Specialty chemicals manufacturer Lubrizol recently announced a US$200 million investment to build a manufacturing facility in Maharashtra, just three months after opening a new GCC in Pune and slightly more than a year after a US$150 million investment across Gujarat.

People Matters recently had the opportunity to meet with Lubrizol CEO Rebecca Liebert, and with so much growth and expansion going on in India, it was a chance to find out more about the company's approach toward creating a diverse talent pipeline.

It's not work-life balance but work-life integration

As with many STEM companies, attracting and retaining more talent into the profession, particularly female talent, is an ongoing process that starts with youth and even children.

“Our chemists and scientists go into local elementary schools and participate in local fairs teaching about chemistry. And then we sponsor scholarships, internships, different types of programmes to get college age students into Lubrizol, and we really try to target diverse populations in those scholarship and internship programmes,” Liebert said. “We would love every scholarship or internship student to come work for Lubrizol, but of course that's not really practical, so we're happy enough as long as they work someplace in the industry where they can make a difference in STEM.”

There are additional considerations for women, especially for companies aiming to groom a pipeline of women leaders. It's one thing to get women into the profession and ensure they get challenging assignments that will help them grow, said Liebert, but they also have to be supported in that growth.

“We know that many women face the challenge of how to manage their career and families, especially when they reach the midpoint of their career cycle. And we need to ensure that they get the kind of flexible arrangements that will help them manage both. The number one question I get in interviews like this is: How do you manage work life balance? And my answer is always: I call it work life integration.”

“There's not going to be a balance. There's always going to be one side that brings more pressure and needs more adjustment.”

“Maybe when your kids are really young and might be keeping you up at night, but they don't need as much attention during the day, you can balance your time in certain ways. But then they get to a point where they're maybe doing a lot of activities and you need to be home in the afternoon to handle that. And then when your kids get older and go to college, you also reach a different time in your life, where maybe you want to have more opportunities to work and travel. So we have to make sure we're helping women manage the whole career cycle.”

Liebert has one particular peeve around the way women's careers are still sometimes handled – the idea that family and children somehow limit a woman's ability to advance.

“The one thing we should not do is decide for a woman that she can't do it all,” she said. “I used to hear people say, 'She just had a baby. Do you really think she can take on a new job?' But that's not our decision. That should be the individual's decision. And that's where we need to make sure that we're giving the opportunities and and supporting our people in doing everything that they can and want to do.”