NetApp Women in Technology (WIT) celebrates International Women’s Day with ‘Break the Bias’

Only 6.7 percent of board chairs are women, with just 5 percent women holding the CEO rank, according to Deloitte Global’s recently-released seventh edition of Women in the boardroom: A global perspective report. Coming to India, the numbers are not promising. The country has 21 percent of female participation in the workforce, one of the lowest in the world. This means that 79 percent of Indian women do not even seek work.

NetApp, through their diversity and inclusion efforts, aims to increase the demographic and cognitive diversity of their employee population, promote a culture of inclusion, and improve organisational performance. To this end, NetApp Women in Technology (WIT) – focusing on women’s professional development – is celebrating Women’s Day with a week-long celebration.

EmpowHer - Women's Week celebration

NetApp will celebrate International Women’s Day by embracing the theme ‘Break the Bias’. As part of its week-long celebration, the company has invited a businesswoman with over three decades of experience in the corporate world as the guest speaker. She has formed significant partnerships with private equity firms and promoters to build and scale up a diverse set of businesses. In addition, WIT leaders will speak on how diversity and women empowerment serves as a catalyst for a growth mindset.

The event puts the spotlight on NetApp’s focus on diversity and inclusion. The team looks at diversity from the lens of an employee starting from the hiring phase, and the various interjections during the employee journey to make the maximum impact. Diversity starts with talent acquisition, and it happens only by ensuring that biases are removed at the initial stages. The team uses an AI-based talent sourcing platform to disrupt the biases that exist in humans.

Diversity and empowerment for a growth mindset

“Diversity is like being invited to a party, inclusion is being asked to dance and belonging is dancing like nobody’s watching!” And that’s why the buck doesn’t stop at diversity, there is more work to be done to make employees feel included so they can bring their whole self to work. Women thrive in inclusive environments where they feel encouraged, safe, and free.

NetApp is transforming WIT to become not only a diversity agenda but also a business requirement. Both women and men are part of the core team to drive WIT programmes and events. Women need to be mentored and sponsored. While mentoring helps women learn skills and navigate through the male-dominated corporate world, sponsorship takes them to the next level, and shows the commitment of the company to help their women stalwarts steer the path to leadership.

It is essential to improve and improvise on the end-to-end ‘hire to retire’ cycle and focus on varied needs of leadership development at different stages of the career journey to enable a better experience for women. Besides, NetApp also helps drive change in society by running programmes that encourage young women to take up STEM. For example, as part of the WIT programme in India, NetApp does engineering degree sponsorships for young girls, among a few other steps towards improving the overall women experience at the company.

Come join us for the event on March 8, 2022! You can register here.