BW MIW: Rashmi Urdhwareshe - The Challenges Of A Perfectionist

You have had a remarkable journey in a sector seen as male-dominated even today. What are some lessons that you learned in your career?
I am known to be a perfectionist. Apart from being a lady boss, being a perfectionist poses a higher degree of challenge. I learned several good management techniques very early in my roles to offset the inherent shortcomings. It greatly enabled me to build better and stronger teams. As a leader, my colleagues respected me to a great extent for my expertise, management techniques and above all, my way of leadership, which I aimed to be value-based. I became the first person to have risen from the ranks to take the topmost position as the Director of the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI). I had the greatest advantage of closely knowing every person and every brick of the institute. It made it easy to be accepted as a leader.

How did you drive diversity and inclusion at the ARAI and SAE India?
As the CEO of an R&D organisation, I deployed women empowerment policy at all levels. Women were enabled and encouraged to develop strong career plans, which are supported by suitable enablers for a better workplace. This helped in increasing the employment ratio of women substantially within five years.

I was President of SAE India from 2020 to 2022. During this tenure, I curated several proficiency development programs in niche technology areas for young professionals and leadership development programs for women engineers.

Please share an example of how you overcame a challenge at the workplace due to being a woman professional.
At the beginning of my career, I was part of a team consisting of young engineers. During my second-year annual appraisal, I was six months pregnant and my condition did not allow me to partake in strenuous lab and field tests. My immediate supervisor had put adverse remarks in the appraisal form, which I thought was insensitive. I took it up with the higher authority and finally, the reviewer was compelled to change his comments to a more fact-based conclusion. I was then given a more suitable work profile till I resumed my normal routine.

What is your advice for including more women in the workforce?
I would say not just gender but other factors such as people with physical or mental disabilities, ethnicities, and economic and social differences must be kept in mind for creating a more empowered workforce. Leaders must create a fair and just environment with equal wages and social security measures. Occupational health and safety are very important areas towards bringing women into the mainstream industrial growth. Skilling of women in the traditional, new and emerging areas is important too. Numbers show that a large number of women employees drop out at the age of 30-35 years on account of the inability to sustain work demands. Corporations must develop action plans to stop such collateral damage.