Women's Day 2024 | Former SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya: Don't wait for female role models

Arundhati Bhattacharya, 67, is chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India.

When Arundhati Bhattacharya became the first woman chairman of the State Bank of India in 2013, there were suggestions to rechristen the position as chairperson. That didn't happen over her four-year term as SBI chairman. But many other things changed. Case in point: she introduced sabbatical leave policy for SBI's female employees, to keep trained resources from leaving the bank when they needed some time for life events.

Bhattacharya became Salesforce India chairperson and CEO in 2020, and continues to champion the cause of supporting more women to remain in the workforce - and climb up the corporate ladder. Bhattacharya spoke with Moneycontrol ahead of International Women's Day (March 8). Edited excerpts from the Zoom interview:

Since your book, Indomitable, came out, one has so many questions one wants to ask.

Let me tell you, the book disappointed a lot of bankers, because they were expecting a lot of dirt (on the BFSI industry and people).

Is there any dirt you'd like to share now? Especially now that the RBI is cracking down on firms like Paytm?

I'm not into doing that stuff; not for another 20 years at least. Maybe 20 years later, if I'm still around (I'll share dirt on what went on in banking all those years ago).

Of course. But did you have any trouble working with RBI when you were in the banking sector?

No, it's not that. I think what I always told the RBI was that I'd like to have a regulatory roadmap. The actions that they take can seem very jerky, (they can ask you to) comply within a very few days. Now it's really difficult to do that in a large organization, a legacy organization. Suddenly you want some data, I can't switch it on. It doesn't happen because maybe that data was never captured, or it was (the query is from) before a particular point of time. So, you need to give us a roadmap that enables us to prepare for it. If you don't give that roadmap, and you can see that increasingly, it will become tougher if we want this today and we want it to be done faster. But if I have something in my mind as to how things are going, then I can evolve my systems accordingly.

Of course, it is also true that things are evolving very fast, and they want to be ahead of the curve rather than behind the curve. So it is a challenge for both. But still having said that, it would be nice to have a roadmap so that we know which way we are evolving and to be able to be give adequate time so that we can come up with the right responses.

There's an interesting question on Google, if you would like to respond: Why is Arundhati Bhattacharya famous?

(Laughing) I don't even know the answer to that, frankly speaking. But if you ask me, probably because I made it as chairman of the (SBI) bank. And that bank is a very old bank - we started in 1806 with the Bank of Calcutta. SBI evolved over a period of time. We evolved, and that's why we're still around. If we hadn't, we (SBI) would have disappeared like the dinosaurs. But we evolved.

There was no woman Chairman before (me). So when you do something that nobody else has done before, you're the first one, you get a certain amount of recognition.

And then the other thing is that those were very tough times for bankers; I still managed to do a number of things which had not been done earlier. So whether it be the digital initiatives in the bank, whether it be creating the entire risk framework, evolving the risk framework, bringing up a person at the mid-level, and the whole-time director level to be responsible for risk and compliance - the voice of risk earlier was very small (earlier).

Then, I was the face of the banking system during demonetization (2016) - at such short notice, your economy which runs 12 percent on cash, and this is the formal economy - I'm not even talking about the informal one - so 12 percent in cash, out of which 86 percent of the value (represented by Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in circulation) just disappears in four hours' time. And all your ATMs are out of service, and you have to go back to your branches and ensure that a population that is very apprehensive... you reassure them and you deliver the services that are required to be delivered, and to be the face of that.

In GST, even seven days before the GST (Goods and Services Tax was implemented in July 2017), we were receiving clarifications about how things would be done. And these were big changes in the system...

I think those very many big events that happened during that period, probably that's why people knew me.

First with banking and now with technology, you've now led in two fields which are not necessarily known for being inclusive of women or for having women in leadership positions. How do you think about bringing more women into the banking system and into the technology system and then promoting them up the corporate ladder?

Comparatively, actually, there are more women in banking and technology than in any other (fields). If you look at manufacturing, how many women will you find? If you look at things like mining, how many women will you find? In white collar jobs in areas such as banking, there are many more women.

Now, how do we go about enhancing their presence? I think there are two or three things that we need to talk about:

One, of course, is the fact that while there are a lot of women at entry level, both in finance and in IT, the pipeline is very leaky. If you go higher up the ladder, you will start to see that the percentage of women really (drops).

If I look in the bank - and I know about the bank because there was little to no lateral recruitment in the bank - we saw that at the beginning stage, it was around 33 percent (women). And (it drops off at) the senior management level and became focused (narrow at the top). Where did they all go? This leaky pipeline is also present in the IT space, but in the IT space we keep taking people laterally, so it's very difficult to determine who's going out and who's coming in. But even here, the percentage at the top is much less than the percentage below.

Now, you have to be very deliberate if you want to ensure that this leaky pipeline doesn't leak so much. And being deliberate means you need to be empathetic to the times of life when a woman probably needs flexitime, because they have multiple roles to play. It's not that they won't get the work done. It's not that the quality of the work will suffer, but their sheer physical presence is needed in some places. So if we give women the ability to do hybrid as well as flexitime work, it will be a win-win for everybody.

Why is it a win-win for everybody? It will be a win-win because first and foremost, you will not lose a trained resource. Hybrid doesn't mean that they remain hybrid for life. Maybe for two years, maybe for one year, they may need to work from home. We should allow flexitime - what it does is it enables the woman to remain part of the workforce. She doesn't fall behind. She doesn't get outdated. Her output remains almost the same. And the company actually then extends the working period that it has by ensuring that this woman keeps working even after their closing. The customer gets delivery faster, so it is always a good idea to have this for women to fall back upon. Yes, it will mean a little more work for the other team members, but it is worth it in order to stop the leakage.

