High attrition rate of women employees at the peak of their career in a situation of acute shortage of talent is really a matter of concern for companies. CEOs no longer can treat women as `men in skirts' and a common HR policy will not help fix the problem. Issues related to women need to be addressed separately. Transformation of work culture seems to be a prerequisite to retain women employees and achieve success on the work-life front. This article discusses the difficulties that women employees face in their professional life and various possible HR initiatives to tackle those problems. It further focuses on why retaining women employees is so challenging and how it benefits the companies.

No longer can a common HR policy prove effective as more and more women are joining the corporate bandwagon. There are some policies related to women working in the company by government but in today's competitive and highly stressed business environment, that is not enough. The shortage of talent, increasing number of woman MBA and engineering graduates with the emergence of economically strong middle class families are all influencing the way a company is structuring the workplace and developing its human resource policies. High attrition rate of women employees at the peak of their career has thrown fresh challenges to companies. Now companies are recognizing the need to nurture women talent to bridge the demand-supply gap. They are coming out with innovative HR policies to attract and retain the women employees. Many companies have been successful on this front but there still are many issues which need to be addressed.

The issues are not as simple as it seems. In fact, it is deep-rooted. Out of total women population, not even half gets into workplace. It is a longway to make the ratio 1:1 between men and women employees. The basic issue like various sops (reservation in education institution, scholarships, more number of women colleges etc.,) for women education, opportunities for work, scope for higher education etc., needs to be looked into at a wider perspective by the government. Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model can work well in this area. Companies need to encourage women to join the corporate sectors and may have some positions reserved for women exclusively. To have better representation in the government, the Women's Bill is already pending in the parliament.

There are various reasons why women leave. If the job includes a lot of traveling, generally women do not like and the family also puts lot of restrictions on them. The concept of nuclear family has further aggravated the situation. Because of job-related reason, many people leave their home town and settle elsewhere. Working women having kids find it difficult to take care of their kids and are forced to enroll them in crèche.

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