The Indian workforce is becoming diverse and how!
Bharat Aluminimum Company or BALCO as it is known, a subsdiary of Vedanta Aluminium, has hired seven transgender professionals in its workforce at Balconagar, in Chattisgarh’s Korba district. This is rare in the manufacturing space.
Four of the new hires operate forklifts, while three are part of the security team.
The Company has taken the help of local NGOs and the transgender community for skill mapping and to make this happen. It has also been training these new hires to hone their existing skills and equip them with the knowledge required for the job assigned to them.
Its existing workforce has been undergoing gender-sensitisation sessions so that the new hires from the transgender community are accepted and treated with respect, keeping in mind the mental and physical challenges that they undergo.
To ensure diversity in the workforce, Vedanta Aluminimum has already been trying to hire women professionals with high potential to be part of its team.
Rahul Sharma, CEO, aluminium business, Vedanta, said, “Our markets, customers and businesses are diverse and complex. To match that, we believe in recruiting people with diverse points of view, experiences, skills, and education so that their business strategies are correspondingly well-rounded. And hence, we are now casting our talent acquisition net wider and looking to attract competent and ambitious LGBTQIA+ people to our workforce, for merit has no gender”.
With this move, the Group wishes to “build a wholesome culture, that makes our employees and partners feel welcomed, encouraged and empowered to deliver to the best of their potential.”
Meanwhile, in Noida, the NGO called Basera Samajik Sansthan has been working to help members of the transgender community find jobs. Their efforts paid off when a private diagnostic centre in Noida hired four transgender people, who have studied till class 12 from government-run schools. All four had lost their jobs during the pandemic and are grateful to be respectfully employed now thanks to the hiring drive organised by the NGO. They are employed at the logistics department of Redcliffe Lab’s warehouse.
