The ROI of Gender Diversity: Women Driving Business Success in Blue-Collar Roles

A white paper making the business case for dark stores, warehouses and flexi-staffing companies to hire more women in blue-collar roles. While the benefits of gender diversity in white-collar roles in advanced economies are well documented, this paper looks specifically at blue-collar roles in a developing economy.

FSG's Growing Livelihood Opportunities for Women (GLOW) programme analysed data on more than 10,000 workers from two large warehousing companies, around 109,000 orders across two dark stores, and approximately 8,000 employees (~86% male, ~14% women) across 26 Indian states on a mid-sized flexi-staffing company's payroll. That flexi-staffing data set covers associates across 70+ client companies, mostly in manufacturing, logistics and retail.

• In dark stores, women's higher productivity, attendance and order quality can cut per-worker cost by 11.83% compared with men, for every woman added — despite equal pay.
• In warehouses, women's stronger retention, order quality and parcel ageing can cut per-worker cost by 3.59% compared with men, for every woman added.
• In flexi-staffing, hiring a woman can raise gross margin per person on payroll by 10.3%, as lower attrition and longer tenures increase placement and payroll management revenues.
• Companies are recommended to collect and analyse gender-disaggregated data on key performance metrics, and to document and share the business benefits of a gender-diverse workforce.