Umicore : Empowering women to pursue and advance their careers

How can we, as a company, weave diversity into the fabric of our DNA? Over the years, Umicore has made great progress in fostering a diverse and inclusive, respectful workplace around the world. Take India, for example. When director and HR manager Pooja Shukla joined the Umicore India team in mid 2016, there were only two women at Pune plant. While today, the gender diversity ratio is 16%, a number that has increased three-fold.

'Gender equality has improved greatly in India,' says Pooja Shukla. 'Education has helped Indian women to become financially and economically independent from men. And yet, female representation in industries like manufacturing or chemicals is still fairly low, compared to the services sector. At Umicore India, we have managed to attract a fair deal of female colleagues to our Pune as well as Mumbai office. Since last year, we are now been focusing on initiatives to boost their engagement and empower them to pursue and advance their careers in order to make sure they stay on board.'

Unleash your potential

'On International Women's Day in March, we launched 'Unleash your potential' training workshop and we treated all the women at Umicore to a day full of fun,' Pooja Shukla goes on to say. 'We also premiered ''Coaching circles' which focuses on development of competencies and strengthen soft skills, like emotional intelligence, stakeholder management, building resilience, etc. '

The feedback is really positive, as assistant manager Arpita Shaha highlights: 'All these activities not only help us develop, grow and explore our potential but also make the workplace more fun and engaging. By connecting with our colleagues and sharing our experiences, we learn a lot from each other and get to know each other better.'