Microsoft’s organisational culture is founded in the growth mindset, which encourages and nurtures potential in all employees across business groups, and is deeply committed to fostering a collaborative, diverse, efficient and productive workplace.
Microsoft advocates a strong focus on diversity-aligned hiring practices, reference tools, trainings and processes to instill the right inclusive mindset within the organisation. This ensures that all employees are able to find their rightful place as leaders in the corporate world, irrespective of their gender, age or ability.
Springboard: Empowering women to get back to work
Microsoft’s ‘back to work’ programme helps women professionals re-launch their careers. Young women professionals who have taken a career break, are able to get back to work comfortably under this initiative, which includes a mix of on-boarding, many training hours and careful mentoring. All this, put together, helps them gradually transition to focus on their career, while balancing family priorities.
Flexible work arrangements
All the employees are offered the opportunity to explore flexible work options, which help them stay connected seamlessly and ‘work from anywhere’. This is also reflected in Microsoft’s enhanced maternity policy that now offers flexible work arrangements for upto two years, to their women staff members. Microsoft’s infrastructure enables all employees, including new parents, to be mobile while continuing to be collaborative and engaged. The Company has four types of flexible work arrangements in India, available to all employees, such as flexible scheduling, teleworking, work-from-home and part-time work.
Parental Leave
Recently, Microsoft has increased the maternity leave for women employees to six months. It has also given them options to opt for unpaid leave of up to three months. Keeping in mind the significance of both mother and father, in nurturing a new-born child, the paternity leave has been increased from two weeks to six weeks for male employees. The same leave entitlements apply to those who adopt a child as well as for surrogate parents.
The family care giver leave
To help women balance their responsibilities between family and work, Microsoft has enhanced family-leave benefits. This meets the needs of its employees and empowers its women to be fully present at home and at work. This benefit offers four weeks of paid leave to take care of an immediate family member with a serious health condition.
