Make it easy for moms - that's what global businesses look set to do

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over the 3 years but in a different way. According to a global survey undertaken by Regus plc (www.regus.com) of over 11,000 corporates across 13 countries, nearly half (44 per cent) of the global business population plans to hire more mothers returning to part-time work over the next two years.

Indian hiring intentions register far above the global average, with 64 per cent of business leaders saying that they will recruit more mothers into their workplaces on a part-time basis over the next 24 months. The finding indicates that the Indian work culture is, overall, keen to support the balance between work and family responsibilities.

Regus’ multi-national global economic indicator survey, the Regus BusinessTracker, asked more than 11,000 respondents about their hiring intentions with regard to part-time, returning mothers over the next two years. The resulting data offers economists a consistent survey benchmark with which to assess national outlooks versus global averages.

The Regus BusinessTracker survey found that Indian businesses intend to take on more mothers returning to part-time work than their international counterparts, with 64 per cent reporting that they expect to hire more over the next two years. This marks India as the country with the most ambitious hiring intentions out of those studied. The most conservative hiring estimates appeared in the Netherlands, with only 24 per cent expecting an increase.

While India’s performance registered positively on the global scale, the nation still faces numerous challenges in making the workplace suitably flexible for new mothers. Although attitudes towards working mothers have changed over the past few decades in the large urban centres of India, rural businesses sometimes demonstrate reluctance to treat working mothers fairly. In such areas, women can struggle with the lingering notion that they are meant to take care of children, and re-entry to the workforce may be seen as a betrayal of traditional gender roles.

Another challenge facing working mothers in India is the level of resentment from male co-workers that has developed as a result of new legislation that extended maternity leave periods. Men make up 70% of the Indian workforce, but they are not granted generous paternity leave packages. Without the introduction of a comparable package for men, this resentment is bound to increase.

The overview of international hiring intentions varied from sector to sector in Regus’s survey. The banking (47%) and manufacturing (47%) industries anticipate taking on more returning mothers, while the ICT sector (39%) expects to take on fewer. The latter figure may be a result of the ICT sector being historically male-dominated: if there are few women in the industry to begin with, it is unsurprising that ICT businesses are less likely to take on a great number of new mothers as part-time employees.

On the global level, size of company seems to have little impact on firms’ intentions to take on more returning mothers in 2010 and 2011. In terms of slight variations in the Regus survey statistics, 77% of larger firms (1,000 employees plus) expect to see more part-time mothers in their workplaces, whereas firms of 250-999 employees expect to see fewer than any other size bracket (39% expect to hire more).

Madhusudan Thakur, Regus’ Country Head comments, “As businesses worldwide take the tentative steps towards recovery, we’re starting to see the emergence of shifting workplace strategies. Businesses have learned that adhering to a rigid 9-5, 5-days-a-week mentality with no room for flexibility can mean sacrificing talented workers – and in a time when companies are focusing on cutting costs and maximising profitability, firms cannot afford to operate without the best and brightest talent available.

‘While we have seen that companies intend to take on more mothers as part of their strategy to combat the financial downturn, there is much work to be done in making the transition from maternity leave back to the workforce as smooth as possible. Allowing mothers to take advantage of workplace flexibility demonstrates an understanding for the challenges that they face and paves the way for them to be more productive and less stressed at work.