MUMBAI: Making up for the loss of a woman talent with another woman hire is the new mantra at corporate India which is going all out to improve upon its gender diversity ratio at the workplace.Sodexo India, Fluor, an engineering, procurement and construction maintenance firm, and Pitney Bowes, a global technology company, follow such a practice of replacing a woman employee with another woman employee.Gender ratios are currently skewed towards male employees even in some of the most progressive organizations today. There appears to be a sense of urgency with which companies are adopting new practices to improve their gender ratios."We have come up with a new practice of replacing a woman with a woman. If we lose out on a woman employee, we will ensure that she is replaced by another woman employee so that we maintain our gender diversity. We will, however, not compromise on quality," said Rohini Anand, senior VP & global chief diversity officer for Sodexo.With a focus clearly on recruitment of more women employees, Sodexo India has set a target to take the total percentage of women employees from the current 16% to 20% by the end of this financial year.Fluor, according to Shachi Irde, executive director of Catalyst India women’s research center, follows the practice of hiring women to fill vacant positions when women employees leave the company or take a break. Another company that Catalyst (a global nonprofit organization with an objective to expand opportunities for women and business) works with is Pitney Bowes, which has similar hiring practices for women."Pitney Bowes identifies job roles and positions exclusively for women across departments and levels, and has job postings that specifically target qualified women for certain roles," said Irde. However, there is no reservation of roles or positions for women. Both, Fluor and Pitney Bowes follow the said practice in India as well.Some companies have adopted a role-based approach to seek out women candidates. "We have identified women friendly roles across AFS (automotive and farm equipment sectors) and hence while recruiting we first look for availability of women talent for these roles. Considering the dearth of experienced women candidates specifically in mechanical/electronics engineering fields, we have initiated hiring fresh female candidates from the campus as graduate apprentice trainees," said Emrana Sheikh, VP - HR, international operations – AFS, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M).As against the current 5% women employees, the AFS division of M&M plans to further enhance this number over the next three years depending on the business scenario.SHRM, a global association focused on human resource management, however, believes a practice of replacing women employees with women, negates the whole idea of diversity. "This practice is a short term approach to ensure diversity within an organization since it only looks at meeting numbers but not inclusion. If the hired woman candidate does not have the required credentials or skill-set, her team will not be supportive in her role, leading for mediocracy to creep into the system as well as impacting the business and team engagement levels,’’ said Dedeepya Ajith John, knowledge and research consultant, SHRM India.Tarun Katyal, chief human resources & admin officer, MTS India said, the company does not simply replace a female employee with another female employee, unless the role requirements demands so. "However, if there is any potential female employee who deserves the role then as leaders we do promote the replacement and ensure no biases are creeping in to refrain a deserving candidate from getting they deserve," said Katyal.