Dell's next day delivery

A pregnancy enabling mineral that is so far unknown but CRN can reveal that something, somewhere in that building is behind a Dell baby boom.

Over the past four and a half years Dell has had close to 50 (actual number 49) women take maternity or parental leave. As this article goes to press Dell has 14 pregnant women in the office and a further nine on maternity leave.

Furthermore, nine women out of 50 have taken maternity leave more than once. Including Nicole Gemmell, corporate communications for Dell, who has taken maternity leave three times with three boys.

"Dell is an extremely family friendly organisation and has implemented many benefits and programs based on employee feedback," Gemmell says.

CRN discovered there was no extraordinary water aiding pregnancies at Dell, in fact, it all comes down to the support and benefits the vendor provides the women in its workforce.

According to Gemmell, these include part-time work, extended paid parental leave, flexible working hours and a work from home policy.

As a working policy, Dell encourages its employees to have a breadth of experience and understanding of different aspects of the business for career progression.

"Backfilling roles while employees are on maternity leave enables Dell to place employees into different and or senior roles for a period of time to deepen their understanding of the business and how other functions operate," says Gemmell.  

Dell founded and continues to sponsor WITEM (Women in IT Executive Mentoring), a cross-organisational female mentoring program that accelerates the development of leadership competencies in senior female IT specialists and professionals.

"It forms part of a longer term strategy of attracting and retaining women within respective organisations who participate. Mentors are CEOs, CIOs and CTOs from Australia's leading government departments, commercial companies and educational institutions," Gemmell says.

A note to women at Dell: keep drinking that water -just in case.