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MUMBAI: An extended maternity leave of 24 weeks plus four months of flexi-working hours with full pay, and, if needed, one-year career break without pay: Flipkart has rolled out these and several other incentives to attract and retain women employees. Perhaps the first e-commerce player to roll out such incentives that go beyond the statutory requirement, Flipkart has joined a growing list of progressive brick-and-mortar companies that seek to make the workplace more attractive for women.The current statutory requirement for maternity leave is 12 weeks. A number of traditional brick-and-mortar companies like Vodafone and Accenture recently announced enhanced maternity benefits, taking the quantum of leave beyond the statutory requirement. However, only some companies like HCL Technologies, Godrej and Hindustan Unilever (HUL) offer 180 days (over 24 weeks) of maternity leave benefit to all employees. HUL only recently extended the policy to new recruits as well.With a growing customer base of women who shop online, Flipkart seeks to prop up its gender diversity. And it has introduced women-centric policies with the hope that it will benefit young and expecting mothers who can continue with the same job after a maternity break or a post-maternity career break. Research shows that most women quit their jobs after childbirth. The company also offers transport reimbursement benefit, parenting counselling, maternity tie-ups with hospitals, child care support for all employees and insurance benefits.Research undertaken to gauge the challenges employees faced helped Flipkart identify key opportunities in creating the right environment for employees to contribute to the growth of the company. Assisting women through key life changing events was a critical need given Flipkart's young employee base. Providing these women with mentoring opportunities and bringing them on to the leadership team have been identified as key opportunities."Flipkart aspires to be a change catalyst in society which has its age-old conditioning of gender biases. As an e-commerce leader, which has pioneered change in India, we also want to be a catalyst for a change in the way our society works and that's one of the bigger community causes that we want to contribute to," Deepali Tamhane, senior director, product management at Flipkart told TOI.The company wants to ensure its employee base and leadership team represents the diversity of its customers. "Being inclusive can prove to be a competitive advantage for us. To maintain a leadership position, we would have to attract diverse talent that represents our customer base," said Tamhane. Flipkart, however, did not disclose its current gender diversity ratio.Research by Catalyst, a non-profit that works for gender diversity at workplaces, shows that organizations which create and maintain a well-managed, diverse workforce, on average, outperform those organizations which don't. Companies have started to gradually accept the business case for having more women employees in the workforce.In May this year, Accenture increased maternity-leave benefits for its full-time and part-time women employees in India to 22 weeks of paid leave. Prior to that, Vodafone India announced a new maternity policy, offering 16 weeks of paid maternity leave and 6 hours per day for 6 months post return from maternity for child care. A global analysis commissioned by Vodafone from KPMG indicates that businesses could potentially save up to an estimated $19 billion annually through the provision of 16-weeks of fully paid maternity leave.Shachi Irde, executive director, Catalyst India Women's Research Center, however, said: "While providing renewed maternity benefits is a commendable step towards retaining women employees, reintegrating them back to the workforce is fundamental. It is crucial to ensure that performance management systems are fair and do not penalize women for maternity breaks."