Corporate diversity initiatives often announce ambitious targets and publish progress reports. Actual workplace change tends to lag behind. Women return from maternity leave to find projects reassigned, manager relationships weakened, and career trajectories quietly altered.
Birlasoft, an IT services firm employing thousands across India and globally, reports something unusual: a 98 per cent maternity return rate, with 177 out of 180 women coming back to work. According to Sarika Saini, senior director, HR and DE&I, this stems from structured intervention rather than policy alone.
“DEI is deeply embedded in how we build our culture, develop our talent, and make everyday decisions. It’s not a separate stream of work, but it’s part of how we operates.”
Sarika Saini, senior director – HR & DEI, Birlasoft
“We connect with women even during their break—not to disturb them, but to ensure they remain connected,” she says. “We run balancing motherhood sessions, provide buddies, and sensitise managers for smoother reintegration.”
The approach targets a well-known problem. Indian IT services firms typically see 30–40 per cent of women not returning after maternity leave—a significant loss of trained talent. If Taken at face value, the figure suggests that maternity retention can be engineered.
The representation pattern
Birlasoft reports 26 per cent overall gender diversity and a 23 per cent hiring mix. More strikingly, it says 67 per cent of key managerial personnel (KMP) roles are held by women.
The contrast is notable. Overall representation aligns with industry norms. Senior representation appears disproportionately high.
This creates a structural tension. Either KMP roles form a relatively small pool, or the organisation may face a pipeline challenge in sustaining that composition over time. Without clarity on role definitions or cohort size, the metric is difficult to interpret in isolation.
Saini attributes senior representation to structured interventions—mentorship, leadership programmes, and sponsorship. The BEmpowered Women’s Leadership Programme recently included 34 participants, with 26 moving into mentoring roles. The Each One Teach One initiative has supported over 100 women across cohorts.
Leadership programmes are now common across corporate India. Their effectiveness depends less on design and more on outcomes—whether participants advance faster, gain visibility, and move into roles with real decision authority. Without comparative benchmarks, separating programme impact from broader workforce trends remains difficult.
Governance versus theatre
Birlasoft has built a multi-tiered DE&I governance structure: a council of senior leaders, supported by 25 ambassadors across functions and geographies.
Such structures are now standard. Their value depends on whether they influence decisions on hiring, promotion, and resource allocation—or remain advisory forums whose recommendations yield to business pressures.
The company tracks multiple indicators: diversity ratios, hiring mix, leadership composition, training coverage, and engagement scores. Over 6,500 employees have undergone inclusion training, with coverage exceeding 80 per cent.
Training completion, however, rarely signals behavioural change—and often reflects compliance more than cultural shift.
Saini points to engagement surveys and focus groups as evidence of improved psychological safety and collaboration. Without baseline comparisons or external benchmarks, these indicators remain difficult to validate independently.
Targets and trade-offs
Birlasoft has committed to ensuring one-third of candidates for managerial and leadership roles are women, alongside a 50 per cent target in campus hiring.
This approach reflects a familiar debate. Critics argue targets risk tokenism; supporters argue they correct structural exclusion.
“We do not compromise on meritocracy. What we do is expand access,” Saini says.
The shift from equal treatment to equitable access has become standard framing. Its validity depends on outcomes—whether expanded access produces comparable performance and sustained career progression.
Birlasoft has also introduced structural changes: diverse sourcing channels, balanced interview panels, and hiring manager sensitisation. These interventions likely matter more than targets themselves, though disentangling their relative impact is rarely straightforward.
Beyond gender
The company’s diversity efforts extend beyond gender. It employs 22 persons with disabilities and five veterans, with plans to expand further while exploring neurodiversity and generational inclusion.
“Inclusion cannot stop at hiring. It must extend to infrastructure, digital accessibility, and managerial capability,” Saini notes.
Expanding scope reflects maturing thinking. It also raises execution risk. Building capability across multiple diversity dimensions simultaneously can dilute focus unless supported by sustained investment and operational discipline.
The maturity question
Birlasoft reports its Inclusive Business Maturity Score improved from 7.1 to 7.8 in FY 2024–25.
Such scores typically rely on self-assessment frameworks that reward policy presence and programme deployment. they offer useful signals of organisational intent, though they are less effective at capturing lived experience or behavioural change.
An organisation can score highly while employees experience uneven inclusion across teams. Without insight into methodology or employee-level data, the score indicates progress in structure more than in outcomes.
Scaling the model
The returning mothers programme remains Birlasoft’s most distinctive intervention. It combines ongoing engagement during leave, manager sensitisation, buddy systems, and structured reintegration.
This suggests that maternity retention can be addressed through sustained, high-touch design rather than policy alone.
The question is whether such an approach scales. Each returning employee requires attention, coordination, and managerial alignment. As organisations grow—or operate under tighter margins—maintaining this level of support becomes more complex.
More broadly, Birlasoft’s case highlights a familiar measurement challenge. The company points to high return rates, leadership representation, and expanding programmes as indicators of progress. Without comparative data on advancement, performance, or retention beyond maternity stages, assessing whether these efforts produce superior outcomes remains difficult.
The longer view
For now, Birlasoft demonstrates that maternity return need not be left to chance. With deliberate design, organisations can significantly improve retention at a critical career juncture.
Whether that success represents a scalable model—or a high-touch system that works best under specific conditions—will become clearer as the organisation grows and the demands of consistency, cost, and leadership continuity intensify.