MAM
Gender disparity & males’ preponderance at top level in media cos: Study
MUMBAI: Population First, the communication and advocacy initiative working towards gender sensitivity, has conducted a study on ‘Media: How Gender Sensitive, How Inclusive’ in collaboration with Gender Issues Cell of K.C. College, Mumbai. The report of this research was released at an event in on 28 July at KC College, Churchgate (Mumbai).
The report covers 36 media organizations from 87 respondents which saw Mapping of Gender Distribution, recruitment & promotion, Equity Policies, Proactive Measures, Sexual Harassment.
The findings of the study were shared in a panel discussion with eminent media and advertising leaders – Kalpana Sharma (Former deputy Editor, The Hindu), K V Sridhar (Founder, Hyper Collective), and Devleena Majumdar (President HR, Culture Machine).
A L Sharada, Director, Population First shared, “The study was conducted with funding support from UNFPA. The project was restricted to media organizations within Mumbai Metropolitan Region and covered a total of 87 respondents drawn from 36 media organizations across languages.
“Data on gender distribution at different levels within media houses have clearly reflected gender disparity. Board members, Founder members, CEO etc are predominantly men. Women are found in large numbers as HR personnel across print and advertising but are less in number in broadcast. The presence of women camerapersons, photographers in technical sections is dismal across all media. The study also throws light on beats being highly gendered, awareness of Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace, demands of work and family life came out as a major hindrance for women professionals in media and more,” she said.
Conclusion and Recommendations: This was a comprehensive study, carried out across print, television and advertising media to find out how gender sensitive and inclusive media is with regards to policies, gender distribution and pro-active measures in place, to provide a gender friendly working environment. The project was restricted to media organisations within Mumbai Metropolitan Region and covered a total of 87 respondents drawn from 36 media organizations across languages. The data collection exercise was carried out by a group of 15 students who received an intensive training in the intricacies of data collection and research methodology for two weeks prior to going to the field.
Conclusions, thus, are derived from the rich data gathered from interviews with media personnel and from review of previous research studies and existing literature on the subject. However it is important to bear in mind that media personnel do not constitute a homogenous community. They expressed a diversity of opinions on a range of subjects. What we present here are broad conclusions:
• Data on gender distribution at different levels within media houses clearly reflect gender disparity. While there are more number of women in lower and middle level positions, there is a preponderance of males at the top levels. Board members, Founder members, CEO etc are predominantly men. Women are found in large numbers as HR personnel across print and advertising but are less in number in broadcast. The presence of women camerapersons, photographers in technical sections is dismal across all media. Marketing and client services in the language press have more women employees. However the marketing section in English dailies is largely male oriented. However there are some exceptions like Indian Express which has an all women editorial team.
• Beats are highly gendered even though media houses would have us believe that gender is irrelevant when it comes to assignment of beats. Culture, education, consumer news, fashion, lifestyle are primarily assigned to women and crime, business and political reporting is generally done by men with some exceptions. This was attributed to a women’s preference for the so called feminine beats and that it was unsafe for women to do crime reporting or that she was physically weak to handle heavy technical equipment.
• Some of the respondents were so critical of the use of a gender lens in the questions that it seemed as though gender is on its way out and that gender did not matter in media organisations. That women and men are distinguished more by their professionalism than masculinity and femininity. However a deeper probe revealed the misogyny floating around.
• A masculine culture pervades media organizations and determines everything, the work ethics, news content, that the gender of a person is unimportant, that we are all professionals. There was the preponderance of a ‘Boys’ Club” and a masculine culture which includes working till late hours or playing political mind games. Women respondents said that they got their promotional opportunities depending upon whether they played by these power games or refused to do so. Women respondents also felt that they were constantly being judged and had to prove that they were “as good as a man”. However if women were aggressive it was perceived as arrogance, whereas the same was overlooked in a man.
