Just Kidding

Jayashree loves to play with her little kid when she gets back home after a tiring day. The smile on little ones face makes her forget all her worries and tensions. She quickly starts to finish all her regular chores for the evening and sits down to feed the baby his dinner. "Tomorrow I must close the financial report of the month and submit the final numbers to the boss. I have to be back home on time to take chhotu for his vaccination as well. Hope the quarterly update meeting gets over on time and am able to send the summary to the headquarters before that", she thinks. Her husband enters and finds her smiling on her own and asks, "hey, who are you smiling at?" She suddenly gets back from her thoughts and says,"just wondering about the regular jobs for tomorrow and also that its feels great to be balancing it all. Its so satisfying. Never thought I would be able to sail through it all after the baby."

Jayashree is our GM compliance working with finance function where the diversity ratio is compratively lower than other functions. I happen to interview her one day for our newsletter and here are the excerpts:
How does it feel to be back after maternity leave?
Jayashree (JS): Feels rather uncomfortable in the beginning, since your thoughts are on the baby – how is he coping, is he comfortable and so on. With time, you learn to switch off home when you are in office and switch off office when you are home.

What was the response of your colleagues & Supervisors when you returned?

JS: Generally everyone was interested in knowing whether it was a boy or a girl, what had we named him, what arrangements I had at home for looking after the baby, how was I coping with work & whether my baby was keeping me awake through the night and so on….

What thoughts come to your mind when you decided to go the family way?
JS : Lots of thoughts crossed my mind – to name just a few:
· the infrastructure that one would need at home to look after the baby – this is vital
· Whether the manager would be willing to allow you to adjust the work timings a bit or allow you to work from home, if this is possible for the role that one has
· How to manage career and home?

What kind of support did you get from PepsiCo during this period?
JS: All infrastructure required to work from home – data card, courier docs to my place, send the rider to pick them up etc.

Do you have any suggestions for PepsiCo to deal better with gender diversity / to make this place more female employee friendly?
JS: It would really really help if we can have a crèche at our office to keep babies upto at least 2 years of age. The cost can be picked up by the employees who use it.

Jayashree's phone rang which she picked up quickly and said,"baby ko kela dena mash kar key, thoda dudh bhi daalna usmein" (give him mashed banana and put some milk as well). She smiled at me and said,"time for lunch for baby and for me too. Catch you later. Bye."

Career opportunities for Women at PepsiCo