Khaitan & Co’s Mumbai office celebrated International Women’s Day today with ceremonial cake cuttings, festive decorations, readings and an internal women-only email list, also allowing all female staff to leave the office at 330pm today.
The human resources (HR) department initiative was started to “keep people happy”, value the “human side” of lawyering and to encourage bonding, explained Khaitan’s HR head.
“We cut cake, we distributed flowers to female colleagues, we gifted them some organic soaps and spa package for reflexology to them, we also opened an email ID specifically for all females […]@khaitanco.com where they can kind of blog and all ladies were pampered with ice creams and deserts.”
One of the firm’s senior partners Ravi Kulkarni also gave a short speech and an article from an “ancient Hindi newspaper” dating back to 1975 was read out about Khaitan & Co’s “revolutionary ideas to get women lawyers sign as solicitors”. (Click here to download the article)
The “internal message list only for women” was not accessible to men but the HR head said that he kept hearing that “something interesting” had been discussed and circulated.
All female staff were also told to leave the office early at 3:30pm to 4pm which most had taken up and were happy about, he noted, although he admitted that at least one female lawyer was still in the office by around 7pm today.
Photo by 200MoreMontrealStencils
Comments
I suggest the HR people should planning right away. And everyone will leave office at 2pm.
Please share!
Best regards
Kian
@ LegallyIndia: Shame on you for publishing such a news.
My concern is not with K & Co. having allowed their female staff to leave early, but the way they are going around and blowing their own trumpets by showing newspaper cuttings etc.
Unlike most other publications, we do not report half the things that law firms 'trumpet', as you put it.
I heard about this happening and took a call that it would be an interesting story to write about and I asked for the newspaper clipping. And clearly people are interested as the number of comments and hits on this story show. If it had been press-released or sent by a PR agency we probably would not have written about it at all.
At the end of the day this is clearly a fun and topical human interest story with some HR/management elements thrown in - if such stories do not appeal to you, please feel free not to read them.
Best wishes
Kian
Ps: Was your A & Ovary mispelling intentional? If so, very good joke for Women's Day! :-)
Firstly, the website named as 'Legally India' and not 'HR/ Management/ or for that matter Gossip India'. So a visitor obviously expects some meaningful legal news appearing on the website and not related to some trivial HR policies of a firm.
Secondly, the number of hits on a particular story does not in any manner reflect whether or not the readers have found that story worth reading. They might have just clicked on the link and soon realized that it was a crappy story. To support it, I would like to mention that most of the visitors (probably except Khaitan's employees) have criticized the story.
Thirdly, it's in your website's best interests if you do sensible and meaningful reporting and do not sound as mouthpiece of any firm.
Lastly, you claim that the above article was not press-released or sent by a PR agency and had it been so, you would not have written about it at all. If so being the case, you owe a duty towards your readers to explicitly make a mention somewhere about that in your article. Else, how is an average reader expected to know whether it was press-released or not.
- A Genuine Well-Wisher
I don't agree that all this is useless reporting. If nothing else, it can give inspiration to other law firms to do something special and make people feel good about the place where they spend more than 8-10 hrs every day!
Just a thought - do visit http://www.rollonfriday.com/ for some interesting read on law firms in UK and then comment on whether Legally India is doing a good job!
Kian, dont get bogged down by criticism (constructive criticism is welcome of course!!). Keep up the FAB work!!!
@24 - thanks for your kind wishes, always nice to hear!
@20 Thank you for your constructive feedback too. Please allow me to explain.
1. We intend to write more about HR and legal management because it is an important part of the corporate legal 'industry' in India. And I think HR can be very interesting and underrated, though admittedly not everyone's cup of tea.
2. Disclosing every time whether something was press released or not will quickly get very tedious and should not be necessary. All that should matter is that we exercise our good-faith independent judgment on whether something will be interesting or important to readers or not, which is why we reject a lot of inane or fluffy press releases. Savvy readers who care should be able to discern this. Sometimes we may not be able to please everyone in our selection but we hope that most of the time we manage ok and provide a nice mix of stories.
3. Yes, we and everyone else likes the serious deal and legal news but Legally India should also be a fun place and not all work. Therefore we sometimes publish more light-hearted stories such as this one. We will not turn into a full-on gossip website but occasionally we hope some of our articles will also inspire water cooler talk. With this article I know for a fact that it has done so.
It's all about balance and like any newspaper or website, it is the reader's choice which pages/sections to read (or whether to pick up the publication at all). And if you really think other websites provide a better and more credible mix of news and original content, by all means check them out and compare.
Thanks again for your feedback both good and bad - it is nice to see that readers care enough about LI to bother writing in - we could not wish for more.
Warm regards
Kian
I think good HR is a very relevant issue for discussion today. I've seen the way at least 4 of the 'top' law firms in India function, and the work-culture absolutely pales in comparison to foreign firms which treat you so much better! No wonder foreign firms are so sought after.
Good job Khaitan HR, and hope the HRs at the AMSSs and Luthras of this country are up to some other such stuff!