News: Two corporates with two distinct pledges on Women’s Day

Diversity

Two corporates with two distinct pledges on Women’s Day

While ICICI Bank with the help of technology enables their women employees to work from home for one year, and HCL Foundation launches ‘Confident Girls’ Program for less privileged girls in the urban slum communities
Two corporates with two distinct pledges on Women’s Day

Two corporates – ICICI Bank and HCL Foundation –have marked International Women’s Day with two distinct pledges.

The ICICI Bank has taken its ‘work from home’ option for women to a new level – deploying face recognition technology and extended a secure network that provides access to the core banking servers from its employees' laptops. This is the first time any bank has opened up its core banking system for remote access by employees. It enables almost every non-customer-facing task to be done from home for extended periods of time.

On the other hand, for better tomorrow, HCL Foundation has gone a step ahead in taking care of the future women – As part of its corporate social responsibility initiative for inclusive community development, the Foundation has launched ‘Confident Girls’ in the urban slum communities. The program aims to create confident and self-reliant girls who are digitally literate, well informed on matters relevant to them and can make their own decisions in personal and professional lives. 

ICICI Bank’s initiative titled, iWork@Home was launched on the eve of International Women's Day.Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO of ICICI Bank, said an internal survey showed women leave the organization largely for maternity duties, to attend to childcare, or because of long commutes. "To ensure that women do not leave the workforce, we decided to put in place a stronger support system," she said. There are already 50 women trying out the iWork@Home project and the bank has received 125 requests. The bank expects to have around 500 women working from home soon. "One employee who had put in her resignation has decided to withdraw it because of this facility," said Kochhar. Around 30% of ICICI's 73,000 employees are women.

HCL Foundation’s ‘The Confident Girls’ clubs have been instituted to facilitate employees to volunteer for this program along with external experts who will help build confidence and instill the leadership qualities in the young girls. Adolescent girls in the age group of 8 to 18 years will be a part of this program and Confident Girls Clubs in the urban slum communities.

The program will be focussed towards enabling girls by establishing Confident Girls’ Club in select HCL Gurukuls, HCL Yuvakendras, My School projects run by employees as well as local Corporation schools. A wide range of activities such as digital literacy, career counselling, legal and rights concepts, self-defence and coping skills, sports and theatre will be provided for their holistic development. The Clubs will supplement these programs by arranging various events, and talks to motivate the girls. 

 

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Topics: Diversity, #PowerWomen

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