Next big gig for firms: Ensuring women delivery execs are safe

As more women join the last-mile delivery workforce, ecommerce and logistics companies are tweaking their anti-sexual harassment policies to protect the fleet of their female delivery personnel from potential harassment by customers, male colleagues and vendor partners.

Such moves are also aimed at increasing hiring of women in delivery roles, executives at search firms said. While the companies may already have policies in place to deal with harassment, they may be insufficient to cover delivery workers who regularly interact with multiple stakeholders.

A spokesperson for Zomato said the platform hopes to hire more women for delivery roles across its platform including its upcoming Instant service, and hence it is fine-tuning anti-harassment policies. The company said it follows a “zero tolerance” policy against discrimination and harassment towards delivery workforce.

“Discrimination and harassment of any type towards the delivery partners by any stakeholder – including fellow delivery partners, restaurant partners, customers and employees of Zomato – is strictly unacceptable,” the spokesperson said.
The number of women in the gig workforce remains small – on average the percentage is less than 4% – but it is gradually increasing.