SAP Labs announced its commitment to driving diversity and inclusion in the workplace with a series of initiatives culminating on International Women's Day (IWD). Presently 32 percent of the organization's workforce constitutes women and SAP's goal is to increase women in leadership roles to 25% by 2017.
Coinciding with IWD, SAP Labs India will conduct a women's only recruitment drive where between 250 and 300 women have been invited to the campus in Bangalore for a final round of interviews. These professionals have been shortlisted from an initial pool of about 1500 candidates that SAP received through a Diversity Employee Referral Program that was initiated across the company over the last three weeks. From the shortlisted profiles, about 20 percent will be hired for positions ranging from SAP scholars, early talent, lateral talent and interns.
As part of this recruitment drive, potential women employees will be addressed by Anirban Dey, Managing Director, SAP Labs India and Sheenam Ohrie, Vice President, Diversity & Inclusion, SAP Labs India. A motivational session will also be conducted by Sooni Taraporevala, the Indian screenwriter and photographer.
"SAP Labs India has been at the forefront to nurture and incorporate diversity policies that help create a favorable ecosystem for growth and innovation within the organization", said Sheenam Ohrie, Vice President, Diversity & Inclusion, SAP Labs India. "This year, we continue our commitment to engage and empower our women employees across the organization while also reaching out to prospective women recruits."
To nurture a culture of innovation and intrapreneurship, SAP Labs India in association with National Institute of Technology, Trichy (NIT-T), is hosting a nightlong hackathon called "APP.ly - Code to Empower her", to build mobile or web based applications that address everyday issues faced by women. The event is part of NIT-T's Golden Jubilee celebrations and will be held over two days (March 8th and 9th) with support from various NGOs. The winning team will receive an initial seed funding from an angel investor to bootstrap their idea.
Leading up to IWD, SAP Labs India also launched an internal code Olympics for women called ‘WCODE', which received over 250 registrations. Split into 51 teams, three ideas have emerged which can be developed into full-fledged products.
Additionally, the Business Women's Network (BWN) at SAP Labs India held a forum for women to interact with two established entrepreneurs, Vani Kola, founder and CEO, Certus Software and RightWorks; and Shriram Adukoorie, co-founder, Asklaila.com. The BWN is a part of the diversity charter of the company and aims to provide support, education and networking opportunities for women in business. BWN took shape in the beginning of 2012 and now has over 1,100 women in the network. A separate, focused networking event was also held for emerging manager and leader women colleagues to meet with executive leaders from SAP Labs India, SAP Global Customer Organization and SAP Global Delivery to create new mentoring relationships.
SAP Labs' Diversity and Inclusion programs have been widely recognized over the past year. A few of these include CMO Asia's ‘Best Organization for Women Talent Development', ‘Creating a Conducive Work Environment for Women' from the NCR Chapter of National HRD Networks, ‘Global HR Excellence' award by World HRD Congress, the ‘NASSCOM Excellence Award' for Gender Inclusivity and the Zinnov award for the ‘Most Successful Attrition Management'. One such initiative the organization runs is for women returning after a maternity break that has seen attrition in post-maternity returns drop from 69 percent in 2007 to just 2.6 percent in 2013.