• The lack of awareness among media personnel about their rights with respect to various policies is appalling to say the least, and among those who are aware of institutional mechanisms and procedures, the reluctance to use them is disheartening. While the number of women in media is definitely on the rise, it has still not translated into organizations having structured programmes for creating awareness of sensitive issues like sexual harassment.
• Only 33% of the respondents reported to there being any orientation/training/workshop organized at periodic intervals for employees so as to generate an awareness of Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013. There were exceptions in which seniors from certain organizations did say that they conducted such programmes at their own initiative for their juniors.
• Again, this lack of awareness translates into respondents not knowing the procedure regarding filing of sexual harassment complaints within their organization. At least 26% female respondents and 10% male respondents said that they had no idea about the procedure for filing complaints. Amongst the others who knew about the procedure, many felt hesitant about filing such a complaint if the situation should ever arise, because they were not confident about their organizations supporting them.
• While the number of women in different forms of media have been increasing, the feminization of media does not necessarily translate into less sexism in media content or an increasing feminist consciousness since organizational content, socialization of reporters, journalistic routines play an important part in imbalances in gender portrayal in media content.
• Gendered assumptions and stereotypes are deeply embedded within media organisations but are more pronounced in the regional language press. Men play ‘big brotherly or avuncular roles’ (Joseph, 2005,p) patronising and protectionist.
• Reconciling the demands of work and family life came out as a major hindrance for women professionals in media. Women seek not only gender sensitive workplaces but also understanding families. The socialisation process is not wired to train girls in goal setting and negotiating skills or for facing the challenges of work life
• When it comes to gender policies very few organisations have little to offer other than the legally mandated policies like maternity leave for instance. Even here there are disparities with some offering fully paid three months maternity leave and others six months. Paternity leave of course is a mere token ranging from one week and fifteen days to one month. There seemed to an unwritten code in some media houses about losing out on career benefits like promotion and other incentives following maternity leave.
• However all is not bleak. There are some media organisations which stand out for their progressive gender policies that reflect their sensitivities to structural inequities within the system. These policies seek to provide a gender enabling environment and mitigate the gendered consequences of their work life. These include organisations like SapientNitro, FCB Interface and Hypercollective in the advertising media, Star Sports, NDTV in broadcast and BBC in print.
• Lack of transparency within media organizations is a bit startling. They seemed reluctant to share information on policies and programmes and when the gaze turns towards them, they refuse to introspect.
If your HR software still feels like a glorified spreadsheet with a login page, 2026 is the year to rethink everything. Especially as HR software in India evolves rapidly to meet compliance, scale, and workforce complexity.
Why 2019 HRMS You Chose Probably Isn’t Enough Anymore?
To be honest, most businesses didn’t really choose their HRMS; they just happened to get it. A vendor demo, a short deadline, and a CFO who approved the budget all made you stuck with a system that was “good enough” at the time.
Today, that same system is struggling to keep up with hybrid work, distributed teams, complicated compliance issues, and employee expectations that have changed a lot in just five years. This is exactly where modern HR automation software is redefining how HR teams operate, moving from manual processes to intelligent workflows.
As per the 2025 report by Gartner, more than 58% of HR professionals stated that their existing software did not fully enable their workforce strategy. On the other hand, as per the HR Tech survey conducted by PwC, those companies that invested in modern HRMS systems were able to improve their HR efficiency level by up to 22% and reduce compliance penalties by 15%.
The takeaway is that the HRMS world has grown up, and so have the expectations surrounding it. Be it the CHRO developing the company’s digital transformation plan, the CFO analysing return-on-investment figures, or the CEO looking to grow his organisation without HR being a constraint, this checklist will help you achieve success.
This is your list of top 10 HRMS features your team simply cannot do without in 2026.
1. Unified Employee Data Architecture (Single Source of Truth)
This is the base on which everything else is built. A modern HRMS must get rid of data silos by keeping one central, real-time record of each employee from the time they are hired until they leave. That means that all of your payroll data, performance history, leave balances, benefits enrolment, document management, and compliance records are all in one place.
