Cisco Connected Women Initiate Addresses Need for Employee Longevity
Posted by admin on July 10, 2011 under Uncategorized | 
Be the First to Comment
Cisco Connected Women Initiate Addresses Need for Employee Longevity
A problem facing almost all technology-based companies is that they do not
make room for senior employees. As employees age, they get systematically
removed to make space for younger graduate employees. The tech industry has
specifically been difficult for women who find they have increasingly fewer
opportunities in the sector as they age.
Cisco has announced an initiative designed to help make more room for women
in the tech industry. The program is called Cisco Connected Women, or CCW, and
it is focused on helping women living in the United Arab Emirates.
The multi-faceted initiative involves giving more than 50 Cisco female
employees access to advisement programs, mentors, and strategies to help keep
their work and family lives balanced. The overall goal of Cisco Connected Women
is to draw more women into the tech sector and to build up a system which helps
them remain in the industry so they may develop high-level careers.
If the goals of Cisco Connected Women seem familiar, it is because the
initiative is a modernized version of their former program called Cisco Women
Action Network. The global initiative has been in place for the past decade and
has helped over 4,000 females working for Cisco. Aside from the various
mentoring programs and support, the Cisco Women Action Network organized events
like “bring your kids to work day.”
This initiative comes at a time when Cisco is working hard to forward its
public image and give investors confidence. Right now, investors should feel
confident in Cisco, especially with the company now getting put on
recommendation lists from stock research groups like TickerSpy.
Even though the Cisco Connected Women initiative doesn’t address the issue
outright, it does bring forth an important subject of employee longevity in the
tech industry. At an investor conference in late May, Inder Singh said of Cisco:
“It is a company that has had a history of not just selling products and
boxes, but really selling end-to-end solutions to customers and selling them
with an architectural differentiation.”
In order for Cisco (or any other tech company) to deliver end-to-end
solutions for clients, they will need to have long-term employees who have seen
the growth of technology and can adapt to evolving demands. Instead, most tech
companies are just hiring many young graduates in order to give their company
fresh ideas – ideas which may not correspond to the fluid growth of previous
technology. This problem has been addressed by Inder Singh in many of his
lectures.
There have been several negative blog comments about the Cisco Connected
Women initiative, saying that it is just a PR campaign. One anonymous commenter
at Albawaba.com said, “These initiatives are just a smoke screen or feel-good
stories for John Chambers who likes to think he is progressive.”
Even if Cisco is reaping the PR benefits of having an initiative for women,
it doesn’t change the fact that the company is one of the few which is
addressing the need for more women in the tech industry and a long-term solution
for keeping them there.
Citation:
Geoff Seiler, "Cisco Roadshows Highlight Company’s Strategy" on the world
wide web:
http://www.tickerspy.com/newswire/?p=2333
1unus.com is a