HCL shares employee stories for its largest IWD event to date

 July 11, 2019

Giving women a platform to voice their experiences is often an important step in achieving gender equality.

For next-generation global technology company HCL, women empowerment is an important part of its diversity agenda, which is why for International Women's Day HCL empowered both its female and male employees to share their personal stories. 

These stories were shared in email communications to the entire company throughout the month of IWD, published in HCL’s internal Discover News platform and on social media platforms, and featured on HCL’s IWD19 microsite available to both external and internal visitors and accessible from the IWD website.

HCL's initiative has certainly had an impact beyond IWD as stories are still being shared and HCL's women still celebrated.

Organizing HCL's largest IWD event to date

HCL saw IWD as an ideal time to strengthen its commitment to women empowerment and celebrate the contribution of women in the organization. A volunteer group of senior marketing professionals collaborated with HR leadership to form a planning team made up of both men and women.

Involving all genders in IWD celebrations was vitally important to HCL to make the event a success. Together, these employees worked together to organize HCL's largest IWD event to date.

Further exciting activities for IWD

As well as sharing employee stories, HCL also hosted a Global Tweet Chat with senior leaders titled 'Balance for Better'. HCL also launched an inaugural internal IWD Photo Competition.

HCL's IWD events from around the world were also successful from an employee engagement perspective. Their IWD events included networking, posting engaging selfie messages on social media, music from female performers, quizzes, games, raffles, flash mob performances, dance workshops, group walks, dressing in shades of purple, competitions, charity donation efforts, enjoying IWD cakes with colleagues, notes of appreciation, special recognitions, gifts including roses for women, enjoyable high tea and lunches shared with employees.

Informative learning events included insightful panel discussions on how to forge a #BalanceForBetter and adressed topcis including Workplace Inclusivity, Real-world Perspectives, Being a Woman in the Technology industry, and Driving Transformation. Inspirational speakers and engaging sessions also addressed the 'Art of Creating Wealth' encouraging strong financial awareness.

Displaying IWD events real-time on a global map

A global map was developed for HCL’s IWD19 microsite to display IWD events real-time.

As events wrapped up, photos were submitted to the creative team, reviewed, and posted to the map. 

HCL ran their own IWD cake competition

One of the highlights of HCL's activity was their IWD Cake Competition that saw many impressive entries and enjoyable moments.

Adopting #BalanceforBetter in wider company events

HCL's IWD event has made a positive impact on HCL's wider Diversity and Inclusion strategy. The planning team decided to adopt the #BalanceforBetter campaign theme as HCL's own theme for all Diversity and Inclusion programs for the year. The team personally interpreted the campaign theme through a design of two triangles balancing on each other point to point to illustrate the beauty and power of balance. 

HCL provides an excellent example of how IWD can engage an entire company at such macro and micro levels.