IKEA India Breaking stereotypes! Aims to be truly gender equal by 2022

They believe that everyone has the right to be treated fairly and given equal opportunities, regardless of their gender. 

IKEA aims to be truly gender equal by 2022. That means ensuring equal opportunities for both women and men, and reaching 50-50 gender balance in every unit, function and level. This isn’t just about numbers; it’s about breaking down the walls that keep women and men underrepresented in certain roles and building an organization that recognizes the importance of diversity of thought and experience.

Equality is a commitment, a movement and to celebrate this commitment IKEA India organized Equality at the workplace event at their corporate office in Bangalore. They hosted this event along with Breakthrough (an NGO dedicated to the cause of Equality) where they discussed, co-created and shared learnings with everyone on how everyone can work together to build a more equal workplace.

On the day of the event, IKEA India’s senior management shared company’s equality message, few of IKEA co-workers shared some interesting testimonials on the topic, Breakthrough shared the findings from their Streelink Project and we also had Professor Kade Finoff from the Azim Premji University, who spoke on women, work and dignity at workplace.

This was followed up by a co-creation workshop on Equality, where issues were discussed around topics such as – various steps and policies an organisation can undertake for creating inclusive workspaces especially for women or how organisations identify and address the diverse needs of employees, e.g. women who join back after a career break, etc.

Diverse teams are more innovative and companies with gender diversity in leadership positions have better financial performance. When setting goals for gender equality, IKEA makes sure to include both genders. As an example, if a function is more male-dominated, IKEA encourages the People & Culture team to recruit and develop more women, and vice versa. As a result, IKEA has more women co-workers in roles that are traditionally done by men – forklift, assembly, etc., and more than 50 percent of senior leaders in functions like finance and logistics are women. Similarly, men are working with women on an equal footing, no initiative is limited to women only. IKEA’s gender inclusion goals aim at providing an inclusive work environment for all genders.