Abstract

The case ‘Women Empowerment at HCL Technologies’ describes HCL’s gender diversity and inclusivity initiative that helped empower its women employees. It focuses on how the company’s women empowerment programs and initiatives helped HCL create an inclusive, open, and transparent culture. The case first touches upon various women leadership development programs. HCL launched ASCEND to empower women leadership in its senior management. ‘Stepping Stones’ focused on enabling mid-level female leaders to connect with HCL’s leadership and learn from content providers such as LinkedIn and Harvard Business School. The case then touches upon various diversity-oriented women empowerment programs such as Women Connect, iBelieve, Feminspiration, BlogHer, Women Lead, and Red Ladder that contributed toward HCL’s gender diversity agenda and to its business success. Women empowerment programs helped HCL increase the number of women in senior leadership in fiscal 2020 by 30 percent from fiscal 2019. The gender diversity ratio for senior leadership also increased from 5.4 percent in fiscal 2019 to 7.5 percent in fiscal 2020. HCL was also recognized by various associations and industry forums across the globe; its awards included NASSCOM’s Award for Excellence in Gender Diversity in 2019. The case ends with HCL’s future plans to continue its focus on diversity and women empowerment since the firm saw diversity and inclusion as a key tool to drive better risk management, strategy, and ultimately better outcomes.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the benefits of gender diversity for both employer and employees
• Explore how diversity and inclusion can contribute to company image
• Become aware of the challenges that women employees face in an organization
• Examine the role of diversity oriented women empowerment as well as women leadership development programs on business growth
• Learn how organizations can use focused hiring strategies to improve diversity and inclusion

Keywords

Diversity and Inclusion; Gender and Diversity Management; Career Management; Employee Benefits; Employee Development; Human Resource Planning; Organizational Culture; Training & Development; Employee Benefit Programs; Leadership; Company Image; Women Employees; Leadership Development; Women Leaders; Mentoring; Coaching