Wipro plans to expand its ‘Begin Again’ plan to boost diversity: Sunita Rebecca Cherian

'Unconscious bias is a very important topic that we cover for the leadership with a lot of examples'

The final story of our special series tied to the International Women’s Day focuses on Wipro’s efforts to boost diversity. Wipro Chief Culture Officer Sunita Rebecca Cherian tells DH’s Dhanya Skariachan how it retrains its leaders to fight unconscious biases and plans to expand its ‘Begin Again’ programme to create more opportunities for women who have taken a career break. Edited excerpts.

As of December 31, women formed 36.3% of Wipro’s workforce. Where do you see that number in five years?

The idea is to get to a perfect balance. Obviously, one should strive for replicating what you see around you. So, if the world is 50-50, I don’t see any reason why there should be a different math inside corporations.

So do you see women forming 50% of your workforce by 2027?

I would love for that number to be achieved even before. I think you do the right things and you will get there. I don’t want to go after a number as much as everybody doing the right thing. The conversations we have are not about the number as much as just showing the mirror. After every process, we show the mirror (to Wipro’s leaders) in terms of where they stand on promotions, where they stand on salary increases, where they stand on rewards/recognition (for women). That drives better behaviour from the leadership.

What are some of the things you do to reduce unconscious bias from affecting hiring, performance review processes and the building of teams?

Unconscious bias is a very important topic that we cover for the leadership with a lot of (in-house) examples. We have actually built modules which are very real, which people can relate to. For example, (suppose) I have just come back from maternity (and) there is a very critical project for which I need to travel, say to the US. The manager feels ‘you have got a young child, how will you leave the child and travel, so let me give this opportunity to someone else.’ Here’s the woman saying ‘you didn’t even ask me, I would have made my arrangements, give me the choice to choose’. A lot of the examples that we have got in our modules are from these kinds of stories. (We train leaders) on the kind of questions which they will ask and the kind of pushback they need to give the hiring agency if it gives them resumes of only men.

Have you seen a decrease in the number of women who aren’t returning to work after maternity leave?

Yeah, absolutely. We are at it. Almost 96% of them come back. Where I have the challenge is how many of them are continuing beyond a year. It’s easy for me to tell the individual ‘Wipro is a great place, come back’ but after they come back, if you don’t give them a great project, if you have put them on the bench and you have left them to fend for themselves, then that story is not as positive as 96% coming back.

Tell us about some of your maternity benefits

The good part is maternity (leave) is not like earlier. It’s not that you have to come back in three months. It’s six months (now). If you want to take an extended maternity (leave), you can go in for another six months. Even after you come back, there is a creche on our campus. What we are trying to do now is to tell women when you come back, I want to train you on the latest technologies, I want to hand-hold you so that you don’t get lost in the myriad of ‘which project do I go back to’ as much as saying whichever project you left, you should be able to get back to it. These are the small changes which, I believe, will go a long way in women continuing after they come back from maternity for the long haul.

What have been some of your most successful initiatives to boost diversity?

While “Begin Again” (our second careers program) is quite recent, it started off well and is picking up momentum. Our objective is to create an equitable workplace and through this programme, we are creating more opportunities for women who have taken a career break. We believe that this is one initiative that can definitely help in plugging the “leaky pipeline”.

Do you plan to launch any new women-focused initiatives this year?

We launched “Begin Again” in India as a pilot with one unit last year; now we are working towards extending it to other units and exploring opportunities of expanding this model to other geographies as well. We are also looking at opportunities to expand our affinity groups for women across geographies so as to create a system of support for our women employees. This year, we are also planning to launch a refreshed approach for our unconscious bias campaign, and we hope that this will contribute towards initiating conversations about breaking stereotypes, becoming allies and being an active agent of change.

Where else do you plan to implement the “Begin Again” programme?

We launched it in India through a pilot with one of our Global Business Lines. Since our launch in September 2021, we have onboarded around 80 women professionals and another batch will be joining us next week. We are now exploring how we can scale this programme beyond India, and will be looking at geographies like the USA and Europe next.

What is the main philosophy behind it?

Our philosophy is to create opportunities for women who have taken a career break, no matter the reason. The aim is to bring them in for their talent and skills. From our conversations with those who have joined, we have learnt that they took a career break for different reasons - childcare, eldercare, medical reasons being the more common ones.

What do you specifically do once these women return?

You have taken that break. Now you don’t know what to do. You are obviously extremely rusty to get back to a corporate (firm) because of the lack of tech edge. So (we ask) how is it that Wipro can support you (1) in terms of just confidence-building (2) in terms of just pure play technology-(training).

What are the main tools that you have in place to tackle gender discrimination?

We have a zero tolerance towards any form of discrimination, and this is highlighted in our Code of Business Conduct which is a foundation for everything that we do at Wipro. We also have a comprehensive grievance mechanism for anyone to report discrimination at the workplace. An independent investigation is carried out and appropriate action is taken. Apart from this, our focus remains on creating more awareness and a safe space for employees to call out and bring attention to any such instances of discrimination.

Why do you have only two women on your board of directors?

Out of nine people, two women is not a bad count.

Why don’t you expand the board to include more women?

I don’t think we will go after a gender. I don’t want to go after it with an agenda of a gender lens. You look at the board. You have so many people of different ethnicities there. To that extent, it is the right person for that role. We will continue on that ground. If more women rise to that position, then why not!

You have made it to the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for a third consecutive year. The index measures gender equality across five pillars: female leadership and talent pipeline, equal pay and gender pay parity, inclusive culture, sexual harassment policies, and pro-women brand. Where have you done really well and where do you want to improve?

The one which we have done right from the beginning would be in terms of pay parity and the equal policies. (I would like to see improvement in) getting in more women, especially in the middle management. As long as the woman did not quit because the organisation was not as forthcoming in terms of the support to be provided, I am good.

How has your sponsorship programme for high-potential women worked out?

It’s something that we launched last October. We picked around 50 high-potential women and connected them with 29 sponsors within the company. This is the first batch. The initial reviews from both the sponsors as well as the protégés have been extremely positive, in terms of just knowing someone that senior in the company, knowing that person has got your back and will be rooting for you when the next position comes up and three, in terms of just networking amongst each other. We do know that women have this general inhibition of networking. These are women across the organisation, across countries who we have put together and formed a programme where they can really lean on one another.

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