Mentoring programme for women

Amazon announces the launch of rekindle, an initiative to encourage women on a professional break, to resume their corporate career. Through this initiative, Amazon aims to provide opportunities to support women, who intend to professionally re-integrate and recommence their job.

Structured on-boarding, focused mentoring, flexible work options and on the job learning will be the key elements of Rekindle which will help candidates develop the requisite competencies for the role.

Amazon will provide an environment to address their concerns and close specific skills gaps. The rekindle program offers them flexible work options including work from home and flexible shift options depending on the role.

We will offer them roles that allow a flexible work arrangement and at the same time provide an opportunity to perform effectively on the job such as live projects across different functional areas including Technology, Operations as well as support functions like HR, Finance and Legal etc.

This will enable gradual ramp up of responsibilities in stages giving the candidates the bandwidth to regain confidence and accustom to what is expected from them.

Talking about the program, Raj Raghavan, Director Human Resources APAC, Amazon said, “Often when we looked to fill key positions, we chanced upon senior women leaders who had taken a career break and wanted to return to work.

However several of them, were constrained by lack of being in active practice with their skills and expertise on their subject that they weren't as confident as they would have earlier been.

In addition to their need to have a flexible work schedule, the desire to ramp up in a thoughtful pace etc. were inhibiting us to engage with great talent focused on solving customer problems. This caused us to pause a bit and put together a thoughtful approach towards tapping this latent talent.

The result was ‘rekindle’. “With rekindle, we aim to provide a launch pad to women who have had an extended absence from work in their career due to any circumstances and encourage them to come to Amazon and pursue their career goals.”

As per Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia 2011 report, female employees represent a small percentage of the total workforce (29%) and constitute the largest talent pipeline leakage (% reduction in female employees while moving from junior to middle management or middle to senior management).

It has been observed that Indian female employees are giving up their careers sooner in comparison with other Asian countries. As a part of the programme candidates will go through a structured assessment process comprising of a telephonic interview and multiple in-person interviews.

On the basis the performance during these interviews, final hiring decision will be made for the position. Once the selected candidates are on-boarded, Amazon.in will help them get assimilated into the Amazon culture and way of business with rekindle Mentoring Program.

The mentoring engagement will include a series of developmental conversations spread over five months, where each of the identified areas is progressively worked upon. “Our rekindle mentorship program is aimed at grooming women in brushing up their skills and to make them ready to take on bigger responsibilities,” adds Raj further.