The good news is that the number of young Sri Lankans graduating with qualifications in IT and related fields is on the rise. But that rise is “nowhere near fast enough” to satisfy the burgeoning demand for their skills. Dialog Axiata’s Group Chief Customer Officer, Sandra De Zoysa says that one of the solutions to addressing this issue is to wholeheartedly encourage and engage the female workforce by offering flexible work options.

At Dialog Business Services (DBS), women make up over half the workforce. Sandra De Zoysa says that in her experience she has found that it is advantageous to maintain a healthy balance between gender as well as other diversity factors such as religion, ethnicity, and age segments to embrace inclusivity in every aspect because such differentiation adds value to the organization, bringing the best in terms of leadership, creativity and innovation.

DBS’s achievements in female employee engagement have given them the distinction of being ranked as one of the 15 Best Workplaces for Women in Sri Lanka for the third year running. In this interview, Sandra De Zoysa shares her thoughts on Dialog Axiata’s approach to female engagement and empowerment across the Group and its subsidiaries.

Dialog Business Services (DBS) has once again been recognised by GPTW as one of the Best Workplaces for Women in Sri Lanka. Can you tell us what makes DBS an outstanding workplace for women?

Sri Lanka’s Leading Quad-Play Connectivity Provider at the forefront of driving the country’s digital economy, Dialog Axiata and its subsidiaries provide critical communication services in the Mobile Telecommunications sector with a robust footprint and market presence in Sri Lanka’s Fixed Telecommunications, Digital Pay Television, Digital Services, Financial Services, and IT services market enabling Sri Lankans and enterprises a plethora of lifestyle services from health, education, mobile money to entertainment. Dialog Business Service (DBS) provides 24/7 Customer Experience and Contact Management services across a multitude of digital, social and automated channels, to their customers.

We have created a work environment and culture spanning 25 years that has always attracted a female majority because we have created an environment that is safe, non-discriminatory and gender equal, for professional development, growth and recognition.

However, as an employer, we have gone the extra mile to create a conducive environment that facilitates and supports women to juggle the various roles they have to play, predominately as a multitasker and a caregiver. We have witnessed that a little flexibility and solidarity on the part of the management plays a significant role in advancing women’s careers.

In this regard, Dialog Business Services formulated special work policies that allow our female employees to choose from a variety of work schedules with varying hours, days of the week, time of day, remote work and working from the office and across full-time/ part-time/ permanent/ contract and assignment-based options to ensure that there is something for everyone. We provide a safe working environment, particularly conducive to women given that they account for 52% of our workforce, ensuring both the physical and mental well-being of female employees. Besides the standard benefits package which includes training, development and reimbursement of professional membership and exam fees, medical and life insurance cover, we also provide free devices and connectivity, a counselling and consultation service through Doc990, to ensure that employees receive the support they need, a welfare and salary loan scheme, vouchers extended to the kids of our employees for purchasing school supplies, and bereavement grants. What’s unique perhaps is our “Dialog Cares” initiative which supports the families of deceased employees, paying up to 80% of the salary including all benefits to their aged parents and children up to 18 years. We will shortly be extending fitness and well-being-related facilities such as gym membership, Yoga, Zumba and any other services that are popular among Gen Z and female employees.

In a business landscape challenged by the pandemic and the economic slowdown, what investments were particularly relevant in making sure the workplace is inclusive of women?

Despite the challenging global and local business environment, we recognize the importance of continuously investing in the development of our workforce, as such, all our meetings have gone hybrid including the interview and selection process as well as the training programmes. This required a considerable investment on our part in enabling devices, headsets and laptops as well as the procurement of new platforms and tools.

A strategic decision was made in 2020 to actively focus on accelerating the development of our female workforce. One such initiative was the recruitment of 22 graduates through our GradStart Programme where 44% of the new hires were female.

We have made significant investments in facilitating continuous on-the-job training and development opportunities for upskilling and reskilling our female employees to prepare them for managerial and leadership roles. Also, considering the stress and fatigue that females are subjected to, given that they multitask across their various roles in life, we have a series of motivation and engagement-related activities in which we include their families. These activities act as stress relievers and help to avoid burnout, keeping them smiling and happy.

