... And they also make women of steel

True, there are very few women employees at Tata Steel. But the premiere company has been busy trying to give each one of them a shot in the arm

PAPIYA DE

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Perhaps, that aptly describes what Tata Steel’s employee sex ratio reveals. Consider this. For a total employee strength of 43,000, only 2,100 are women, and a mere 300 of them grace the 4,500-strong executive force. But do numbers always speak the truth? A closer look at the company unfolds a story with a difference.

Impossible as it may seem, Tata Steel is far from being a man’s world. “We have to be frank, our numbers are small. Ideally 50 per cent of the workforce should have been women, but there is more to it than just numbers,” says Niroop Mahanty, Vice-President (HR). There are historic reasons behind numbers being so tilted in favour of men. Archaic laws, like the one which forbids women from working beyond 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. in plants, are major hindrances to a steel company that requires working in shifts.

Despite attracting a large number of metallurgical graduates, the company is forced to deploy them in departments such as Quality, Safety, Maintenance, which involve generals shifts. “I have had young engineers tell me that their job is to make steel, and they would be happier doing just that, but there is little I can do,” says Niroop. The company has sent several large representations through CII, appealing against this law, and “I now plan to send a delegation of women employees to sit in dharna outside the Labour Commission,” he says.

Tejaswini programme concludes

While laws and perceptions do not allow Tata Steel to boast of any flamboyant numbers like an organisation such as ICICI Bank would, the company has, in ways more than one, tried to ensure that its women employees—right from the manual worker to the ones at the highest rung—are equally at ease.

Shilpa Jain, manager (Sales & Indirect Taxes), who joined the company after completing her chartered accountancy, had looked at Tata Steel as a platform from where she would move within one or two years. “It’s been three years and I can’t even contemplate moving out. It says a lot about the way the company takes care of us,” she says.

That Tata Steel is an employee-friendly company is not a recent phenomenon. The company has created benchmarks that the rest of the industrial community has followed. Way back in 1928, the steelmaker introduced the Maternity Benefit Scheme. It took the Government of India 18 years to take cognizance and it was finally enforced by law as late as 1946. With changing times, the company has felt the need to upgrade its policies. Today, for instance, a woman is given 15 days of special leave if the company hospital certifies that her child is sick and requires supervision.

Such privileges apart, the company believes that mentoring and development are crucial means of empowering women. About six years ago, it had occurred to the then managing director, JJ Irani, that the women executives were somehow not blossoming and not making their mark in the company hierarchy. A dialogue with industry experts led him to asking RM Associates to design a programme for them. Empowering Women Managers to Succeed (EWMS) was thus created that has since been adapted by several companies, informs Niroop. This is a three-day residential programme that encourages women to look at themselves not as “women executives but as executives who happen to be women”. “It is a good sensitisation process, but women who attend this are already empowered,” says Sangeeta Prasad, head of Construction Solutions. An IIM-L alumnus, who also holds the highest office amongst all women employees at Tata Steel, Sangeeta, however, believes that men should have been included to make EWMS more successful.

All smiles at the three-day EWMS

Efforts to empower have not been restricted to the executives alone. Given that 1,800 of them are from the unionised cadre, and some of them who are on the company rolls by virtue of having a parent who has spent 25 years in the company, Tata Steel has had to design ways of improving their lives too. The company launched the Tejaswini programme in 2002, whereby the company inducted women workers to do jobs that were till then strictly reserved for men. The first batch of 13 ordinary women, working either as office girls (serving tea, and running errands) or working as sweepers and cleaners, were trained to drive heavy vehicles ranging from dozers to dumpers to fork lifts of various capacities. “This was a means of giving them an opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with their male colleagues,” says Niroop. The next batch of Tejaswinis were taught other skills like welding, lubrication, etc. “Despite initial inhibitions and apprehensions, the applications we receive for the Tejaswini programme is steadily rising each year,” he adds.

Efforts to make Tata Steel a safe work destination continue. Earlier this month the company formally signed a historic Memorandum of Settlement with the Tata Workers Union, incorporating an additional clause in the Works Standing Orders of Tata Steel—the act of misconduct on “Sexual Harassment at the Work Places”. This is a punishable act, if proved under the existing provisions of Works Standing Orders. “We have just formalised the entire process,” he says, claiming that sexual harassment was treated with equal seriousness even earlier.

The company has also constituted a Complaints Committee to look into the grievances of female employees regarding sexual harassment at the workplace. Headed by Ethic Counsellor Rekha Seal, this Committee consists of equal representations of female and male executives, including a female representative from an NGO. This Committee is the first of its kind where female employees can directly lodge complaints of any unwelcome sexual advances and expect the committee to take immediate action in investigating the matter and even take penal action. Adequate measures are also taken to provide graduate engineers with accommodation that “has a campus atmosphere” to ensure their safety.

So far, so good. Why is it then that we do not hear of any topnotch women from the Tata Steel fold? Says Malathi Pande, head of global sourcing, who has been with the company for 20 years, “Up to a certain level there is absolutely no discrimination, but strangely, despite having many talented women, we have only one woman executive who is in the IL2 level.” While departments such as HR, Accounts, Finance have several women, there is not a single woman who steers any of the key functions. “HR, Corporate Communications, Technical Systems, there are several areas where women can be as effective as their male counterparts,” argues a senior executive. “There is a lot that needs to be done,” admits Niroop, and this is only the beginning. Perhaps, these efforts will concretise soon to give India Inc. some women of steel.