How Equiniti improved its women talent from 23% to 43% in 4 years

financial services and technology company headquartered in the UK, has about 6,000 ‘colleagues’ globally, including about 2,600 ‘colleagues’ in India.

Adam Mesh, Chief People Officer, Equiniti, who visited the firm’s Bengaluru office recently, shared with that talent management is a global process that they want to further implement in India later this year. “Equiniti has been very focused on performance, and assessing performance through multiple performance reviews in a calendar year, which is great for holding employees accountable to drive a high-performance organisation,” he says.

“The talent planning allows employees to identify and communicate their aspirations around their career paths and skill sets they want to develop, where every employee will have a conversation with their people leader to create a unique development plan for their further growth. This will really foster an environment and a culture based on career development,” Adam adds.

Nikhil Raj, Director – Human Resources Development – India, Equiniti, shares that the organisation has moved from management to more into development, innovation and the centre of excellence. “We have a marketing team, a technology team and a shared services team, whether it’s a financial shared service or an HR shared service. We collaborate across the geography. For example, if some work in the US needs to be done, we’ve got talent here. We do both forward and backward integration of delivery processes, depending on the situation,” he says.

Adam highlights that Equiniti enables and empowers local leadership to lead and inspire locally. “In India, we follow the specific labour laws, and as a practice of engagement, we have introduced rewards and recognition that are unique to India, which may not be the same as those in the US or the UK,” he says.

Equiniti India has ‘Women Leader of the Year’ Awards across departments and many more global awards, which enable winners to visit the UK office, interact with the leaders and receive the awards at the EQ Annual event.

D&I interventions

Nikhil points out that the attrition rate is much better when women employees are given more opportunities.

Equiniti has nearly doubled its women-workforce participation from 23 per cent in 2022 to 43 per cent at present over a span of four years.

“We have about 43 per cent women workforce compared to the industry average of around 20 per cent in the financial services and technology domain. In India, within the HR function (People Service, Global HR, Global Recruitment, People Analytics, L&D), we have 51 colleagues, of which 34 are female employees, which is 67 per cent,” Nikhil says.

More than 34 women were hired in the previous year under the EQ India Career Returners Programme. Nikhil says, “We should not look at a career break as a hindrance. A lot of resistance comes from the business, but the HR leadership team was able to prove our point and say, ‘We understand that, but this is a need.’ Otherwise, 80 per cent of women would not have returned to the organisation after their maternity leave. There is flexibility provided to work from home on a case-by-case basis. Mentorship is an ongoing process. There are assigned buddies to connect with them on a periodic basis. There are feeding places for new mothers that are exclusively given to women employees.”

Also, Equiniti has partnered with various vendors to further support its women employees. For example, there are curated conversations and counselling sessions, through ‘YourDost’ portal, around how to take care of themselves and their kids.

Other focused wellness programmes for women include:

• The Empower Her programme helps accelerate the growth and development of women. It had 12 members in 2025 to nurture women leaders and have a healthy pipeline across mid and higher management levels. This year, the firm plans to cover 25 women under the programme.
  
  

“These people have been trained by the internal leadership, and the equality leadership team as well. This helps us to have a healthy pipeline of women leaders, and they will be the front-runners in the talent management framework,” Nikhil says.

• The Maternity Connect programme has an 80 per cent return-to-work success rate.
  
  
• Menstrual leave
  
  
• Assigning a buddy during the maternity phase
  
  
• Career counselling, where 120 women employees participated in the programme.
  
  
• Shift and Transport allowance
  
  
• Exposure to challenging projects, and project movements to enable flexi-working.
  
  
• Mentoring: In 2025, there were 25 internal mentors and 12 external mentors.
  
  
• Career returner programme – Drives are conducted to onboard women who have a career break due to personal situations.
  
  
• Various committees such as CSR and sports committees are headed by women leaders.
  
