When the workplace gets a rainbow hue

When Riyana R. gingerly stepped into the corporate office of home rental aggregator NestAway in Bengaluru more than a year ago, she was sure she wouldn’t get a job as an HR executive. “They would not even consider my application because my documents said I am a transgender woman,” says the 22-year-old graduate from St Joseph’s Community College in Bengaluru. “The major fears transitioning or closeted individuals have is whether they will get fired for coming out,” says Kalki Subramaniam, who set up Sahodari Foundation in 2007, two years after she transitioned. She now works with corporates on training and sensitization, and to “ensure the corporate world doesn’t miss out on the talent the LGBTQ+ community brings, and that the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t miss opportunities it deserves”. “A lot of our work has largely been on the gender space because that was what the corporates initially wanted, it is after the change in the Section 377 we see so many companies today talking about LGBTQ+—prior to that I think there were a few multinational or IT companies which had actively started working with the LGBTQ+ inclusion space.” Real inclusion Easwaram says hiring people from the LGBTQ+ community alone does not mean a corporate is inclusive.