Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at Tata Steel: Employment of Transgender Individuals

In February 2022, Sudhir Kumar Singh, head of human resources (HR) at Tata Steel Limited (Tata Steel)—one of India’s oldest and largest steel producers—was meeting with the vice president of HR to discuss how a unique pilot project to employ transgender people at the mine could be rolled out across the entire company. The long-term objective of the initiative was to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and contribute toward achieving a 25 percent diverse workforce by 2025. Although the pilot project had been successful, how could the HR team now scale up the transgender initiative across Tata Steel? Singh understood that to overcome these challenges he needed to adopt a multi-stakeholder approach, plan holistically, and integrate all the learnings from the pilot project to create a clear, consistent, and comprehensive plan that could be discussed with the vice president of HR.