What Makes Accenture A Leader in Diversity?
- Neha Bagaria - Founder & CEO, JobsForHer
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- Back to Work, Founder's Blog
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- 13 Nov 2017
We’re always on the look out for women-friendly companies that believe in diversity, and demonstrate this core belief through their policies. Accenture is one such amazing company, that has long been known for being a diversity-forward organisation. Recently recognised as one of the top 10 companies for women in India, Accenture is proud of its inclusive and supportive work culture for women and it shows in its numbers - in India, the company employs 45,000 women.
Diversity and inclusion begins right at the top, and this shows at Accenture. Chairman and Senior Managing Director Rekha Menon was recently recognized on the prestigious Fortune ‘India’s Most Powerful Women in Business’ list, and is a champion for building enabling environments for women to return to work after career breaks. “Creating an inclusive environment that enables women to achieve both their personal and professional ambitions, reflects Accenture's core values and culture,” she says. “We’re pushing barriers to make our company more inclusive... We remain committed to ensuring that our women feel empowered to drive their own success.”
Accenture has been widely recognized for its inclusion and diversity, appearing in the Top 10 on Working Mother’s 100 Best Companies List for a whopping 14 consecutive years. The trailblazing company was also on DiversityInc's Top 50 Companies for Diversity, marking five consecutive years in the top 15 (2012-2016) and ten consecutive years on the list overall (2007-2016).
It is heartening for us at JobsForHer to see a company like Accenture that doesn’t need to be convinced of the fact that inclusion and diversity are catalysts for success at every level. And this March they are launching a Career Reboot Program for women on a career break to restart their careers.
Accenture’s commitment to diversity is evident in the companý’s policies and programmes and from the work culture, which enables employees to be themselves and to be productive, in turn contributing to the company’s collective success.
Several of Accenture’s initiatives enable its female employees to be successful, both personally and professionally. For example, the company:
- Offers leadership development programs for its high-potential women, helping them hone the key skills needed to advance and foster relationships with senior leaders;
- Helps women build and extend their professional networks – both in and outside of Accenture – with Vaahini, its networking forum for women;
- Offers career-track focused initiatives specifically for women, including one that helps them advance their tech skills and become technical architects; and
- Provides access to a variety of flexible work programs; the company helps new mothers in their transition back to work by identifying ideal re-entry roles and providing various women’s leadership development programs to support their long-term success.
The company recently announced that it surpassed its goal to reach 40 percent female new hires worldwide by 2017.
In addition to what Accenture offers women employees, it also runs a variety of programmes across the board that are aligned with its commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Employee Resource Groups
ERGs enable employees to strengthen their networks, grow their skills and give back to the community. These ERGs aim to promote diversity by bringing individuals with common interests together; they also foster networking within the organisation and provide mentorship opportunities.
Training programmes
Training programmes on diversity aim to educate employees on Accenture’s belief in inclusion and diversity. Accenture runs Diversity Awareness training programmes, where employees understand the benefits of working in an diverse and dynamic organisation. They also have Diversity Management training courses which equip executives with the skills to manage diverse teams effectively, while fostering an inclusive work environment (leading, managing and working across cultures, among others).
Accenture is a featured company on the JobsForHer portal and is an all-star in the women-restarter arena for their diversity-forward practices.
It doesn’t take very much effort or commitment to be diversity-forward in your organization if everyone believes in the same goals - to be the best that you can be in your personal life, which automatically translates into the best foot forward for your work life.
Accenture knows that hiring women restarters makes good business sense. Be like Accenture.
Is your company ready to diversify? Then look no further! Sign your company up on JobsForHer TODAY and gain access to this incredible talent pool of experienced and qualified women, available at no notice period!
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