When workplace facilities work in practice
Hiring is only half the challenge. Retention continues to be a concern. When a woman worker leaves the shopfloor, she takes with her the training, experience, and skills she has gained on the job. This shows up in rehiring costs and re-skilling efforts that firms undertake on a regular basis to balance their lines. A common belief held is that women’s departure after marriage or motherhood is inevitable and out of the firm’s control, so there is little point investing in retaining them. However, our fieldwork found that the experience women have on the shopfloor plays a critical role in the decision to leave or stay, well before these life milestones.
Most firms assess facilities through a statutory lens, counting washrooms or noting that a creche exists. Women judge the same facilities by whether they are accessible, functional and reliable during a shift. Workers at one component maker in Haryana told us that it took them five to seven minutes to reach a washroom, and that time away from the line could be penalised in high-pressure production environments. Others described receiving resized men's gloves or heavy boots that didn’t fit properly and caused pain over time.
Four questions could help firms bridge this gap. Is the facility present? Do women know about it? Can they access it in its current form? And, is it used in practice? Firms can use these questions to assess readiness before hiring women, rather than waiting until workers begin to leave.
Enabling re-entry and career growth
While workplace experience can help firms retain women workers, attrition can also stem from personal reasons. Firms rarely have information on this front, because formal exit interviews are uncommon in blue-collar work. However, workers that exit should still be considered as critical resources for the knowledge and experience they hold. Their re-entry onto the shopfloor needs to be approached from a practical lens.
Many women workers acquire technical skills and experience through on-the-job training rather than formal education pathways. However, these capabilities often remain undocumented in blue-collar work and remain invisible to prospective employers. This lack of visibility is a disadvantage that can be particularly pronounced for women, who are more likely to face fragmented work histories due to career breaks, limited access to formal skilling pathways, and fewer opportunities for recognised technical credentials. A portable record of their capabilities and skills can signal experience. Without such recognition, women risk being overlooked during recruitment, classified as freshers despite prior experience, or placed in roles below their capabilities.
Moreover, career progression also depends on whether the skills women acquire on the shop floor are visible, recognised and valued when they grow proficient to move up the value chain. Apart from infrastructure, opportunities for career progression also play a key role in shaping whether women stay or leave. Women also face barriers at multiple stages of the career ladder, including unclear pathways into leadership. Left unaddressed, these barriers can weaken retention and limit firms’ ability to build a strong pipeline of women for future supervisory and management roles. Adoption of an internal skill tracking system can enable firms to make more informed workforce deployment decisions for better line management and promotional pathways.