Women's Day 2022: How Amazon India is using tech to help women go back to work

Since commencing operations in India, Amazon has made significant efforts towards building diversity at the workplace with pioneering programs and inclusion initiatives. Just the way it connects with customers to constantly listen and identify to improve the shopping experience,  Amazon follows a similar approach with employees. This has helped the company take away the barriers which come in their way offer equal opportunities to employees.
 
The company has been using technology and playbooks to provide opportunities for women to ramp back at the workplace once they go on either caregiving leave or maternity leave. For instance, the technology will automatically allow for the manager to look at workbooks, guiding how to work with a woman employee who is likely to go on maternity leave in the near future. It plays out the kinds of conversations Amazon has identified which are the biggest pain point.

Swati Rustagi, Director, DE & I, International Markets, WW Consumer, Amazon says, “The first pain point is will my work for this year get side-lined or not recognised or whether the female employee will continue to get the best work opportunities? It also covers the conversations managers should have once the employee comes back.”

Speaking on how different the Indian market has been, Rustagi says, “I think India is different and India is same. That's something that I realised as I started working on this particular subject, in a wider geography. When we say we want to do equal things at the workplace for men and women it can often be very misleading because the experiences and the needs could be very different.”

For instance, Amazon had to do a tremendous amount of advocacy with the Government of India to get the night shift approved for many of its sites for women to work, because technically, until the new labour code comes women are not allowed to work night shifts in warehousing.

“Imagine how unequal that can feel because they can’t rotate and that ultimately becomes a big barrier to hiring women because you just can’t have a balanced roster. It is so systemic that you need to understand what could be coming in the way for generating that employment. And I don’t think anyone is to be blamed," Rustagi adds.

Similarly, Amazon acknowledged that for women to be delivery drivers for delivering packages, there needs to be a safe public infrastructure such as washrooms.

“These are the kinds of issues that are unique sometimes to India which need additional action from an organisation compared to some of the other countries,” says Rustagi.

Swati Rustagi joined Amazon three years back and as the Director, DE & I, International Markets, WW Consumer. And in her words, the mandate for Amazon has always been about how to make a workplace that is heavily driven by innovation, individuals who can come in and do their best work and how as professionals of human resources, and professionals of DE&I can truly identify and take away barriers which come in their way do their best work and show up most authentically in their workplace. This has always been her mandate, which hasn’t changed yet.

Over the years, some of the women-focused initiatives helped Amazon bring diverse groups together including rekindle’ to provide a launchpad to women who have taken a break in their careers due to any circumstances, pinnacle and transcend leadership development programs to provide ample opportunities for women in the middle management to grow into leadership roles.

Amazon WoW is a networking platform for women engineering students in India, providing participants with an opportunity to interact with Amazon leaders on essential skills, participate in workshops, connect with alumni on career experiences and opportunity to apply for roles at Amazon. To engage with women and create unique job opportunities in the logistics space, Amazon Delivery Service partners in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh run all women delivery stations. Women deliver packages on two-wheelers, covering a radius of 2-3 km from the delivery station.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Amazon India, aligned with this year’s theme – ‘Break the Bias’, has launched ‘SheIsAmazon’ a campaign to put the spotlight on women employees, associates, and partners who have not only fought societal, cultural, disability and economic barriers to achieve their dreams but are also redefining the powerful role of a woman in the fast-paced e-commerce industry.

As a part of the campaign, Amazon is launching a coffee table book that gives an insight into the professional and personal lives of these women, and their journey of hope, struggle and success.