For companies with more than 500 employees, having HR data that is not organised or that are simply exploring HR outsourcing can cost between $15,000 and $40,000 a year just to fix (Deloitte, 2024). The number goes up quickly when you include the compliance risk from records that don’t match.
What to look for:
- Bidirectional synchronization between modules
- API-first approach to integration
- Access based on roles and responsibilities
- Audits that can withstand a detailed examination, be it by an internal auditor or an employment agency inspection.
2. Payroll That Runs Automatically and Stays Compliant
Payroll has surpassed being a routine month-end task to becoming intelligent software that must be able to handle variable pay packages, multistate/multinationals’ taxation, loans, statutory deductions (PF, ESI, TDS, and PT for India) and even off-cycle processing without a hitch.
The real differentiator in 2026? HR automation software based compliance. Laws about work change. Tax brackets change. There is a fluctuation in the minimum wage based on the region. A good payroll system should always update itself with respect to changes in regulations.
Important numbers to remember:
- 40% of small and medium-sized businesses have to pay payroll penalties every year because of mistakes made while processing (IRS, 2024)
- When compared to manual methods, automated payroll systems can cut processing time by as much as 80%.
- According to SHRM (2025), companies that use integrated payroll-HRMS platforms make 93% fewer mistakes when entering data.
For businesses operating across multiple geographies, especially those leveraging EOR (Employer of Record) arrangements. Your payroll software also needs to interface cleanly with local in-country payroll engines without creating reconciliation nightmares.
3. Employer of Record (EOR) Integration and Global Hiring Support
It’s not just multinationals that hire people from other countries anymore. More and more, startups, mid-sized businesses, and even businesses that only operate in one area are putting together teams that work across state and national lines. And that’s where things get really complicated.
Companies can legally hire workers in places where they don’t have a legal entity through an EOR (Employer of Record) arrangement. But managing those workers on a platform that wasn’t made for it is a mess. Many businesses in India are now combining HR outsourcing models with EOR services to simplify global hiring. Your HRMS must have built-in support for EOR workflows, such as classifying contractors and employees, following local compliance rules, processing payroll in any currency, and creating documents that meet local regulatory standards.
In 2025, compliance confidence was the top driver for 72% of companies using EOR services, according to Velocity Global, but only 34% of those companies said their HRMS could manage such processes.
Request: Onboarding processes suitable for EOR usage, employment contracts valid for multiple jurisdictions, and an overall consolidated overview of all global employees, whether direct or EOR-based.
4. End-to-End Recruitment and Onboarding Automation
The best talent doesn’t wait. The average staffing and recruitment time is around 42 days (LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 2025), therefore, a long and inefficient recruitment process is a competitive disadvantage. This is where HR automation software comes in as a competitive advantage, streamlining hiring workflows, reducing manual intervention and ensuring onboarding is consistent, fast and structured.
More importantly, onboarding automation is where many platforms still fall short. Poor onboarding is expensive: research from SHRM shows that replacing a single employee can cost 50–200% of their annual salary, and a significant driver of early attrition is a disorganised onboarding experience.
Look for:
- Automated Offer Letter generation
- Electronic document acquisition and signature
- Customised onboarding tasks based on job role
- An equipment access checklist
- Buddy programme workflow setup and 30-60-90 day follow-up triggers that you can set up without contacting your vendor.
5. Performance Tracking That Matches Real Work
Not only does it belong in the past, but yearly appraisals are indeed harmful to the performance environment. By 2026, if you’re not paying for continuous performance capabilities in your HRMS solution, then you should probably get your money back, as all modern systems come fully loaded with goal-setting frameworks (OKRs, KRAs), immediate feedback, peer reviews, manager check-ins, and career development planning.
Companies that have adopted continuous performance reported to have a 14% rise in employee engagement levels and a reduction of 12% in voluntary turnover (Gallup, 2024). For those executives looking at retention numbers, that is substantial.
Also non-negotiable in 2026: you’ll want to look for systems which include features to protect managers from making biased evaluations and to help identify future leaders in advance of a leadership vacuum occurring.
