Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi office is launching a day-care facility for the children of its working mothers in a bid to support and facilitate work-life balance.
Amarchand Delhi managing partner Shardul Shroff will inaugurate the newly built 500 sq feet crèche on the ground floor of its Okhla-area office on 19 December.
The firm stated that it has dedicated the center as a small token of appreciation to the women lawyers and staff of its office.
The Amarchand partner in charge of this project Akila Agrawal told Legally India: “It is for first time in the history of Indian law firms that a day care center for women lawyers would be launched.”
She added: “Firm bears all the costs of running the facility both the infrastructure cost as well as running costs. We have partnered with Your Kids ‘R’ Our Kids, the agency which set-up such facilities for IBM and Accenture.”
She said that the facility will function from 9:30 am to 7:30 pm every working day.
It has a capacity to provide for 15 children between the age group of six months to eight years, with one qualified nurse for infants below the age of one year and two teachers for the rest.
“For toddlers, we will have teachers who will group them into ages and keep them engaged throughout the day, for school going kids they will provide home work help, puppet shows and theatre workshops,” she noted.
Amarchand associate Natashaa Shroff added: “Basically the culture of our firm has been to encourage women lawyers and facilitate them in their working environment in the office, considering that most of us spend our day here.
“I always felt that if you’re not sure of how your home life is then you can’t concentrate on your work life. At the moment we have a lot of young mothers and mothers-to-be. The project was always in the pipeline, but now was an opportune moment to do, considering that we have a sufficient number to make it workable.”
The Delhi High Court also operates a day-care facility for advocates since last year.
Photo by Manish Bansal
Comments
It would be good if people come up with practical ideas as to how working mothers can take care of their work as well as their kids.
Am surprised the partners and associates are not objecting to this unfair generosity to a small section of the workforce! What next, free gaming consoles for those who are bored of playing brick breaker on their blackberries?
P.S. Wat a stupid comment at 6!!
[I don't quite get this comment - are you being ironic or are you just trolling? -Ed]
trolling is the word, man!
I think this will see the fathers brining their children too :-)
It will be far more challenging to implement this in AMSS Mumbai given space constraints and significantly more commuting times but lets hope there's some good news for working women at the AMSS's Mumbai office too...
There are both men and women travelling from Gurgaon to Noida to South Delhi and even connaught place just to work with the top law firms, which is a huge distance. Asides the distance, traffic, longish work hours in these firms make it even more necessary for doing something about any one of these factors...traffic is not something a law firm has control over, long work hours and perhaps distance is something a law firm could think about looking at without of course compromising on their business plans and position.
Market information suggests that Amarchand as compared to some of the other top law firms has all weekends off (a good move), does not require its lawyers to work till midnight or longer merely to be there or merely to satisfy artificial deadlines and in fact lawyers are encouraged to leave by seven, eight or nine (again a good move)...and of course with the new move on helping women...shows that Amarchand is a thinking law firm...which defintely aims to and is at the top but without compromising on the quality of life for its lawyers (be they men or women)...i.e. 'lawyers are human too' is the image Amarchand seems to project. A good work life balance goes to help improve work productivity. One of the other factors that would help improve work life balance is the physical distance one has to travel to work. The lesser the time spent the more one can give of oneself both to work and home.
So this really brings us back to another factor Amarchand and perhaps other law firms could consider, which is the distance factor. In the NCR, Delhi of course continues to remain the hub of activity, with Gurgaon fast increasing as a contender. Of course this is not to say that there may not be people living in other parts of Delhi who dont face the distance problem. However, compared to other parts of NCR, Gurgaon is a value proposition. More and more people are moving to live in Gurgaon from the perspective of the quality of apartments that are available there asides the fact that it is perhaps easier to find a place in a developing area like Gurgaon as opposed to Delhi, which is already very congested. Further, many people like living in Gurgaon also because of the fact that there are very well developed malls each a stones throw away. Organisations like PWC, E&Y, GE, Coca Cola and DLF amongst others already have an office or branch office in Gurgaon for whatever reason. Clearly Gurgaon is the space to watch out for in terms of growth in business as well. In other words, there is also a vast amount of intellectual talent and business that can be harnessed from Gurgaon. Intellectual talent because a vast part of the new generation is moving to Gurgaon and Business growth because a lot of organisations have moved there or are there.
There are several capable youngsters literally languishing because of the huge distance they have to travel from Gurgaon to other parts of the NCR. For personal reasons i.e. they may have family there, because of which they are unable to shift to live in Delhi, and are forced to travel upto four hours a day merely because they need to work..and for them compromising on the reputation of the firm may not be a choice they want to exercise. Yes. one of the top four law firms is based in Gurgaon, and is a good place to work in too. But there should be more options available to a corporate lawyer in Gurgaon. i.e. more and more reputed law firms, and corporates should consider setting up a branch office atleast in Gurgaon.
Why such a huge write-up on this? Well. Inspired by Amarchand's humane way.....and the fact that Legally India has provided such a wonderful forum to express one's views (which one would want to but not otherwise be able to for want of anonymity)...has given the opportunity to express a legitimate problem that is being faced by many...and it is hoped that someone out there (maybe Amarchand since it has such a big heart) notices and does something, if possible.
In any event...thank you Legally India...thank you Amarchand.
thank you.
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