Domestic automakers accelerate employment of women in shop floors

Local automakers Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Leyland and Hero MotoCorp are speeding up the pace to hire more women on shop floors as they hit the pedal hard to boost diversity.

Previously an outsider but not anymore, thousands of women now move from two-wheeled SUVs to popular SUVs and heavy commercial vehicles through various factories of these companies.

Tata Motors has more than 4,500 women working on shop floors across six factories, including an all-female line at its Pune facility with over 1,500 of them producing popular SUVs such as the Harrier and Safari.

“We are an equal opportunity employer and believe that a gender balanced workforce results in greater productivity, better decision making, fostering collaboration and more innovative ideas. Our focus is on promoting diversity, particularly on the shop floor and 25 percent of all our new recruits are women ,” Ravindra Kumar, Chief Human Resources Officer, Tata Motors, told PTI.

He added, “Today, more than 4,500 women are actively involved on shop floors at our various plants. They exercise a wide range of job capacities on many products, from small passenger cars to heavy commercial vehicles.”

Homegrown automaker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has seen the number of women increase as its number of employees in its manufacturing plants triples from last year to 1,202 employees at present, engaged in core activities ranging from welding to loading robots, assembling vehicles and the machine shop, from among others.

According to M&M CHRO, auto and farm sector Rajeshwar Tripathi, the company hires more than 25 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), some of which are women-only.

“Our annual intake is over 1,200. We have adopted about eight ITIs in the tribal areas, where our intake is very regular,” he said, adding, M&M strongly believes that a diverse team is more productive, the work culture is much better and these teams are more creative and innovative.

When asked about the challenges facing more women entering the auto industry, he said it was as much internal within the company as it was social.

Although the company worked to put in place the basics such as policies and physical infrastructure, the external factor of social and family pressure could be a hindrance in getting more women to work the store floors.

Tripathi asserted that the social and family pressure on women not to take up manufacturing as a profession is very important and can play a significant role if not handled appropriately.

At Ashok Leyland Commercial Vehicles, 991 women work in seven different factories. At the company’s Hosur plant, an all-women assembly line of approximately 120 women assemble light commercial vehicle engines producing 120 per shift per day.

Ashok Leyland Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, Ganesh Mani, said the company has always preached that any job does not have to be gender specific.

Citing the example of the company’s Pantnagar plant, where female executives involved in assembling trucks, could occupy leadership positions much earlier after working for about one to two years, he said it had inspired the company to consider setting up a women-only engine assembly line.

“If they (women) can make trucks, why don’t we choose a (women-only) engine assembly line,” said Mani, adding, “Our new line is ‘Koi manzil door nahin’, which means no dreams are too far away for anyone. With that in mind, we thought we should be a starting point for an all-women line to have as well.”

Women’s empowerment is also witnessed by the largest two-wheeler maker Hero MotoCorp, which has more than 1,500 employees.

The concept of female technicians and engineers in the automotive industry, which seemed like a distant dream, has now become a reality. Women now not only find their feet on shop floors, but also run the supply in factories, thanks to these Indian car manufacturers.

(Only the title and image for this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is generated automatically from a shared feed.)