ICICI Bank announced the launch of a work-from-home programme to prevent women employees from dropping out of its workforce. Working from home has adapted over the years with more people opting to go this route, as well as businesses offering a hybrid working situation that can help out with personal and business expenses. This is why technology like this as well as virtual offices that have a central London business address or a city address, depending on where businesses are based, are being made available for business professionals so that this process is easier.
The company has deployed face recognition technology to facilitate women to work from home, while making use of the necessary employee communication trends to keep in contact with everyone that they need to in the office and beyond, and provide access to the bank’s core banking servers under. The programme iWork@ home will enable almost every non-customer facing task to be done from home. Although this would require improved tech like fast speed routers and efficient internet connections (similar to the ones provided by the likes of Comcast and metronet internet in the USA), this is the need of the hour due to the ongoing health crisis around the world.
The platform is designed not only to recognise the employees face; it also logs her out if she leaves her seat or if another face appears within range of the camera.
The technology has been developed by ICICI Bank in collaboration with IIT Delhi.
Further, under this program, employees working from home can carry out multiple tasks such as checking documents for disbursement of loans, image-based verification of cheques for clearance, first-level scrutiny of documents for opening of accounts and processing of export-import documents for payments. This is great for those working moms who need that leeway in their job so they can keep their careers but still raise their children. It can be hard for working moms to do it all, so motivation is a key factor in getting them to feel like they can face it.
The bank has also announced another initiative for women managers with children up to 3 years of age as managerial responsibilities at times require them to travel outside city limits, for client interactions, business reviews or training.
In order to support these employees, the bank has defined a policy to provide them with the cost of travel and stay of the child and a caregiver (family member or child caretaker).
“These two new measures are aimed at creating an enabling environment which will help many women to pursue their careers successfully while attending to the needs of their families,” said Kochhar.
