ICICI Bank now lets women work from home for up to one year

India-based ICICI Bank has launched two key initiatives to "help women employees overcome challenges that many of them face at certain life stages."

The first initiative, iWork@home, will enable women employees from many core functions to work from home for a long period of time, up to a year initially, and extendable further if required.

These employees will be able to access their operating systems securely, using a technology platform developed in-house in partnership with students from IIT Delhi, which lets the arrangement scale across several functions.

Apart from a three-level security protocol ensures that only the concerned employee is able to access the system, the iWork@home initiative has facial recognition technology to ensure that no one can impersonate the employee and get access to its applications.

Some of the tasks being carried out under this programme include: checking documents for disbursement of loans, image based verification of cheques for clearance, and first level scrutiny of documents for opening of accounts.

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The second initiative by ICICI Bank is for women managers with children upto three years of age.

As part of their managerial responsibilities around travelling outside city limits, the bank will provide them with the cost of travel and stay of the child and a caregiver, such as a family member.

Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO of ICICI Bank said: "Although women form 48% of the population in our country, their representation in the workforce is much lower than men.

"To ensure that the working women do not leave the workforce, there is a strong need for a robust support system, both at home and at work."

Image: Copyright World Economic Forum (http://www.weforum.org) / Eric Miller (emiller@iafrica.com)