Omni-channel platform Fynd aims to bridge gender gap, pays women employees 10pc more than men

Actresses Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, and Ellen Pompeo have been vocal about pay parity. Closer home, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, and Kareena Kapoor Khan, who are routinely paid much lesser than their male counterparts, have been demanding equal pay.

Pay parity remains a pertinent issue and an impediment in the way of women’s growth and retention in the Indian workforce.

The Monster Salary Index conducted for the year 2018 revealed that women earned 19 percent lesser than men. While there is no gender pay gap in semi-skilled work, the gap accounts for 20 percent for skilled women and 30 percent for highly-skilled professions.

The number of women in the workforce stood at an abysmal 26 percent in 2018, and paying them lesser than men is not helping the cause. 

So, it comes as a breath of fresh air when you hear of a company that pays its women employees 10 percent more than its men. Yes, you heard it right.

Omni-channel platform Fynd, which also runs a fashion ecommerce portal, has announced a unique initiative where it intends to mend the existing pay gap by hiking the salary of all women employees by 10 percent. This has been done with an aim to eliminate gender bias and motivate more women to join the organisation.

To take this further, Fynd will conduct a recruitment drive in three cities – Mumbai, Pune, and Bengaluru - to invite more than 200 aspiring engineers to attend it. Of these, 25-30 candidates will be selected to join Fynd.

Speaking to YourStory, Harsh Shah, Co-founder, Fynd, said,

“We never wanted to have a disparity in our employee payments in the first place. But, unfortunately, while trying to establish a lot of other things, this went unnoticed for a good amount of time. While conversations were happening around the world with respect to women empowerment and equality for all, we decided to do a hygiene check and see if we were doing anything wrong. Once we probed, we figured out this anomaly and decided to make sure not just to remove the anomaly, but also to correct it in a way that women feel proud while working at Fynd.”

He added that overall representation of women in Fynd is 40 percent, but women comprise only four o six percent of the engineering departments. “When we were a small engineering team (around 15 people), we had enough women engineers working with us. But as and when we scaled up (up to 40 engineers), mostly men joined, and a few women engineers left the organisation. We had small efforts around hiring more women, but they were never dedicated. So, we decided to do a hard reset on this problem of gender disparity, and conduct a special recruitment drive, especially for women.”

According to Harsh, diversity and inclusion rank high on Fynd’s agenda. “Most government initiatives on this front are right on track, and we currently make sure to follow all of them. Apart from this, we have a women-only group where the panel works on creating an ecosystem where women can discuss their problems and challenges, work or otherwise. We make sure to do whatever we can in our capacity to help them,” he said.

While increased pay is one of the factors that will increase female participation in non-traditional roles, Harsh believes it’s important to create an environment that provides a great degree of comfort and offers ample opportunity to learn and grow.

“At the end of the day, we are not looking at women to join Fynd because of increased pay, but majorly because of the culture we have nurtured within the company for the past few years. We plan to continue our efforts in terms of diversification of the team and maintain a healthy balance of people with different values and cultures. Also, we would be actively working on scaling up our leadership team with more women,” he added.

This is a good enough beginning, and we hope more companies will follow suit and offer women what they deserve – equal pay, an unbiased working environment, opportunities to grow, and much more.

Also read: Pay parity, support, and more: why women ask for more at the workplace

Also read: Gender Pay Gap: Is World Really Balancing For Better?