Leading steel manufacturer Tata Steel having production units at Jharkhand and Odisha has been recognised as a Gold employer at IWEI’s (India Workplace Equality Index) Top Employers 2021 for leading the way in LGBT inclusion.

The awards were declared on Tuesday evening.

The Gold standard signifies that employers have successfully embedded LGBT inclusion in their policies, hiring practices, external communication, demonstrating a long-term and in-depth commitment towards LGBT inclusion.

IWEI is India’s first comprehensive benchmarking tool for employers to measure their progress on lesbian, gay, bi, and trans (LGBT+) inclusion in the workplace.

The index measures nine areas- policies and benefits, employee lifecycle, employee network group, allies and role models, senior leadership, monitoring, procurement, community engagement, and additional work.

This is the second annual IWEI top employers list, featuring 72 organisations. A total of 26 firms have been recognised in the gold category, 18 in the silver category, and 13 in the bronze category.

Tata Steel is the only steel manufacturer to find a place in the gold category.

“We are humbled to receive this recognition and acknowledge the contribution of every stakeholder in this journey. Tata Steel has always invested in pioneering initiatives to create a diverse and inclusive culture. We have a target of 25 per cent diversity by 2025 and we are actively taking steps towards enabling an inclusive environment for our LGBT+ employees like equal benefits for LGBT+ partners, health care and gender transition support for transgender employees, gender-neutral parental leaves,” said Tata Steel vice-president human resource management, Atrayee Sarkar Sanyal.

She further informed that in the near future, Tata Steel will proactively work towards bringing in more talent from the LGBT community and co-create the way forward. “While crafting the policies, we have closely worked with the community and all stakeholders. We are constantly evaluating all our processes, policies, digital, physical, and legal infrastructure with a close lens to ingrain inclusion at every step,” Atrayee said.

Some of the pioneering initiatives of Tata Steel for an inclusive workplace for the LGBT workforce includes equal benefits for LGBT partners which go beyond just coverage for medical benefits and includes benefits like joint house points, honeymoon package, health care, and gender transition support.

The company also provide recruitment drive for transgender trainees at West Bokaro, participation in RISE - Asia’s largest LGBT+ job fair, interventions for beating the bias and breaking gender stereotypes for employees and vendor partners, Wings - Company’s employee resource group, the introduction of Indradhanush - the online safe space for LGBT+ workforce and allies to connect and more.

Tata Steel has actively taken steps to engage with the LGBT community at the grassroots level through its CSR interventions like drives to enable them to have identities of their own through photo ID drive, extending relief to the community during the lockdown to ensure their well-being under the initiative #ThoughtforFood.