How does greater female inclusivity impact the business? How do you measure this impact?

Women are forging ahead stronger than before despite the even more challenging environment they are faced with during and in the post-Covid era taking on the extra work that comes their way. In comparison to their male allies, we find that females are doing more to support their teams, particularly when it comes to building and maintaining the natural empathic leadership style which helps to elevate strong emotional engagement and work-life balance for their team members.

Female managers and leaders seem to be far more committed than ever before to actively focus on advancing the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. I suppose they all feel that it is their responsibility to do so and to that extent I think that the awareness creation and call for action efforts carried out by the Dialog Group are creating greater impact within the organization and the society that we live and work in.

Female Managers are taking more consistent action to promote employee wellbeing—including checking in on their team members more regularly, helping them manage their workloads, and providing additional support to those who are dealing with anxiety, burnout or PostCovid related stress impacting the country, helping to better navigate work-life balance related challenges.

We have taken various measures such as Healthy Employee Engagement Scores – when managers support employee well-being, employees are happier, less burnt out, and less likely to consider leaving. Engaged staff perform better which has a direct impact on business and its growth.

We measure how well we are doing by way of an employee engagement score, happiness index and employee effort score through our Service from the Heart (SFH) and employee experience, engagement and culture programme, and engagement scores of female leaders by analyzing employee retention rates and through 1:1 performance, coaching, mentoring initiatives and regular discussions.

Dialog is a telco, which makes it a Technology company. There are fewer women traditionally in leadership roles in the tech industry. Is it important to change this and if so how?

Yes, it is important to change the traditional mindset.

In our effort to achieve gender balance, we encourage our female employees to actively plan their careers and take ownership of their development. Over the years, we have seen a significant number of talented women rising to management and leadership positions in each of our business operations. Currently, 18% of our senior management team consists of women, while corporate management and junior management account for 20% and 28% respectively. We have a long way to go to achieve gender parity and personally I would like to see this number at 55% – 60%. Therefore, our male allies together with the female leadership are actively working to achieve our aspirations through our Diversity and Inclusivity agenda.

We have an Employee Resource Group for females, creating a forum to network and share knowledge. Our mentor network continues to provide invaluable coaching and support for our male counterparts in engineering and tech roles so that they appreciate and understand the value of working with female team members and leaders and the impact they create as well as the value they bring to the table. For example, one or two of the most senior engineering leaders working for the CTO cross functionally reports to me on a dayto-day operational role within the service delivery domain and some of my senior female leadership are required to work very closely with my male colleagues in business and technical functions as we want all our future leaders to be competent in tech and business.

We have gone to great lengths to build a strong female mentorship community within Dialog and we see the numbers steadily increasing when it comes to the mentor/mentee discussion sessions.

Tell us what else the Dialog Axiata group and DBS are doing to empower and grow women leaders in the workplace.

Two initiatives Dialog has taken are to provide equal opportunities for career progression, such as transparent promotion policies and transparent internal mobility policies.

We have created a regular forum of live panel sessions where senior female leaders share their thoughts and experiences, provide practical tips and answer questions from our female employees.

IdeaMart is another Dialog initiative, that goes beyond the office, supporting and encouraging tech entrepreneurship and providing female entrepreneurs in particular, with the support and infrastructure required to digitize their businesses.

How do you build acceptance for a culture that is inclusive across the organisation?

Dialog has remained the market leader for 22 years straight. One may wonder about its consistency and continuity in a highly competitive market and the secret sauce of the recipe to our success is our strong people-centric culture.

Promoting inclusivity and diversity within Dialog fosters an open-minded company culture and we see it as an ingredient for even greater success. Inclusivity is not only about women, it covers a wide range of topics, for example, nationality, sexual orientation, and physical disability. We are focused on providing solutions, interventions and initiatives to improve every aspect of the diversity and inclusivity agenda. And we want to ensure that we have a healthy pipeline, and a great succession plan, to build future leaders who embrace the uniqueness of other human beings. A very focused company-wide programme under the theme “employee experience, engagement and culture” continues to help us make great strides.

Ideamart is another Dialog initiative, that goes beyond the office, supporting and encouraging tech entrepreneurship and providing female entrepreneurs in particular, with the support and infrastructure required to digitize their businesses