Cognizant plans to have more women in leadership roles: Brian Humphries
Brain Humphries, CEO of IT Major, Cognizant said that company will implement diversity goals from 2021. Under this initiative, more women will be assigned leadership roles and the inclusion of people of different ethnicities will be given priority.
Currently, out of the 2,83,100 global workforce of Cognizant, 35% are women. However, not many ladies are in senior management positions and this might be a spotlight space, stated Humphries while chatting with the Phil Fersht, CEO of the worldwide analysis consultancy HFS.
“We have a 100,000 female associates in Cognizant, but to be very honest, a lot of that is at the lower levels of the pyramid. That’s not acceptable,” Humphries stated
“We are rolling out in the coming year, diversity targets for an executive committee and their operating rules. We are continuing to add much more EC (executive council) member sponsorship and what we call ERG (employee resource groups) groups. We have added two in the last few months – Pan Asian ERG and Disability Person ERG as well,” said Humphries.
Recently, we even appointed a Becky Schmitt as chief people officer, Shameka Young as global head, diversity and inclusion, and Ursula Morgenstern as president, global growth markets.
“I am trying to also start by leading by example at the top of the company, with diversity not just in terms of male and female but also sexual orientation, nationalities and backgrounds,” Brain Humphries said.
The Cognizant CEO also said that racial and gender justice movements, which dominated headlines in 2020, had ushered in change across various companies.
“I think it’s permanent. Companies, vendors like Cognizant are speaking more openly about it, about their expectations for us to show up as a global company, to show up as a representative of society,” stated Humphries.
India’s IT Major, Tata Consultancy Services also be working to extend the variety of women leaders on the prime. In an interview with SightsIn Plus, Chief Diversity Officer Ritu Anand stated, at TCS we believe in the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Strategic interventions are what make us one of the largest employers of women in the world, at more than 36% and multiple initiatives for helping women employees realize their potential while striking a good work-life balance. TCS is also trying to improve the proportion of ladies holding managerial positions.
