How companies can improve the transgender experience at work

By Yogita Tulsiani,

With time, corporate organizations have started understanding the need for improving the lives of people working with them. Working day and night is stressful and some carry a heavyweight of emotions, rejections, denials and bullying at the workplace. Transgenders are one of those who go through a gender identity crisis in their life when they fight for an equal place in society and at work. It’s a long-misunderstood section of the society that was deprived of societal acceptance, job satisfaction and inclination to remain with an employer.

According to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016, discrimination against a transgender person is prohibited, including unfair treatment or denial of service in employment, education, healthcare or access to any service. As per the study of the National Human Rights Commission in 2020, about 92 percent of transgenders are deprived of the right to participate in any form of economic activity in the country including refusal of jobs to qualified ones. On the other hand, there are few examples of transgenders involved in the nation’s economic activity. For instance, Joyita Mondal from West Bengal became the first transgender judge in the country or the first transgender sub-inspector from Tamil Nadu.

Open door policy

Earlier old school corporates waited for courts to bring law and determine transgenders are protected. Instead, they must introduce non-discrimination policies including equality for transgenders throughout their businesses. This can start with conversations to build a foundation for relationships at the workplace. Such policies, as a result, lay a strong foundation of trust and harmony between the employee and employer.

To create a more inclusive environment for transgenders, organizations can promote an open door policy to bring in work allies and create a safe space for people. Usually, such policies are intangible, but documenting open door policies makes transgender employees safer at the workplace. Then comes the implementation stage. After making the organization understand the need to introduce an open-door policy, organizations must provide transgenders the equal access to resources, making them feel heard, letting them ask questions and providing them the opportunity to bring something constructive.

Dialogue sessions and training

When it comes to creating a trans-inclusive environment at the workplace, employers have to take first step by being knowledgeable and tolerate no discrimination against transgenders. To implement this, organizations need to conduct dialogue sessions and workplace training. This will improve relationships, communication and cooperation between transgenders and employers.

Organizations can organize workplace training programs to help employees recognize and eliminate discrimination at the workplace. This will also help employees understand the organization’s expectations and non-discrimination policies to contribute to the organization in providing equal work opportunities to transgenders.

Integrating new technologies

Embedding new-age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning in the HR policies help organizations achieve diversity and inclusion at the workplace. With the help of AI and ML, organizations can continually create, analyze and assess data of people. This further helps in identifying gaps and weak spots to work on the points of improving the environment and situations.

As the world is advancing towards digitization, technology has become an enabler of diversity and inclusion. Organizations use AI’s potential to assess data-driven insights and solutions to mitigate biases at the workplace.

Steps to be taken by Corporates, Society and Government

There are provisions many specific provisions in Transgender Bill to protect transgender interests. Though it prohibits discrimination in employment opportunities, implementing such provisions becomes extremely difficult.

Organizations need to have a robust mechanism to protect transgenders’ interests. For instance, organizations can adopt digital tools for unbiased assessment of employees at work. Apart from this, these tools can also be used to shortlist candidates’ CVs for interview rounds. This can promote gender equality right from recruitment to improving employee experience for transgenders.

Summing up

Trans inclusive environment is imperative for promoting efficiency at the workplace. It creates greater space for innovation and makes it easier for people to adapt to a diverse work environment that promotes growth and business scalability. Furthermore, every organization must consider diversity as a constant step towards business and societal progression.

(The author is MD & Co-founder, iXceed Solutions (Global Tech-Recruiter Provider). Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online.)