  

L&D interventions

Equiniti has a global mentorship programme that allows any colleague to get mentored by a senior leader through the internal portal, Workday. The employee can choose the mentor, set up a meeting, and discuss any specific areas they seek guidance on. Similarly, there is an India-specific mentorship programme, especially for women, where employees can choose the mentors and have personalised conversations.

The major HR intervention that the company plans for this year is to upskill all employees with AI. There are AI-curated learning modules, across the organisation, such as:

• Introduction to AI for everyone
  
  
• AI for business user – customisation for different jobs
  
  
• AI for advance user on how to create ‘No-code practices – Deploying agents with Copilot Studio’
  
  
• Microsoft Copilot Certifications
  
  
• CoE teams: Creating core team to handhold users basis the business and the location
  
  

Beyond this, the firm provides training courses covering more than 40 per cent of colleagues from an L&D standpoint. Some of the interventions are:

• Design thinking workshop focused on fostering innovation, problem-solving and user-centric thinking among participants.
  
  
• Technical training like Java Selenium, C# Playwright and Testing to enhance automation testing skills and technical proficiency.
  
  
• Acing interviewing skills workshop: Designed to strengthen interviewing techniques, candidate evaluation and hiring effectiveness for a consistent and superior candidate experience.
  
  
• Freshers programme: A comprehensive onboarding and foundational training initiative to equip new hires with essential skills, knowledge and organisational understanding.
  
  
• Growth mindset training: Training mid and leadership teams on growth mindset.
  
  

HR technology interventions

Commenting on how the HR team is deploying AI in talent planning, Adam says, “Robust data will be gathered through our talent planning process for succession planning in India and globally. Especially as AI continues to become more pervasive, we look at what kind of skill sets we have in the organisation and what kind of skill sets we require for the roles in the future. And then, we look at how we can blend and match our needs of the future with the current skill sets.”

“For instance, if Nikhil were to fill out his profile and list his skill sets, the system could match them with relevant opportunities. If there’s an open role that aligns with his capabilities and interests, it could suggest, ‘Hey Nikhil, you should consider applying for this position. It matches what you’ve said you want to do, as well as the skills you already have and those you’re looking to develop.’ This might prompt him to think, ‘I hadn’t considered applying for that role before, but it could give me the experience I’m looking for.’ This is a good example of how organisations can leverage AI, technology and robust data to connect people with opportunities and help them truly fulfil their potential,” Adam shares.

Adam opines that getting people in a growth mindset to learn AI and leverage AI is step one.

“Step two is that we are implementing AI for everyone. It’s not just about training people. It’s about how AI can deliver value, and how it can help grow people and their skill sets. Every line of business, every function, including the people function, here at Equiniti, is going to be tasked with creating proof of concepts, creating agents and creating real-life examples of how we can leverage AI to become more innovative and to drive efficiency,” he says.

“In the people function, we already have some great examples of AI screening candidates and screening job descriptions and doing a match for recruiters, saving a number of hours of time. That’s just one example of an agent that was created. We are planning to fully leverage AI in our people function. I’ve tasked our whole people function on that; and so, we’re hoping to have many more proof of concepts by the end of the year,” Adam adds.

For specific information like pay slips and leave balances, people can raise the query in the HRIS portal Workday. Elissa is the overall AI agent for employee assistance and people-related information and policies across Equiniti. Instead of searching the bowels of the intranet for a policy or the holiday calendar, employees can chat with Elissa and get the answers in two seconds.

“Initially, we had an HR USA mailbox, and employees had to email to get answers. It used to take 24 hours or 48 hours for a response. Leveraging AI is creating a much better employee experience in query resolution. This tool will also support people leaders by offering guidance in real time. For instance, if a manager has a performance management concern about a team member, they can seek advice on how to manage the situation effectively. The tool will provide practical recommendations and help guide leaders in making informed decisions,” Nikhil shares.

According to Nikhil, Equiniti believes in the democratisation of technology, where everybody can use technology for their benefit. “For instance, an HR professional might realise they are spending too much time on administrative tasks and can use technology to reduce that effort. This allows them to invest more time in employee collaboration, training and other value-added activities,” he says.

