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Accenture on 14th June announced that by 2025 the company aims to have a gender balanced workforce. This bold decision taken by the global management consulting and professional services company makes Accenture the first company to take such a major initiative for gender equality.
Ellyn Shook, Accenture’s Chief Leadership and Human Resources was quoted as saying that the company is confident of achieving the 50-50 workforce agenda by 2025. The company seems very optimistic and confident towards achieving this goal. However, in the past 5 years, Accenture’s woman workforce has reached just below 40%. Keeping this in mind, a 50/50 gender balance in eight years appears to be a tough task. In 2015-16 the company’s woman workforce increased by only 1%.
One of the company’s initiatives- ‘Woman in Technology’ program aims to improve the career of high-performing women towards the position of technical architect. Accenture has claimed of making measurable targets to push the growth of women workers and has also published workforce demographics for many countries like the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Japan, India and ASEAN countries.
In the past few years, Accenture has upgraded the number of woman workforce by aiming for diverse goals across different business segments and geographies and launching initiatives that provide woman with in-demand skills. Working in the area of gender equality, the company has promoted women of the firm. They have also sponsored most senior women to advance to P&L roles so that women get better opportunities and have an authority in the firm.
Currently, the company has around 1, 50,000 women, i.e. 40% of its global workforce. The company is unlikely to achieve the goal with this scenario but the efforts put in are noteworthy. This initiative for gender equality should inspire other companies to do the same. This step would help companies accelerate the pace of woman empowerment and gender equality across the world and especially in the IT sector.