Corporate India steps up security for women after Delhi rape case

HCL Tech and Aegis are conducting workshops in self-defence. AFP

While ICICI Bank has conducted several meetings to figure out ways of assuring the safety of their women, female employees at Maruti’s Gurgaon office have come together to share their safety concerns with SY Siddiqui, chief operating officer of HR, among other functions, another ET report said.

Companies like Accenture, HSBC and Aegis either ensure that a male security guard drops women employees if they are travelling alone or drivers are not allowed to deviate from the travel plan and a security guard has a walky-talky which is always switched on and has to maintain regular contacts with the transport department.

After Wipro BPO employee Jyotikumari Choudhary’s gang-rape and murder in November 2007, the company came up with multi-level safety measures to ensure that such incidences are avoided in the future. Wipro runs late night cabs at scheduled times. Routes and every cab is registered with the transport department and each vehicle has a security guard in it who accompanies the lady employee to the doorstep. The company has also introduced a vehicle-tracking system  that enables company’s security officials to monitor and track the location of the cabs ferrying employees and has a 24X7 toll-free support number on which employees can report about an emergency.

Yebhi.com also ensures women are not the last to be dropped or the first to be picked up in office taxis, the ET report said.

NDTV, on the other hand, has hourly shuttles to pick up employees from various points during the day. All employees are entitled to pick-up and drop-off during dark hours.

Though the safety of women travelling during night by company-arranged cabs is quite ensured by many firms, centralised scrutiny of all office vehicles by a GPS system, assisted by police patrol at night is needed.

Last year, the Delhi police made it  mandatory for employers to deploy security guards in cabs ferrying women during night. But some BPOs and corporates in the national capital were seen trying to bend the official directive in order to cut costs.

But with increasing number of  crimes against women in Gurgaon and Haryana, the city police has decided to  visit each and every multi-national and BPO company to inspect the current situation and note down the safety issues of women working in these companies.

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Laurie Gerber: 5 Easy Steps to Ending Your Year With a Bang

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Lawmakers OK initial steps to audit Gessler's spending

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The Denver Postdenverpost.comPosted: 12/13/2012 04:08:34 PM MSTDecember 14, 2012 6:38 AM GMTUpdated: 12/13/2012 11:38:57 PM MST


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Biyani learnt it the hard way. You, can follow these 7 steps

Here’s a list of things Biyani has learnt about doing business.

On the other hand, his elder daughter, Ashni Biyani, launched herself into entrepreneurship. During the slowdown she has seen only downturns but anticipates to taste success in the future.

2. Remain relevant in business: Only a business that keeps pace with changing times can ensure sustainability for itself. To be in sync with the needs of a customer, it is vital to observe popular trends and practices.

The objective being tracking the mindset and interest levels of people. This could involve observing brands that people shop, television soaps they watch videos with maximum hits on social networking sites and many more. The idea is to understand and tap unexplored options or revise existing models.

3. Top line growth in not the only relevant priority: This concept has appealed to him very recently after reading the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham where he read about a lot of businesses that wanted to sustain a particular level of growth in absolute values.
Further growth for such organisations came from improving already existing systems and narrowing down efficiencies for every field of the enterprise. His younger daughter, Avni Biyani, is being trained by him on the same concept, where the magnitude of growth is not large but  doing small tasks with finesse and precision is improvised.

4. No place for emotions in business: Business is driven only with passion and to do business an entrepreneur has to be rational at all times, good or bad. It is difficult to find and identify flaws in things that seem dear but tend to create a major hindrance in the growth process. The same principle applies to business as well.

Emotions potentially deter an entrepreneur from taking harsh decisions which are in the best interest of the firm.

5. Don’t lose sight of stakeholders and employees: Stakeholders are the only ones that are equally affected by the business an entrepreneur runs. Not considering them as part of the same family could have damaging effects in the long run, especially when the business is going through turmoil.

6. LSD: With respect to employees, he has an interesting abbreviation for keeping them happy called LSD (Lakshmi, Saraswati, Durga). Pay your employees more than what they deserve; it creates an urge for them to justify their work. Empower them with the skills and knowledge so that they are assets for your firm and help in the decision and execution process. Give them the adequate degree of control and power. With power comes accountability and responsibility. These three factors help breed loyalty and create an organizational culture.

7. Be positive, laugh at your mistakes and accept criticism: Three very difficult things to follow but inevitable traits for an entrepreneur. Positivity helps overcome the most depriving circumstances. It is the only binding force that can keep the business and the people associated with it to stick around. Laughing at mistakes makes failures look like temporary setbacks hence it is easier to get over the blunders made and at the same time creates a learning lesson. Criticism, if not taken correctly, could potentially make an entrepreneur make a mistake he was warned about.

Why learn the hard way when an easier option is available?

Story first published in entrepreneurindia.in

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