments in the organisation. The objective was to build capability of women employees, which would drive sustainable and inclusive career growth at ICICI Lombard. The programme revolves around building individual contributor and managerial competencies and competencies that are unique to women needs and requirements. The program spread across 12 to 15 months cover different aspects as mentioned below:

Along with increasing our women representation, retaining women talent is also of prime importance and we would continuously strive to balance the equilibrium by hiring and retaining/developing women. Some of the success metrics of these programmes that we are targeting are – improved readiness of women to take on higher responsibilities, increase of women representation in mid to senior leadership levels, increased engagement scores, better retention of women etc.

Ultimately, investing in women's development not only benefits our women employees but also contributes to the overall advancement of the organisation, driving progress and creating a more inclusive and equitable workplace.

Jerry Jose

Guest Author The author is the Chief Human Resources Officer of ICICI Lombard.