IKEA's Indian Stores Will Have Creches For Its Female Staffers, Here's Why

India is set to become the home to twenty five IKEA stores across 9 cities by 2025, with plans to hire an approximate of 15,000 people. “Each store would employ 500 to 600 co-workers and indirectly provide job opportunities for 1,500 people,” explains Anna-Carin Månsson, country HR manager, IKEA, to Hindustan Times.

As per the report, amongst the future 15,000 employees, 50 per cent of the staff will be female employees. To meet this goal, the Swedish company will be opening crèches in each of its stores, to accommodate women in the work force who have children or have just come back from sabbatical leave. This would also help the women to adjust to IKEA’s job timings that aren’t that flexible, as it does not abide by the store sale business model.
Månsson adds, “The idea is to hire 50% of women staffers, about 7,500, by 2025. Considering the social set-up here, it is necessary to open day-care centres for kids and babies in India. We will be doing this for the very first time, in any country, specifically in a bid to attract women talent.”
Hopefully, this won’t be the only initiative to attract more women employees as IKEA is in the midst of researching other human resource policies that have successfully served women in other Indian companies. “In our India-based learning, we are working on policies related to women who came back from maternity leave and sabbaticals. Also, we are drafting policies on women safety. Here the requirements are different and we need policies to address those areas,” Månsson said to Hindustan Times.
The recent data presented by International Labour Organization painted a rather puzzling picture of the female labour force in India. Even though the economy seemed to be booming between 2004 and 2011, and women’s visibility in education institutions increased, their participation towards the country’s economic growth was minimal. As per the report, if India increases the number of women in its workforce by 2015, it could lead to an increase of our GDP by an estimated 16 percent. To accomplish this, we need more companies to follow IKEA’s steps and adopt HR policies that take women’s issues into consideration. Some companies have already adapted for the workforce by introducing day care centres in their premises, for example; companies like HUL, BHEL and private banks have separate spaces for children in India.

Click here to read the full report by Hindustan Times