Company honoured for the fourth consecutive time for its efforts towards diversity and inclusion in the workplace
Thiruvananthapuram: UST, a leading digital transformation solutions company, today announced that it has been named as one of the ‘100 Best Companies for Women in India 2022’ (BCWI) and ‘Exemplars – Most Inclusive Companies in India’ (MICI) by Avtar & Seramount for the fourth consecutive time. UST was honoured for its exemplary efforts in ensuring gender diversity, inclusion and equity within the company. This recognition is a testament to UST’s commitment to creating an inclusive, diversity-affirming environment for all employees, especially women, the differently abled and minorities.
An evaluation of diversity representation and inclusion practices was conducted on over 350 companies spanning every major industry, geographical location and line of business. A major focus of MICI was diversity, including gender, generations, the differently abled as well as the LGBTQIA+ community to foster diversity and inclusion in recruitment, retention, advancement of people from diverse groups and company culture.
UST has a long history of diversity leadership and was the first tech company to hire a transgender woman in Kerala. UST has also hired more than 50 differently abled associates through its ‘Impact India’ Program. UST Step IT Up is another global program that provides a highly effective formula to train and employ women, disadvantaged communities and veterans in the field of technology. UST’s DEI initiatives have focused on creating an inclusive and respectful environment for all its employees with focused internal communities such as Curved Colors, a group for the LGBTQAI+ community. The COLORS of UST is a unique program for UST employees designed to promote diverse interests through volunteering and community development projects. Through the program, employees have extended UST’s sense of an inclusive community to its external stakeholders, using technology to put UST’s vision of ‘Transforming lives’ into action.
UST launched Win IT a unique Women-oriented mentoring program that aims at inculcating diversity and empowering women. Launched in 2020, this program provides a robust platform to offer mentorship for high potential women working in middle-level management. This initiative had achieved a high rate of response with participation of 30 percent of our female colleagues across the globe. More than forty percent of Win IT participants received a career elevation and 75 percent of the participants benefited from 1:1 mentoring sessions.
“While women’s representation at entry levels has moved up in the last five years, studies show that there continues to be a slump when it comes to women in senior roles. The pandemic normalised remote working and flexible work hours, opening opportunities for all genders. This recognition from AVTAR as one of the ‘100 Best Companies for Women in India 2022’ reflects our ongoing effort to make the workplace a more diverse, equitable and inclusive environment. Through innovative practices and deep commitment, UST has put itself on the fast-track towards achieving gender balance in the coming years. We are extremely proud to our teams for encouraging and running programs and initiatives to encourage our DEI initiatives. We believe that the future of our organization lies in the aspiration of our diverse and inclusive talent to create boundless impact,” said Kavita Kurup, Global Head of Human Resources, UST.
“We are truly honoured and energized to be recognized as a ‘2022 Exemplar of Inclusion’ and listed among the top ‘100 Best Companies for Women’ in 2022. At UST, we believe in equity, inclusion, and diversity and feel that the richness of diverse perspectives helps us build for boundless impact for our customers, communities, partners and employees. We welcome open and honest conversations that empower and enrich our organization thus creating opportunities for equity, innovation, growth and collaboration. We are strongly committed to making significant investments year on year to train, develop and create awareness of the need and impact of DE&I,” said Anu Koshy, Head – Diversity and Inclusion, UST.
UST has also won the ‘Business Culture Awards 2022’ and the ‘Best Environment Protection Initiative of the Year – 2022’ at the Indian CSR Awards 2022. In addition this, the company was recently recognized for CSR Excellence by the 2022 Mahatma Awards.
