87% Women In India Likely To Quit Job Over Harassment Issues: Survey

Job site Indeed, recently conducted a survey of employees across various companies in the technology sector in India in order to look at the perception of employers in the wake of public allegations of misconduct at the workplace. The survey indicated that more women are likely to leave their job in the event of a gender-based scandal. Here are some key points from the survey.

Key points from the survey:

• The survey was conducted by Censuswide with 506 workers in the technology industry between December 27, 2018, and January 11, 2019.
• 87% of women indicated that they would be likely to leave their job in event of a gender-based scandal such as sexual harassment, bias in hiring, etc. occurred at the company for which they work.
• 82% of men were also in agreement with the statement. However, 95 percent of respondents would be more likely to stick to the job if their company was transparent about the issue in question and made attempts to correct it.
• About 80 percent of respondents said they were more likely to report misbehaviour in the wake of last year's public offences. Women are more likely to report a complaint than men.
• 70 percent considered changing their jobs depending on the nature of the scandal, their loyalty to the firm.
• 75 percent of the respondents indicated that the political views of the CEO or senior leaders as a reason which would influence their decision to quit their job.
• A huge number of respondents, 92 percent, said they would stay on, if their organization was quick to respond to a scandal, by taking an initiative to fix errors and communicating internally and externally. A strong public message by the leaders of the organisation often helps regain the trust of customers and employees alike.

#MeToo Campaign scored around 50 million Google search traffic since the movement began.

Unethical Practices:

Only a little over 10% of respondents said they were less eager to work in the tech industry as a result of public offenses such as data breaches, sexual harassment exposures, disingenuous privacy practices. However, 80 percent of respondents were in favour of leaving a job if a technology-based issue such as data breach, product failure, among others occurred at the company they work. While over 80 percent of respondents believed that technology companies are ethical, however, close to 90 percent think that technology companies need to be more regulated.

Venkata Machavarapu, head of engineering, India and site director at the job site Indeed India said, “While it is the responsibility of organizations to ensure the integrity and prevent breaches or untoward activities under their purview, no sector is immune to the occasional offence. What is important in such cases is that the company step up and take ownership of their actions and address the issue in a transparent and timely manner, to restore stakeholder trust."

56% of employees with career duration of five years or less were in agreement of considering leaving their company following transgression in comparison to 46% of respondents, who with longer career duration of up to 10 years were less likely to do so.

Lesser Revelation in Larger Organisations:

It was also revealed that 72 percent of respondents who work in a company with 250-500 employees said their companies were part of a public scandal in 2018, while only 46 percent of respondents who work in a company with more than 500 employees said the same.

Sonakshi Goel is an intern with SheThePeople.TV