International Women’s Day | Britannia's Madurai factory aims to increase women workforce to 70%

The past 12 years at Britannia's Madurai plant have been life-changing for 48 year-old Meena Priya not just professionally, but personally. She started as a data entry professional, and now oversees the factory's entire production department, after learning the ropes across departments. This growth has helped her contribute significantly to her family's quality of life, and earned her recognition in her neighbourhood.

Priya says, “I have been working over here for 12 years. People come to my area and ask about the person who is working at the biscuit company. That's how people know me in my area. Even the postman knows my house like that. When I joined here my kids were in LKG and 4th standard. I grew step by step here and educated both my daughters till post-graduation and got my elder daughter married. Working here helped me do all of this.”

Experts agree that despite numerous efforts being made by companies, India still has a long way to go when it comes to increasing female labour force participation rate from the current 25 percent. In rural areas, this number is slightly higher, at 27 percent — but still not enough to write home about. What's encouraging, however, are stories of women like Meena Priya and P Pandirani, who are rewriting the rules, and inspiring more women to enter the workforce. Policies that support such enrolment are also a big help.

P Pandirani a Lab Chemist Officer at Britannia’s Madurai Factory says, “When people saw me going to work during COVID, they would come and speak to me and ask me, what work I do? People asked me if they could also come and work. I said everyone can come for work, there's a pick up and drop facility. Now there are many people from my town who are coming for the general shift. They shared with me that their families are also happy.”

Such policies have resulted in 65 percent of this plant's 1,400-strong workforce comprise of women. These workers say the best thing about working here has been the opportunity to learn different aspects of the operations and functioning, explore their interests, work on their potential, and rise up the ranks.

Priya says, “What I like is that we get to learn a lot of things. I was told that I don't just need to do data entry and that's how I got into production and started observing things. I have been in the admin team, I've been in-charge of hygiene and now I'm with manufacturing. We have the freedom to explore other departments. They give us whatever help we need and train us. No one will ever question why we are learning this.”

Apart from basic facilities like transport, crèche, etc, Britannia also offers programs aimed at physical and mental well-being of women along with awareness on fitness, nutrition and work life balance. This, the company says, has not only improved productivity, but has helped in better retention of female workers.

At the ground level too, these 900 women, Britannia says, have proven to be more efficient than their male counterparts -- adding much more value to the workforce.

Indranil Gupta, Head of Manufacturing at Britannia Industries says, “They actually bring in lot of engagement, environment in the shop floor by virtue of the nature of female employees. So, our challenge of attrition has drastically come down by increasing the female population. Productivity wise, they are more attentive, we have seen that packing is a very repetitive type of job. And we have seen that they are more attentive, they don't get bored like the male employees and that improves the packing efficiencies for us.”

The company is backing up these claims with intent. It plans to increase women workforce at its Madurai plant to 70 percent... and is working on growing its national diversity ratio from the current 41 percent to 50 percent by the end of 2024.