In this white paper, we present a compelling case for dark stores, warehousing, and flexi-staffing companies to prioritize hiring more women in blue-collar roles, arguing that it leads to measurable business benefits. These benefits include enhanced productivity and work culture, translating to significant cost savings and improvement in profit margin. While the benefits of gender diversity in white-collar roles in advanced economies have been well-documented, this white paper focuses specifically on blue-collar roles in a developing economy.
FSG’s Growing Livelihood Opportunities for Women (GLOW) program analyzed data on more than 10,000 workers from two large warehousing companies, around 109,000 orders in two dark stores, and approximately 8,000 employees (~86% male and ~14% women) across 26 Indian states on a mid-sized flexi-staffing company’s payroll. Based on this analysis, we have quantified the business impact of having more women in companies’ entry-level workforce.
Companies can leverage the insights presented in this white paper to define and test their own hypothesis on the potential benefits of hiring women.
Top Takeaways
- For the data set analyzed for dark stores, we found that despite being paid the same, women’s higher productivity, attendance, and order quality can result in an 11.83 % reduction in per-worker cost, compared to men, for every woman added in a dark store.
- Our analysis of the warehouse dataset showed that despite being paid the same, women’s superior performance in a number of parameters including retention, order quality, and ageing of parcels can result in a 3.59% reduction in per-worker cost, compared to men, for every woman added in a warehouse.
- Moreover, our analysis of the flexi-staffing dataset showed that hiring a woman can raise the flexi-staffing company’s gross margin per person on payroll by 10.3%, compared to men, as women’s lower attrition and longer tenures increase placement and payroll management revenues.
