1. How does your leadership style contribute to fostering a supportive environment for women at Giordano Pakistan?
It was a challenge to begin with, having women employees in management roles for a company selling primarily male fashion and with an all-male head office staff. It took some time to make our initial breakthrough and for the team to get used to the idea. It was out of both our comfort zones and it took a genuine and sincere effort for both sides to develop acceptance and trust while removing unconscious bias for which I am grateful to our team.
Having been through that experience, it is easier now to create the culture based on merit at the management and the operational level where employees, men or women are hired and appraised based on their ability and performance while being able to recognize their unique set challenges and having an open line of communication to resolve issues. We have since increased our representation of women at both the outlet and at the management level.
2. Can you discuss specific initiatives undertaken by Giordano Pakistan to support and empower its female employees?
As I mentioned above that the first step to support or empower is to recognize and understand the unique set of challenges that every employee can face and helping them manage them. In our case we saw a few key areas where we could help support our female employees:
First part was representation of women in the company and here I would like to point out that the idea was not to have this just for forced diversity or inclusivity reasons but to allow merit based hiring whose impact and performance could be measured. A change in culture helped us to open ourselves to a more diverse representation but our performance measurement and an open and transparent assessment has helped every employee justify to themselves and everyone around them why they belong.
It is really important to understand that we do not exist in a social vacuum, we cannot be oblivious to their ground realities. Unfortunately, there are societal pressures and restrictions on our female staff that limit their mobility and sometimes even their choice or in some cases lack thereof to work in the first place. Our society may have opened up to working women and benefit from their contribution to the household income but their expectations of women and clearly defined gender roles are yet to evolve. It is when this dichotomy of gender role expectations changes that real empowerment will proliferate. To help manage this, we offer more work hour flexibility to our female employees. They are offered shifts in the first half and are not required to stay late hours. We consider our role to go beyond just flexible work arrangements and foster a culture where work-life integration is possible for women. To this effect, our leave policy for female employees include compassionate paid maternity, iddat and miscarriage leaves.
We have also prioritized career growth of women who are part of our store team. We have some very capable and proficient women sales staff who are now aspiring to be store managers. Previously they did not think it was a possibility and to be fair neither did the team. I am particularly excited to have a first female store manager, not because she is a woman but because she is experienced, accomplished and adept and deserves to be in that leadership role.
Another thing in the pipelines is community outreach and awareness. We are developing a mechanism to engage the families of our employees and educating them from time to time, celebrating milestones of each employee, giving them tokens to take home establish their importance and contributions in this other role.
3. In what ways does your role as a working mom influence the company culture at Giordano Pakistan?
Women particularly working moms I feel bring diverse perspectives, unconventional and innovative ideas to a company along with empathy and compassion. It takes a village to raise a child just like it takes an entire team to run a company. At Retail Avenue we have established a collaborative management style which creates a positive workplace environment and boosts employee morale. Retail is a people business; we cannot work like machines. Doing so may lead to short-term results but it is not sustainable and rather detrimental in the long-run for both the company and the employees. We are a small team trying to set healthy boundaries to maintain a work-life balance. If one of us is having a rough day the rest of the team pitches in to make sure the job gets done. Sometimes this requires flexible work arrangements which is offered to all my employees provided they are productive and deliver. Post-covid flexible working options are becoming particularly popular and helps establish a supportive and inclusive work environment.
4. How does your background in social sciences enhance your leadership at Giordano Pakistan?
Leadership I feel is a social science in itself. To be a good leader you have to understand people. Social science is an interdisciplinary field, inherently it is a study of people and societies but also offers more specialized disciplines like economics which is key to the business sector.
A social science degree in a corporate world has enabled me to not shy away from establishing unconventional practices and policies that may not be a norm in the corporate world but are more efficient and maximise the productivity of my team. For example, we have eliminated bureaucracy and any unnecessary layers from within our company that result in unnecessary delays in decision-making. We have employees working on flexible contracts, who get more work done in limited hours. One of our long-term goals of developing an in-house e-commerce team has been achieved within a span of 6 months due to the provision of flexible contracts.
Finally, my degree in research has been a profound factor in my role as a Director at Retail avenue. Research is everything particularly when you are in a leadership role. Researching creates new opportunities for learning and growth, is vital for expanding your knowledge base and opens for you a world of innovation and creativity provided you are open to learning and evolving. This has helped me build credibility with my team, who follow my lead if it is evident, I am informed. Apart from customer, market research and competitive analysis, we have formalized a mechanism and allocated employees in each department who are required to revisit their policies, systems, softwares from time to time to ensure they are ahead of the curve at all times. I would say, all of us are in a constant state of learning and researching.
5. How does Giordano Pakistan contribute to promoting international fashion trends while maintaining its brand identity in the Pakistani market?
When it comes to brand identity what is necessary is to have clarity of what the brand stands for. For us our identity is the same as Giordano International, a timeless classic that does not go out of style. As the CEO and Managing Director of Giordano Middle East, Ishwar Chugani, very rightly summed up; “You will always need a white shirt, a polo, a pair of wrinkle-free pants and something for children” you come to Giordano that is what you will find. When it comes to international fashion trends our production team is international, based in Hongkong, we import all our products at the moment, their specialized team with all the exposure, expertise and resources develop their lines based on trends, what customers are looking for and keep enhancing product features. For example, our latest polos are anti-microbial, a feature which fights odor-causing bacterium keeping the fabric fresher longer and durable. To sum it up, we are not trying to be different. We are basic, we are what you always need, timeless classics that never go out of style.
6. What measures has Giordano Pakistan taken to stay ahead of the curve in the rapidly evolving retail landscape of Pakistan?
Your question has the answer, by evolving and adapting. The only way to stay ahead of the curve is to proactively move, change and adapt to the new landscape as opposed to staying stagnant in your set ways of working. Change in any industry is inevitable, the Covid-19 pandemic fast forwarded this shift for all of us. With the lockdown we instantly had to provide a range of shopping options, that is when we prioritized e-commerce, developed a team, revamped our website, optimized it for mobile, and offered more payment gateways and options. Similarly, Giordano international recognized the shift to comfort wear and produced a line accordingly. We also prioritized omni-channel retail and are constantly trying to develop mechanisms to engaged through multiple digital and physical touchpoints. Currently, we are also exploring BNPL-Buy Now Pay Later options, to facilitate our customers in these times of rapid inflation.
7. Do you believe Giordano Pakistan’s representation at international conferences positively impacts the visibility of female leadership in the country?
Of course, the mere fact that out of 35 countries we were chosen as one of the three countries, deemed a “success story” and asked to present our strategy, approach and future direction, positively impacts not just visibility of female leadership but generally the potential of Pakistan. Given the media narrative and perception, people have a certain predisposition about working women in Pakistan. Things are changing now, women are increasingly becoming part of the workforce, contributing to household income and excelling at what they do. I would still say there is a long long way to go, as having working women is not enough. The social fabric may be accepting of “working women” but it is yet to alter its expectations from this gender group and evolve into a system that actually facilitates them to work and excel in the first place.
