Joyya's business focuses on a holistic transformation of individuals and communities (read more HERE). A core part of our impact is through creating sustainable employment for those at-risk or marginalized in our community, who struggle to get employment elsewhere. Given there are limited job's, we want to ensure we are thoughtful in deciding WHO gets a job.
A Few Key Principles
1) Differentiating between "Impact Jobs" and regular jobs
Given the communities we work in, there are certain jobs we cannot always fill locally. We want to recruit the best possible IT, HR, Finance, Marketing and Operations talent and find people who share our vision and culture. While we do search in our local communities, we also know we need to expand the pool. For these jobs where experience and talent are a must, we look for the best available candidate, regardless of where they live.
However, for jobs where we know it is easier to develop and train people, we want to hire locally. These "Impact Jobs" are jobs we think we can use to provide employment for someone who would not get employment elsewhere. These range from entry-level jobs like cleaning, to jobs that require modest training (e.g. sewing, printing, cutting, packing). Where possible, we also try to recruit supervisory or clerical jobs from these communities.
2) Impact Jobs must be for those living in a Target Community
Poverty, addiction and exploitation are massive issues in almost every community in India. We want to consolidate our impact to make a generational change, and so we focus on a handful of communities. Currently Joyya focuses on 4 communities, and to the best of our ability, we try to maximize employment from these neighborhoods
3) Impact Jobs must balance need and aptitude
We want a job to be a real job and a not a hand-out. Therefore, we are often looking for those people who just need some training and structure to see a big improvement. We know skill development matters and we want to create good incentives to ensure people continue improving even after they start working for us.
However, we also know that sometimes the neediest among us will have limited ability to improve. Sometimes we know we need to give a job to someone just because they really need it, and they may not be the best at it, but they will be good enough, and it will mean the world for them.
Its a balancing act and we don't always get it right, but we think our approach is sound. We work with our social work and neighborhood engagement teams to understand which people need jobs and would benefit most from working with us. We use our training programs to identify skill level and potential. And after taking it all in, we make a hiring decision and hope we get it right.
So why does Joyya hire so many women?
Our goal is to create jobs for ALL people in need (men and women). We are thankful for the amazing men who are a part of our team at every level of the organization. We need them and we we need more people like them. However, there is no denying we employ a lot more women than men. This is the outcome of a few dynamics at play in our community.
1) Women tend to be more vulnerable
Gender discrimination is a reality in our communities. Keeping girls in school is a challenge, and most local companies prefer to hire men for most jobs. The simple fact is that it is hard for women in our community to get dignified stable employment. Most women either run small food shops and stores, or work as cooks and cleaners. While there are opportunities for educated women, the jobs for low-skill women is limited at best. Therefore, we find the need to be more prevalent among women in our community, and tend to hire more women as a result
2) Employing women has a larger developmental impact in at-risk communities
It might feel controversial to some, but study after study has shown that the societal benefits of employing women is massive, and is often the key to broader social improvement. Studies by multiple developmental and government agencies and private firms have shown that improving inclusion of women in the workforce has ripple effects on school enrollment, health, safety and overall income inequality. We've listed some useful studies from major aid agencies below. Even anecdotally, has experience has shown that income earned by women is more consistently reinvested into the household in the form of school fees, improved diets, home repair and retirement savings.
- IMF: Empowering Women is Smart Economics
- IFC: Investing in Women's Employment: Good for Business, Good for Development
- McKinsey & Co: How advancing women's equality can add $12 trillion to global growth