An All-Women's Team at Misty Waters by Gera Developments

Rohit Gera, Managing Director, Gera Developments What's the ideology that drives this initiative? The idea behind creating an all-women’s Gera Developments team of this sort stemmed from a desire to have a greater representation of women in the c

BY Realty Plus
Published - Monday, 08 Mar, 2021

An All-Women's Team at Misty Waters by Gera Developments

Rohit Gera, Managing Director, Gera Developments What's the ideology that drives this initiative? The idea behind creating an all-women’s Gera Developments team of this sort stemmed from a desire to have a greater representation of women in the construction sector on the project sites. The decision to have a full-fledged woman only team came from the fact that in the case of mixed teams we faced the risk that the mindset of the contractors and workers would not allow them to take instructions from women engineers. We therefore decided that the only way to cross this hurdle was to have a team of women only and the contractors at the time of selection were introduced to the project head with a clear understanding that they were to report into the lady in the position of project head. Also, historically women have had civil engineering roles that were mostly in the office and therefore getting women site engineers was a problem that needed to be addressed. I wanted to create equal employment opportunities for women especially in the space of civil engineering. With this thought process and the philosophy to scale up the real estate sector, a team of women civil engineers were recruited for Misty Waters, the upcoming project of Gera Developments. The objective was to develop an all-women’s project team to ensure that they are not only respected for their job and given a platform to perform on merit while not having to deal with gender biases at work. How many women are a part of this team? It’s a seven women member’s team and some of them such as Rachana Pandit, Priya Kohad, Mugdha Rasal and Divya Jain are young girls of 24-25 years of age and just starting their careers in the field of civil engineering. They are excited to work on field and fulfil their dreams rather than have desk jobs. This is the first time such an initiative has been taken in the real estate sector by a developer in Pune. Hopefully more developers will come forward and take such progressive steps to balance the male dominant Civil Engineering profile and encourage gender diversity. The idea is to encourage and drive women to pursue their dream in this sector as active engineers on field and not just desk jobs which do not allow them to use their knowledge and skills & explore their potential to the best of their abilities. Where/ location is this team being recruited at and for what?

Across profiles from Store/ Safety/ Junior engineers/ Senior Engineers & Project Leads
Hired from similar backgrounds with experience on/ off field
Project is Misty Waters at Keshavnagar, Pune being developed by Gera Developments, one of the reputed developers in Pune with over 47 years of legacy in the real estate sector known for high quality, premium, landmark residential and commercial projects in Pune & Goa. They haven pioneers in the Pune realty sector and are known for innovation, trust and customer centricity.

What kind of jobs these women will be performing? Contractor management, Labour management, Project planning, Store keeping, Safety, Quality, Engineering, Project Lead What is the future vision that the founders have with respect to taking up an initiative like this? At Gera Developments, there is highest emphasis on cross-industry recruitment that brings in diversity and best practices from across industries. The first layer of diversity straddles gender diversity. The thought behind this was the outcome of the company’s vision of striving to raise the standards of real estate in the country which when examined through the lens of the gender skew did not paint a very favourable picture. The status quo reflected that women civil engineering graduates were confined to desk positions or remained just being armed with a degree without ever being able to utilize their skills. Construction being a predominantly male dominated industry, there was further bias in men on site taking instructions from a woman. The outcome of this landmark move through the lens of gender diversity in a challenging sector like real estate achieved a whole lot more than just the absolute numbers and the women engineers working on site but challenging as it may seem gradually built into a culture of open communication, trust, and inclusiveness resulting in building a better, more competitive organization creating equal employment opportunities for both men and women alike. What is business advantage of this initiative? What is working for the organization is that this also makes bottom-line business sense. From a result perspective, it was observed that at Gera’s Misty Waters, this gender-diverse collaborative team performed better than a single-gender team. In doing a qualitative audit, one understood that the viewpoints were different, the resultant ideas and insights enabled better problem solving. The impetus on the organization being firmly committed to diversity at the workplace and at the construction site became a firm and transparent move to challenge an age old industry norm. Most importantly in feedback sought from the women, they unequivocally stated that the organization is making concerted efforts to taking the practicality of knowledge and education in civil engineering to the site. The sense of value and purpose was felt in the most compelling manner to demonstrating not just adopting a welcoming stance but a tolerant work environment for all women employees. Every aspect of the working conditions and the environment prevalent at site was looked at which included the company’s efforts to managing the security and safety levels at site where the women worked.