At the "Top 10. The Most Important HR Trends in 2014 and Forecasts for 2015" conference, Ekaterina Boytsova, the HR director of BDO Unicon Outsourcing contributed a report entitled "Diversity and Personnel Policies. A Program for the Support of Women". While the conference continued, Russia's HR professionals, entrepreneurs and officials shared their visions of the modern market tendencies and discussed forecasts for the next year.
Among other things, Ekaterina expanded on how, she believed, organizations, while forming their personnel policies, should take into account the particulars of certain groups of employees. At this time, the principle of diversity in the sphere of human resources is gaining popularity. Yet practically, organizations often forget that the basic idea behind this principle is not just hiring employees of various ages, ethnicities, cultures, etc. But also making sure that each of these groups is maximally comfortable at work.
Ekaterina gave an example of BDO Unicon Outsourcing as an organization supporting people whose rights, as professionals, are, at this time, infringed on. Strange as it was, she meant such a large group of professionals as women. Although, seemingly, the time has long since passed when women were banned from schools, while household duties were considered their main occupation, statistics reveal that women, as far as the labor market is concerned, are still far behind men. For instance, the research conducted by the HeadHunter company in June 2014 showed that, in St. Petersburg, females' average monthly wage was 35 thousand rubles, while that of males was 45 thousand. Professionally, women still feel not very self-confident. Only 2.3% of them publish resumes seeking top managerial positions while for men the figure is twice that, 4.6%.
Ekaterina also pointed out that 81% of all BDO Unicon Outsourcing employees were women. The company uses various instruments to support all its employees. Yet the consideration of the principal target group had to affect the personnel policies as a whole. The organization is oriented towards creating comfortable conditions for women and tries to always consider their peculiarities and needs.
For instance, in their work, this category of employees depends very much on the work-life balance principle. To help its female employees to keep balance between their professional and family lives, the company allows them to select the best-suiting work schedules or work remotely. The social package includes payments for fitness activities, while allowing for advantageous conditions of acquiring Voluntary Medical Insurance for family members as well as compensations for kindergarten payments or medicine purchases. To save women's time, physicians pay weekly visits to the BDO office where they will receives anyone wishing. There are also visits by manicurists who have their office at the company where they serve female employees.
Employers should also keep in mind such women's qualities as being oriented towards cooperation rather than rivalry and their being emotional and expressive. One should not forget that female employees need maternity leaves every now and then. Besides enabling them to work remotely or part-time, the company has created an effective knowledge sharing system that allows employees not to lose important information while being on leave and quickly refresh one's knowledge upon return to work.
Ekaterina emphasized that after the introduction of personnel policies oriented towards comfortable work for women, the company's employee fluctuation rate dropped considerably, while employee loyalty rate went up to 70%.
