​Accenture has planned a Mother’s Day gift for all its female employees. Know what

The information technology services and consulting major Accenture India has set an example for other IT conglomerates. In first-of-its-kind initiative, it has extended maternity leave benefits to five months of paid leave from 12 weeks.

Not only this, women employees will also be entitled to an additional maternity leave of four weeks paid leave if there is an illness directly related to mother’s pregnancy. The policy will be in effect from May 1.

In an exclusive interview to Economic Times, Managing Director, Human Resources for Accenture in India, Parag Pande said the benefits are for both, full-time and part-time employees.
"We are focused on hiring, retaining and advancing women at every level. Extending maternity leave will help women in our workforce continue to pursue their career goals while raising a family," Pande told the financial daily.

Moreover, if employees want additional time beyond the maternity leave but do not have enough accrued vacation leave can apply for unpaid leave of absence for a further 12 weeks, taking the total permissible leave period to nine months.

Under its new recruiting goal, Accenture further plans to have women comprise at least 40% of their new global hires by the end of fiscal 2017. Presently, 1,15,000 women comprise 36% of their global workforce in 30 countries.

The company also offers a slew of programmes like career guidance for new parents, parents at work programme to assist women employees during maternity to remain in the workforce, etc.
"The many programmes we offer will enable women in our company to make a smoother transition back to the workforce after having a child. These initiatives will go a long way in helping us continue to recruiting and retaining the best talent," Pande told ET.

Maternity is a key period where a sizeable amount of women, majority in the age group of 28 and 35 years, choose to stop working, which leads to draining pipeline of high potential women professionals at the middle of the pyramid.

Presently, only few organisations, mostly in the global banking and financial services space in India offer such benefits and most of the other major companies in the IT space in India like Infosys, Capgemini, Microsoft, HCL Technologies, among others, offer three months of paid statutory maternity leave.

Also as mandated, in most companies, women employees are entitled to take an additional one month of paid extended maternity leave in case of any complications. Almost 48% women under the age group of 30 drop out of the workplace citing, says Saundarya Rajesh, founder and president of Avtar Career Creators & FLEXI Careers India, who works in the area of re-engaging second career women.

She adds among the highest percentage of women who seek re-entry at the mid-career level are those who have already worked in IT industry, which hires among the largest numbers of women in the Indian workplace, probably second only to the BFSI sector.
But IT-ITeSBPO also loses approximately 18% women each year to short or medium-term breaks in career.

The cost of replacing these women, who quit workplace primarily citing "personal reasons" seek to return to the workforce about 18-20 months after their break.
Due to this, the cost of replacing these women as well as retraining them is higher compared to what can be achieved if they were retained.

"Companies would save thousands of rupees if they are able to create a support structure to retain these women. A robust maternity benefit policy can play a crucial role not only for diversity and inclusion but for organisations to be sustainable," Saundarya told ET.