Flipkart joins other tech firms in rolling out maternity benefits

New Delhi: Flipkart is in the news again and for all the right reasons. The online vendor has rolled out an unprecedented maternity benefits package that includes six months or 24 weeks of maternity leave plus four months of flexi working hours with full pay for new mothers.

If needed, new moms can also opt for a year’s unpaid leave of absence and then return to available jobs at that point in time. Other benefits that are part of Flipkart’s new package include a transport reimbursement benefit of ₹ 600 a day for women during the last two months of their pregnancy and dedicated parking slots for two months before and after childbirth. The new benefits also include higher maternity claims, tie-ups with reputed day-care centres where the company will bear 50% of the charges for children up to 4 years of age, counsellor support on parenting and work-life balance.

To be sure, most companies in India give 12 weeks or 3 months of maternity leave. “At Flipkart, we want to create a world class work environment. We want to support women employees achieve work-life balance as they continue to focus on their careers. With the introduction of these policies, Flipkart aims to create a safe, secure and an inclusive work atmosphere,” Mekin Maheshwari, chief people officer, Flipkart wrote on the company’s Twitter page.

Flipkart’s new policy is a step in the right direction in ensuring gender diversity and retention of women at the workplace. Research has shown that most women quit their jobs after childbirth due to lack of support at home. With families going nuclear, it is but natural that the workplaces have to fulfil that role by offering progressive maternity-linked policies, flexible working hours and the option to work from home to retain women employees.

Traditionally, the tech industry has often been accused of lack of diversity. The gender gap is wide when it comes to women holding tech jobs, or in top leadership positions. However, companies are now making a conscious effort to bridge the gender gap across levels and initiatives such as Flipkart’s are geared towards attracting and retaining women at the workplace.

While Google’s diversity data is not that great, the company’s focus on women employees is strong. Google empowers women to succeed by providing academic scholarships to future leaders in technology and supporting employee resource groups like Women@Google. Maternity leave at Google is now five months with full pay that includes salary, bonus, and stock, as compared to 12 weeks earlier. The company found that women who came back from leave quit at twice the rate of men. Now with the enhanced benefit, the rate of attrition is the same as men.

In India, there are many companies offering enhanced maternity benefits to their women employees. In May, consulting major Accenture increased maternity-leave benefits for its full-time and part-time women employees in India to 22 weeks of paid leave, making it one of the first companies in the consulting sector to pioneer such a trend.

Additionally, employees who require additional time off beyond the maternity leave but do not have enough accrued leave may take unpaid leave of absence for a further 12 weeks, taking the total permissible leave period to nine months. Tech start-up InMobi also rolled out their new flexible maternity benefits last month, offering six months of paid maternity leave, up significantly from the statutory three months.

Many of these companies are also offering women employees customized training and professional development, succession planning and mentoring programmes besides offering counselling to help them transition back to work. Accenture, for instance, has a maternity returners’ programme, parents-at-work programme, workshops, and offers maternity counselling calls.

Companies are also focusing on new mothers. Citibank, for example, is offering its women employees in India a childcare allowance up to ₹ 1.32 lakh a year over and above their salaries for spending on day-care services of their choice. Citi’s move will be especially helpful for women employees in non-metros where companies usually don’t run creches or have corporate tie-ups. Firms such as Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Hindustan Unilever run their own creches or have tie-ups with creche providers.

With other companies too looking to revamp their existing maternity benefits for women employees, one hopes that this trend becomes the new norm.