During a recent debate with some friends over the sorry state
of affairs in India especially from the perspective of women safety, the
conversation brought up the case of private companies taking actions to ensure
women safety. One of the initiatives being generally followed is that a lady is
not the last employee to be dropped off in the cab or that there is a security
guard in the vehicle in case she has the last stop. Assumption being that the
security guard has probably undergone an extensive background check.
I mentioned how Nokia is not doing any such thing despite requests from women employees.
How do I know this- because my sister was an intern with Nokia and their cost cutting measures were quite evident from the frequent changes of transport contractors without any proper checks. What did this mean? The cabs they provide to employees (including interns such as my sister) were changing every second day, with new drivers, ones completely unknown. No courtesy of dropping off a lady passenger earlier or sending a guard in the car. On top of that, the cabs used to come at around 7AM for the pickup. Thankfully it was summer when she was doing her internship. Had it been winters, 7AM would have meant fog, darkness and a situation where one doesn’t really feel safe. Why didn’t my sister raise this matter with the HR or someone else in the company? She DID, and then got shot down. Besides this, Nokia India’s desperate attempts to cut costs have eaten into the pie called employee morale. I will leave commenting on their survival in India for another blog post.
I mentioned how Nokia is not doing any such thing despite requests from women employees.
How do I know this- because my sister was an intern with Nokia and their cost cutting measures were quite evident from the frequent changes of transport contractors without any proper checks. What did this mean? The cabs they provide to employees (including interns such as my sister) were changing every second day, with new drivers, ones completely unknown. No courtesy of dropping off a lady passenger earlier or sending a guard in the car. On top of that, the cabs used to come at around 7AM for the pickup. Thankfully it was summer when she was doing her internship. Had it been winters, 7AM would have meant fog, darkness and a situation where one doesn’t really feel safe. Why didn’t my sister raise this matter with the HR or someone else in the company? She DID, and then got shot down. Besides this, Nokia India’s desperate attempts to cut costs have eaten into the pie called employee morale. I will leave commenting on their survival in India for another blog post.
On the other hand, I was doing my internship last year with
Coca Cola. The company took pains to ensure safety and comfort to its employees,
at least in my opinion.
Long story short- Avoid working for Nokia, at least until
they prove that the work place is not as bad as I have imagined it to be.
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