6. Leave, Attendance, and Workforce Scheduling Intelligence
This sounds basic, and it should be. Yet it remains one of the most complained-about areas in enterprise HRMS. The problem is not in the collection of leave information but in the intelligent aspect. Is there an algorithm that identifies staffing gaps when three employees ask for leave in the same week? Can it support both the scheduling of shifts for field staff and flexible hours for office personnel?
In India specifically, the Shops & Establishments Act regulations vary according to location and industry. This must be automatically managed in the HRMS software, rather than manually configuring each time the rules change.
Must-have features here include
- Leave management based on policy (this includes compensatory leave and encashment)
- Geo-fencing of attendance data
- Shift swapping coordination
- Auto-calculation of overtime compensation and integration with payroll reporting.
7. Global Mobility and Expat Management
For organisations with international operations or employees on cross-border assignments, global mobility management is no longer a “nice-to-have”. It’s a legal necessity. Moving an employee across borders involves immigration compliance, tax equalisation, shadow payrolls, split payrolls, cost-of-living adjustments, and assignment tracking, all of which need to be managed systematically.
Global mobility mismanagement is an underestimated financial risk. A single failed tax equalisation calculation for an expat can create a liability running into tens of thousands of dollars. And with remote work blurring the lines of tax residency, the complexity is only growing.
The features that you should look out for in an HRMS include:
- Assignment lifecycle management
- Compatibility with mobility service providers
- Compliance alerts specific to countries
- Budget planning with costing tools
- Audit trail records for immigration and taxation purposes.
8. Analytics, Workforce Intelligence, and Predictive HR
If your Human Resource Management System can only tell you last year’s headcount or average tenure, it’s simply functioning as a reporting tool. In 2026, the bar is predictive and prescriptive analytics.
Think about what truly matters to leadership: What matters to your organisation’s executives? Which areas are likely to have high turnover within the next 90 days? What’s the return on investment of a training programme initiated six months ago? Where are the gaps in your diversity among your future leaders? How does your pay compare to the market’s?
For the expanding market of HR software within India, predictive analytics will emerge as a significant differentiating factor among corporate leadership. According to a study conducted by McKinsey in 2025, firms that have more sophisticated workforce analytics tools than others have proven 2.3 times more capable of outperforming their competitors in total shareholder returns.
Look for:
- Pre-built HR dashboards
- Custom report builders
- Cohort analysis
- Attrition prediction models
- DEI analytics and data export capabilities for BI tools like Power BI or Tableau.
9. Employee Self-Service, ESS Mobile App, and Conversational AI
Today’s modern workforce, particularly Gen Z and younger millennials, expects work tools that are just as intuitive as consumer applications. The HRMS that asks your employees to email HR for a payslip and calls up the helpdesk for checking their leave balances has been silently diminishing the reputation of your employer brand.
Employee Self-Service (ESS) with complete mobile access has become a basic expectation for 2026. The factor that makes the winning difference between leaders is the use of conversational AI in the form of chatbots and virtual assistants within the HRMS, who will respond to policy-related queries, manage routine requests, and push out relevant data.
Numbers to make the business case: Adoption of ESS leads to a reduction in HR transaction load by 30-50% (Mercer, 2025). Organisations with high adoption of ESS records 23% greater employee satisfaction levels with respect to HR services.
10. Security, Data Privacy, and Compliance Infrastructure
This tends to be overlooked on checklists, precisely the opposite of what should happen. Employee data might be some of the most highly confidential data within your organisation’s databases, including salary details, health care documentation, performance reviews, discipline records, and even financial data.
By 2025, HR data breaches accounted for 23% of total enterprise data breaches in IBM’s annual Cost of a Data Breach report, and the average financial impact of an HR breach was $4.7 million. In addition, if you are operating in India, there is another legal requirement under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, that your HRMS vendor must help you comply with.
