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In celebration of International Women's Day on March 8th, Alcatel announced a new initiative entitled "Women in Leadership" to support the career progression of women within the company.
Alcatel's management believe that improved gender diversity in the company's leadership pipeline is a business imperative, boosting effectiveness and innovation. Highly talented employees are one of Alcatel's main assets, and women represent a large reservoir of talent. In Alcatel's drive to promote the best people, recruiting and developing women is thus key to the company's continued success. Moreover, the corporation needs a diverse employee base in line with the evolution of the industry. The company also wishes to better reflect the increasing diversity within its stakeholders, including clients and suppliers.
There are a number of women who hold top-level management positions at Alcatel, but they are still few in number compared to the total percentage of women in the Group, 24%. Although women are hired at Alcatel in equal proportion to their availability on the labor market, they often do not see the same career evolution as their male colleagues. To get full value from the female talent which exists, the company intends to remove any barriers which may be preventing some women from reaching their full career potential.
The broad goal of the "Women in Leadership" program is to increase the number of women holding management positions. Things will not change spontaneously. Therefore, the initial action plan includes:
- introducing gender diversity in the talent pipeline,
- increasing awareness of the topic and
- supporting development programs among Alcatel women.
In parallel to these corporate-based activities, there are a number of gender diversity related initiatives already being run locally.
For example, Alcatel in the US has entered into a partnership with the Women's Bureau of the US Department of Labor, to pilot an e-mentoring financial security and retirement savings project.
In Germany , Alcatel is involved in the "Women and IT" project, which encourages women to choose careers in information and communication technologies (ICT). In addition, it also offers training programs for women who have decided to pursue the ICT field. Alcatel contributes to the program by permitting some of the companies' women engineers to be "D 21 Initiative Ambassadors", to pass on their knowledge and skills to younger women.
Another way to highlight gender diversity is through cultural projects like in Afghanistan , where Alcatel is partnering with the Aïna NGO in its project of helping women to be trained in journalism. |
