Meet Paramount, one of our long-term suppliers in India. With a workforce of more than 7.000 employees, and where women are the minority, Paramount has made social sustainability and women’s empowerment a core part of its business values and an important part of its business decisions and day-to-day operations.
Creating awareness about gender and social issues are key factors in Paramount’s work towards ensuring empowerment among workers. One way in which Paramount works to break the deeply rooted mindset around gender stereotypes is to continuously provide all employees with awareness training on gender issues. In 2021, Paramount implemented the WE Women by Lindex programme for more gender equal and inclusive workplaces, and has since educated all employees on gender issues, how to have an unbiased approach to gender and increase the representation of female workers in the factory across all job roles.
“Lindex’s WE Women programme has played an important role in our journey towards a gender inclusive business. Thanks to the programme, we have been able to transform our commitment into strategic actions and have made gender a cross-cutting theme across business functions influencing all our business decisions. As a result of the programme, we have gotten the tools to continue the work within this area and have initiated new internal projects that will help us improve even more”
Sumit Mahajan, Executive Director at Paramount
At Paramount, they have seen the direct effects of working with social sustainability and women’s empowerment, not only from an ethical perspective but also from a business perspective. Through their efforts they have been able to reduce attrition and increase the number of female workers, while also seeing better performance and higher job satisfaction. The gender inclusive approach has also led to an increase in the number of female supervisors across all their factories.
“We believe that healthy, happy, and empowered employees are a prerequisite for business sustainability. Through our empowerment work we have gained trust of our workers, a sense of belongingness and a higher commitment towards work which is reflected in better productivity and efficiency. From a business perspective it has also contributed to improve our image and reputation as a company among our business competitors and peers” says Sumit Mahajan, Executive Director at Paramount.
Project Sehat provides promotive, preventive and curative health services to all workers irrespective of their gender. The project covers a wide range of diseases under both communicable and non-communicable categories like diabetes, Covid-19, anaemia, hypertension, mental health and malaria.
Project Mukta aims to empower female workers towards a more fulfilling life through workplace-based-interventions on sexual and reproductive health, financial inclusion, and gender equality. The project provides free sanitary pads to workers, along with health education on important topics like menstrual hygiene, family planning, care during pregnancy, STI/RTI and safe abortion.