Adam adds, “We provide access to people with reasonable restrictions in place, considering information security requirements. We work closely with our data privacy team and the people function to ensure the responsible use of employee data. We now have a People Analytics Lead based in Bengaluru who will drive our strategy around leveraging people analytics, people reporting and people data strategy. A key part of this strategy is ensuring the security of personally identifiable information and defining how we manage and use such data in a responsible and compliant manner.”

HR concerns

Adam’s concern in today’s fast-paced, AI-driven world is not just keeping up, but staying ahead. “With many companies investing heavily in talent development and offering strong employee value propositions, the question is: how do we remain a workplace of choice? Our retention rates in India are great, but we can’t rest on our laurels. We need to continuously push the envelope to demonstrate to both prospective candidates and current employees that they will be able to do great work here, feel empowered to contribute ideas, and build long-term careers. Doubling down on these priorities will be critical. And my concern is whether we are doing enough, and fast enough,” he says.

Hiring plans



From the India standpoint, Equiniti is focusing on hiring technology skills. “Though hiring in large numbers may not be a current priority, we are planning to hire aggressively in niche skills. As organisations implement automation and AI to support customer service and operations teams, the goal is to make jobs easier by giving employees more capacity to do other things. The real opportunity lies in leveraging employees’ skills and helping them grow into more meaningful, fulfilling roles benefiting both the individual and the organisation,” Adam says.

According to Nikhil, Equiniti hired a ‘significant number’ of team members through apprenticeships the previous year, and absorbed many of them into full-time roles. “We also conducted fresher hiring drives, visited campuses and brought in around 70 to 90 people across Chennai and Bengaluru locations,” he says.

Nikhil points out that the overall hiring numbers will largely remain the same. “But this time, we’ll see a stronger shift toward more technology-driven roles rather than routine or traditional work, especially since we already have a solid talent base in place,” he says.

“It’s always beneficial to build talent within the organisation. The internal job postings provide growth for our own people. For instance, if a role opens up, multiple internal candidates may apply, and the best fit is selected. The remaining gap can then be filled through fresher hiring or other ongoing hiring models. Also, wherever specific expertise is required, we go to the market and tap into it. We work with our sourcing partners and also leverage our in-house recruitment team to build a strong talent pool and pipeline. The Analytics Lead role was recently filled this way,” Nikhil adds.

Through its internal job postings, Equiniti moved 240 talents (12 per cent) in 2025, and has already moved 79 colleagues (5 per cent) this year, including promotions.

Talent Value Proposition



Adam points out that if the core elements are in place, they form the foundation of an effective retention strategy. “While organisations often focus on increasing pay or offering perks like Friday pizza parties, such measures alone don’t truly retain talent. Data consistently shows that what matters most is a strong employee value proposition. The best talent retention is having a great environment where employees can be successful, and having a very strong culture where you’re focusing on what people are doing exciting at work. People should feel like there’s a purpose in their work, their voices are heard at work, they’re creating value, constantly learning, and they feel their career is moving forward. And equally important is working with good people in a positive, supportive culture,” he says.

According to Adam, organisations succeed when they combine a strong global foundation with local flexibility. “Core values, shared goals and overall business direction should remain consistent across all regions to ensure alignment. At the same time, execution must be tailored to local markets, as strategies, policies and programmes often need to adapt to regional needs. The key is striking the right balance between global consistency and local relevance,” he says.

Commenting on the Indian talent market, Adam says, “The talent pool that we see in India brings a lot of strength to Equinity. Especially here in Bengaluru, it’s very much rooted in technology, and a lot of the AI initiatives that we’re looking to create are coming from India. India is going to take a lead in how we implement AI across Equinity. Also, India has a very flexible workforce, and it’s used to working globally. Work that has been done in the US and the UK is now increasingly supported by colleagues in India, who also drive several initiatives originating here.”