Requirements include:
- SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification
- End-to-end encryption
- DPDP-compliant in data processing
- Access control based on consent
- Data sovereignty of vendor and incident response SLA.
Quick HRMS Features Checklist 2026
| Features | Why It Matters | Key Metric |
| Unified Employee Data | No silos, one-stop information repository | Reduces costs by ₹10 to ₹30 lakh per year |
| Intelligent Payroll Software | Auto-compliance, error-free processing | 80% faster payroll runs |
| EOR Integration | Supports global, cross-border hiring | Only 34% of HRMS platforms support this today |
| Recruitment & Onboarding Automation | Faster hiring, lower early attrition | Reduces time-to-hire by up to 30% |
| Continuous Performance Management | Replaces outdated appraisal cycles | 14% higher engagement reported |
| Leave, Attendance & Scheduling | Compliance + ops efficiency | Reduces leave-related disputes by ~60% |
| Global Mobility Management | Tax, immigration & assignment compliance | Prevents six-figure expat tax liabilities |
| Workforce Analytics & Predictive AI | Strategic decision-making for leadership | 2.3x higher business performance (McKinsey) |
| ESS Mobile App + Conversational AI | Employer brand, employee experience | 30–50% drop in HR transactional load |
| Security & DPDP Compliance | Legal protection, data integrity | Avg. breach cost: $4.7M (IBM, 2025) |
What This Means for Indian Businesses Specifically?
HR software technology in India is projected to reach $1.7 billion by 2027, growing at a 14.2% CAGR (NASSCOM, 2025). That growth is being driven by SMEs and mid-market companies finally graduating from legacy payroll tools and disconnected HR processes toward integrated, cloud-native platforms.
However, what is overlooked in the broader conversations is that Indian organisations have to navigate through a complex landscape of regulations. Your organisation will have to manage PF, ESI, PT (depending on which state you belong to), gratuity, TDS, the recently enacted DPDP act, labor laws applicable to your respective states, and, in the case of multinational firms, payroll in different countries along with EORs.
And this is precisely why choosing the right platform, one designed keeping in mind Indian regulations as well as having international ambitions, is an important consideration.
How TankhaPay Supports Modern Workforce Needs?
When you look at this checklist against the backdrop of India’s workforce, like its sheer diversity, the complexity of state-wise compliance, and the massive base of contractual, gig, and blue-collar workers who are still largely underserved by mainstream HRMS platforms, one platform stands out for addressing this gap thoughtfully.
TankhaPay is purpose-built for Indian businesses navigating the full spectrum of workforce management challenges. From automated statutory compliance (PF, ESI, TDS, PT) embedded directly into its payroll engine to digital onboarding designed for both white-collar and blue-collar employees, TankhaPay brings together the features on this checklist in a platform that doesn’t require an army of IT consultants to configure or maintain.
If your business operates on a contract-based workforce, the Contractor Management feature within TankhaPay will cover you right from attendance till compliance documentation, an area which all major HRMS solutions for enterprises continue to address only as a workaround solution. In the case of CHROs running growing organisations, it means being fully prepared for headcount numbers, attrition rates, and payroll costs. And for CFOs concerned about payroll accuracy and compliance risks without any surprises later on, the dedicated compliance engine from TankhaPay addresses those concerns completely.
As more companies turn towards an EOR approach for cross-state hiring as well as global mobility of key personnel, there is a need for a solution that scales with your ambitions but does not deviate from the rigours of Indian labor law compliance.
Final Thoughts
HRMS selection in 2026 is a long-term strategic investment. The ten capabilities outlined above in our HRMS selection checklist are not merely “nice-to-have” features; they represent the minimum threshold of what constitutes a modern, robust human resources technology platform. If you don’t meet this minimum threshold, you’re not only wasting opportunities; you’re increasing your organisation’s risks in terms of legal compliance, operational excellence, and talent management.
Before signing that new contract, before attending your next product demonstration, or before revisiting your next HR budget allocation, make sure you have this HRMS selection checklist on hand.
