P&G India’s Saksham program empowers women at their Goa plant

Goa : Ahead of International Women’s Day, Procter & Gamble (P&G) India was bestowed with the 2023 Gartner ‘Power of The Profession’ Supply Chain Award in the ‘People Breakthrough of The Year’ category, for its initiative – ‘Saksham’. The program is credited for enabling the first fully female production crew at the Company manufacturing plant in Goa.

As part of the program, P&G India partnered with key government stakeholders to enable women to work beyond just day shift hours, in a legally compliant manner in the state. The Company also came up with new recruiting avenues for the on boarding program to be more cognizant of the local ecosystem and worked with its internal Supply Chain teams to create flexible operating strategies. Further, the Company also made deliberate efforts to drive sensitization among its people on gender-inclusive mindset, behaviour, and practices to create a more inclusive environment at the workplace for women.

Launched as a pilot, the Saksham program is now paving the way for expanding the idea to P&G’s 3rd Party Resource partners, to push for 50% gender diversity. Through the initiative, P&G continues to work towards creating a more equal and inclusive environment in the plant and has provided the impetus to break the larger biases that exist around women’s representation in manufacturing industries.

Gaurav Chaturvedi, Plant Head – Goa Manufacturing Site, P&G India said, “P&G believes in helping create a world where equality and inclusion are achievable for all, inside and outside of the Company. This recognition is a testament of our concentrated efforts to drive inclusion on the shopfloors of our manufacturing site, which is typically seen as a male-dominated job-role. We thank the Government stakeholders for their support in enabling women in working at the shopfloor beyond the regular day-shift hours, which is an example of how the right collaborations can help achieve equal and inclusive progress across industries.”

P&G India has continued to drive interventions for creating a level-playing field for women across STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and manufacturing careers. The Company in partnership with Centre For Civil Society has been working to enable STEM careers for girls with the ‘P&G Shiksha Betiyan Scholarship’ program, as part of its flagship CSR initiative P&G Shiksha, where it is providing financial aid and mentorship to girls aspiring to pursue STEM education. The program has so far supported hundreds of women with the aim of breaking barriers and enabling entry of skilled women professionals into manufacturing, technology, engineering, and other STEM related jobs.

Further, the Company’s skin care brand Olay is working to shrink the gender gap in STEM careers with its ‘STEM The Gap’ initiative, by spotlighting the biases and stereotypes that hold back progress and enabling young girls to get interested and excited by STEM subjects. P&G India also has a long-standing partnership with NITIE and hosts the annual ‘P&G-NITIE Equality Summit’ to spark conversations on issues that perpetuate a glass ceiling for women, uncover deep-rooted stereotypes that still exist, and motivate change specifically linked to equal representation of women STEM and Supply Chain.

At the workplace, the Company is driving change to advance equality and inclusion with inclusive policies and programs like but not limited to:

· #ShareTheCare paternal leave policy that encourages fathers to avail of parental leave to promote equal parenting

· A dedicated #WomenNetwork at P&G which allows women to come together and fall back on a network of trusted allies.

· Right from Day 1, the Company inducts its new hires into an inclusive environment which is the everyday work culture at P&G. It conducts sessions on challenging conscious and unconscious biases and promotes the mindset that work roles are agnostic of genders.

· Lastly, for women who may have had to leave the workforce in varied circumstances, the P&G Relaunch Program welcomes back talented professionals who are looking to re-launch their careers. It is focused on STEM roles, like careers in IT, Research & Development, and Product Supply, with targeted support and development.