The other thing that I think (we) can (do to) prevent leakage is that you need to assess women for what they are. By that I mean, I used to think that I'm a very very unbiased person. Now when I went into Salesforce, Salesforce has some do's that have to be done. One of the do's is if you're going to interview a person, you have to go through "unconscious bias" training. Like when I'm talking to you, I have to go through a media training. It doesn't matter that I have been talking to media since the last 20 years. Not enough. I still need to be certified. Similarly, for interviews, I have to do unconscious bias training. And I was really surprised to find that I also seem to have biases, because when the question is asked: What are the questions that you're asking a woman candidate but not a male candidate, I found that it is true that I spent more time understanding the family situation of a woman candidate.

So now I have deliberately understood what those unconscious biases are, and I have tried to correct for them - not by not asking the woman about the family situation but also by asking the male candidate about his families and trying to balance. That is how can I ensure that I'm not judging the woman by only thinking about things that may become a detriment to her. Instead, (by asking) how can I make sure that we have the right kind of setup for this woman to flourish and to be able to deliver, to ensure that you are you are rewarding people for their suitability and their talent, and you will not handicap on them. It is very important for women to be given the right opportunities.

And the last thing, I would say, is for companies to actually train women to be a little more forthcoming. Again, I blame this on the fact that for millennia, women have been taught to talk less. It's given us great listening skills. That's a strength for us. But we don't have those speaking skills and communication skills. We've been taught to be modest. If we talk about what we do, it's not considered to be okay. The fact of the matter is, if you also put five women and five men in a room, when you give them an opportunity for which everybody is about 30 percent ready and ask for volunteers, all five males will put up their hands and only two women will put up their hands. I've seen it actually in the bank. So women sometimes need encouragement, and sponsorship and mentorship to come forward. This is also something that companies need to take care of - they need to remember that there are a number of women who just feel that "Oh my god, I'm not completely ready for this. Should I do it? Should I not? Should I take this risk? Should I push myself out of the comfort zone?" And then they sort of say: why risk it? That doesn't work.

For five or six months. I hesitated whether I should get into Salesforce. I really hesitated. So many people told me: Are you crazy? You retire as a chairman of a bank that was a Fortune 500 company, you had 270,000 people (working under you), you're talking about taking up a role that doesn't even exist, but which you have to carve out for yourself? I'd be totally out of my comfort zone, not understand this industry, and I can't write your line of code, (I thought) will I really be able to lead these people? In the bank, I walked into a situation where that position had been created by law by an act of Parliament. I didn't have to fight for it. Here, when you're trying to carve out a space for yourself, you're taking little bits and pieces from others. And it doesn't come easy. Everybody's territorial. Did I really want to do that?

But ultimately, I decided I'm too comfortable here not doing anything really challenging. Yeah, it will be difficult at times, and I'll feel like "what a fool I am" and want to throw up my hands. But in the meanwhile, maybe I'll learn a thing or two - and believe me these youngsters they teach me something every day.

We need to encourage them (women) to take up these challenges; (tell them) it can be done. Let's try to do it.

What tips would you give to women who are in the workforce right now, and don't put their hand up often enough? 

My one-line tip is: find teams and delegate. Get people to buy into your vision. See whether they're on the right path, if not quickly correct that. Monitor them. But let them be let them perform. If you are going to go into all the nitty gritty and if you want total control, whether it be on the menu at home, or whether it be how you deliver the work within a particular period of time, you will not have enough time to cover everything, and you will be unnecessarily stressing yourself, and even within all of this, still have to find that time to maybe go out with your girlfriends and just relax. Find a space where you can just talk without having to be working or it being something very important. Do it physically. Not just on Zoom. Yes, many times you need to do that too. But it's nice to be physically out and go just do a few silly things every once in a while. Buy a dress which you'll never wear. Because it's important for us to do a few of these (silly) things. Otherwise, you know, this life is like a one big race that you're running all the time.

What's your favourite activity to do with your girlfriends?

Oh, my favourite activity with girlfriends is to go and have a cup of coffee and just chat. And believe me, the chat is so varied and so different. Sometimes it's nothing to do with work at all. It's fun, actually. As I said, I have a few of those dresses I can't possibly think of wearing, but I bought them all the same.

Do you have any women role models or any books that you would like to recommend to women in the workforce?

I don't believe that you need to read up on women leaders. There are lots of very good corporate leaders, and we should read up on how they conducted things and get tips from them.

Actually speaking, I believe that you can get tips from anybody and everybody. It doesn't matter who it is. If that person is excellent in their job - and you will know whether they're excellent or not - you can pick up tips from them. Even a lift man can give you a tip. If you see a lift is absolutely spick and span, you know the person is attending to every single person with a smile and ensuring that they are taken up to the right floor.

But the idea is to pick up tips from people who have excelled; doesn't matter if it's a woman or a man or anybody else. And it doesn't matter whether you learn from your juniors or seniors or peers, learning is a lifelong activity. These youngsters (at Salesforce) teach me all the time... Just now I was thinking about an event I'm supposed to attend, and I was checking around with my friends' (young colleagues) group about what's the "in colour" palette. Just about 10 minutes before this call, I got the colour palette (on my phone)... They are all earth tones.