Diversity drive: How LGBTQIA++ struggles for pride of place in India Inc

Inclusion of women improves with corporate DE&I initiatives, but discourse for the disabled and LGBTQIA++ has only begun

When Mohul Sharma, 25, was 10 years old, he was bullied, teased, and slapped by his teachers, peers, and family members for being “different”. Megha, as he was called then, felt trapped in his own body.

Matters were made worse when years later, his father died in an accident, leaving Sharma and his younger sibling behind. Unable to cope with the loss and mounting financial responsibilities, Sharma started applying for jobs only to face rejections from some of the biggest BPO companies because of his transman identity.

“In one of the job interviews, I was told that hiring me would pollute the office environment,” says Sharma, who eventually joined The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group five years ago as a food and beverage associate. He worked with the in-room dining division in Delhi.

Today, Sharma is senior associate with the group’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) division, actively involved in hiring of people to represent not just the LGBTQIA++ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer/questioning, asexual, and more) community but also those who are physically disabled or acid attack survivors. Thanks to the gender-agnostic company’s initiatives, Sharma was also medically insured for gender-reassignment surgery.

Sharma, however, is an exception as a non-heteronormative employee who has been promoted within the organisation on merit and continues to grow as a key decision-maker within it. For the likes of him, it is also rare to not face discrimination at the workplace because of his orientation.

To be sure, the inclusion of women in the overall DE&I conversation has been much better. According to a 2022 report by DE&I research, service, and solutions firms Avtar and Seramount, women’s representation in the 100 best companies in India has grown from 25 per cent in 2016 to 34.5 per cent in 2021, and is slated to equal men at 50 per cent by 2027.

Numbers are still hard to come by with respect to LGBTQIA++ representation in the workforce in India. Media reports suggest that barely 6 per cent of people from the transgender community were employed by the private sector according to the National Human Rights Commission.

The numbers with respect to persons with physical disabilities (PwDs) is also abysmally low. According to a report published by Business Standard last year, PwD hiring reduced considerably. “There were 30-32 people with disabilities for every 10,000 employees between FY18 and FY21. This figure declined to 29 for FY22 — the lowest in five years,” the report said.

According to some experts that Business Standard spoke with, PwD hiring in India, till recently, was a miniscule 0.28 per cent.

Richa, founder, Saarathee, says, “Corporates are finally looking to include the entire spectrum of LGBTQIA++ and PwDs besides the focus on women while discussing inclusion in the DE&I agenda.”

Formerly with Vodafone in the sales and marketing division where she created a 20-member team of visually impaired people through the telecom company’s collaboration with the National Association for the Blind, Richa founded Saarathee five years ago as an IT enabled service company. Roughly two years ago, it began focusing on recruitment of PwDs in the corporate sector, and is now an inclusion transformation organisation. It works with companies such as Amazon, Daikin, ITC Foods, HSBC and Genpact. Besides building skilled resources to train PwDs, it also runs sensitisation programmes for corporates. Unsurprisingly, 90 per cent of its own workforce of 100+ employees are PwDs.

Many companies that Business Standard spoke with agree that while the conversation with respect to women inclusion has picked up pace in the last decade, the inclusion of LGBTQIA++ and PwDs has begun in the last two years.

At Godrej Properties, women constitute 28 per cent of the workforce, while LGBTQIA++ and PwD sections make 2 per cent to augment the total diversity strength in the organisation to 30 per cent. The company recently launched its nine-month “pride internship programme” with targeted hiring of LGBTQIA++ employees to later offer some of them full-time positions. “The provision of all-inclusive washrooms that cater to LGBTQIA++ employees, differently-abled people, and nursing mothers, is a start in the right direction,” says Megha Goel, chief human resources officer (CHRO), Godrej Properties.

Just last week, PepsiCo India introduced Sambhav, the company’s two-month paid internship programme to encourage members of the LGBTQIA++ community to work across multiple functions.

According to Pavitra Singh, CHRO, PepsiCo India, the induction of 20-plus candidates through this initiative is a start of a conversation that has been long pending. In her view, Sambhav allows two-way communication, both for the employees to experience the food and beverage major’s culture and career possibilities, and the company to engage and associate with the LGBTQIA++ talent in India. This initiative is in line with the company’s 3As — awareness, allyship, action — to make it more inclusive and subsequently diverse.

Even as the leadership role of women in PepsiCo India has trebled, Singh agrees that with respect to PwDs and LGBTQIA++ the conversation is still “nascent”. She adds: “We are looking at the manufacturing plants and figuring out ways to induct PwDs with even greater force than before.”

Larsen & Toubro has only recently begun hiring employees specifically to develop dedicated DE&I initiatives.

“We are already late in implementing changes,” admits Gaurav Jain, director, Roop Automotives, an OEM supplier with 3,000+ employees and a turnover of over Rs 550 crore. With six plants across India, Jain is now moving swiftly to make the company’s spaces more PwD-friendly. Women comprise 15 per cent of the floor shops in two of its six plants; the company aims to double it by 2025. Jain admits that for PwDs, the journey will be slower to become 8 per cent by 2025. For now, he says, their number is negligible although hiring has begun for junior, mid, and senior management.

According to consulting firm E&Y, India has made considerable progress, albeit at a slower pace lately, in increasing women representation on boards: from 6 per cent in 2013 to 13 per cent in 2017, and 18 per cent in 2022.

Why hasn’t India Inc seen more momentum in the boardroom vis-à-vis PwDs and LGBTQIA++?

Nirmala Menon, founder and CEO of diversity consulting firm Interweave Consulting, says, “DE&I businesses have quarter-to-quarter targets and the minute there is diversity, it means more time taken to train people, more infrastructural changes to be made, and more to manage even in terms of dynamics of an organisation.”

Saarathee’s Richa reckons that skilled resources and training modules are lacking; as is sensitisation for a seamless, two-way communication. To that effect, Saarathee has built an “inclusion transformation platform” with certified e-learning modules reflecting global best practices that can benefit prospective PwD employees and corporates looking to strengthen their DE&I culture.

Avtar’s founder Saundarya Ramesh emphasises the urgency of India Inc needing to partner with the right consultants and experts to create systems, conduct surveys and audits, and thereafter devise business strategies in line with DE&I initiatives.

Most DE&I consulting firms agree that in the last two years, the pace has picked up among corporates. The change, several experts say, is also happening because most companies have a global outlook and engage with the best practices, of which DE&I is a crucial part.

“I am hopeful that the position of the chief financial officer in my company will soon be filled by a PwD, and that hiring will be purely merit-based but with an outlook towards projecting my company as diverse and inclusive,” says Jain.

Box

DIVERSITY DRIVE 

Pepsico India: Sambhav, a paid internship programme to encourage future employees from LGBTQIA++ community, began last week

The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group: Specific programmes to ensure inclusion with the vision of increasing hiring by 30-40% in the next 3-5 years; medical insurance on gender reassignment surgeries 

Saarathee: Building certificate programmes, e-learning modules to create PwD team leaders in various departments within the organisation and for other companies

ITC: Runs Social Investment Programme (SIP) to focus on marginalised communities from some of the remotest regions of India, particularly women

TVS Motor: Childcare facilities for women employees, leadership and gender sensitisation programmes to focus on inclusion of women, PwD, and LGBTQIA++ 

Godrej Properties: Sensitisation and hiring programmes via “pride-focused consultants”; participation, hiring, and internship programmes through queer community job fairs