Bengaluru, 14th June 2022: To celebrate Pride month and to extend solidarity to the LGBTQIA+ community, GE organised Pride walks across 10 of their campuses in India. Over 1500 GE employees, allies, and members of the community participated in the walk held across various locations. The Pride Walks were conducted across GE campuses at Bengaluru (Karnataka), Sanand (Gujarat), Durgapur (West Bengal), Dabaspet (Karnataka), Maneja (Gujarat), Noida (Uttar Pradesh), Pune (Maharashtra) and Chennai (Tamil Nadu). Senior leaders from GE also participated in the Pride Walk at different campuses.
Mahesh Palashikar, President, GE South Asia, said, “I am humbled to witness our leadership and employees come together in unison for the Pride celebrations at GE happening across the country today.At GE, we believe that diversity and inclusion, which are the real grounds for creativity, must remain at the centre of what we do. We have a remarkably diverse environment and a very inclusive culture, and we only hope to further these initiatives in the future and create a lasting impact.”
Alok Nanda, CTO, GE South Asia and CEO, GE India Technology Centre, who also participated in the Pride walk at GE’s John F Welch Technology Centre, Bengaluru, said, “Diversity and Inclusion needs to be a way of life, something that every employee in the organization experiences every day. At GE India Technology Centre, the Inclusion and Diversity team is called WOW (Way of Work). It is a diverse team of passionate volunteers that come from different GE businesses, career levels, genders, demography groups and are excited about building an inclusive workplace for everyone to bring their true and best selves to work every day. The Pride Alliance team in the last three years has come up with several new practices with a focus on creating and sustaining inclusive practices, framing inclusive policies, setting up inclusive infrastructure and building inclusive mindsets.”
Speaking at the occasion, Sukla Chandra, Senior Managing Director, Licensing and Inclusion and Diversity Leader, GE South Asia, said, “The goal of the Pride Alliance is to unite and celebrate the spirit of inclusion and diversity followed across the organization. We are proud of making GE a place where people feel they truly belong. The passion of our employees along with our business leaders who drive inclusive and holistic policies, make our workplaces engaging for diverse groups.”
As part of its Pride Alliance, GE has an array of initiatives to inculcate gender positivity and create an inclusive workspace. The GE Pride Alliance community is driving inclusion, diversity, and equity by influencing Policies, Practices, Infrastructure and Mindset. Currently, GE has the following initiatives to support the LGBTQIA+ community –
- Sensitization, awareness building, and ally onboarding sessions are regularly conducted in an in-person and virtual format. These sessions cover all employees with a special focus on training senior leadership, people leaders and human resources team. These sessions are also extended to the vendor partners.
- Employee activations on campus and on social media platforms to drive sensitization and allyship
- Medical insurance covers for same-sex partners as dependents and gender reassignment surgery
- The transgender employee protection policy at GE in India ensures suitable facilities and amenities are provided to employees. Gender-neutral restrooms have been introduced in every work-floor in the JFWTC campus.
- Inclusive relocation policy
- Affinity networks and specialised employee assistance program support
- Pride meetups and ally challenges to increase awareness
GE India Technology Center regularly participates in LGBTQIA+ focused job fairs and has made successful offers to candidates. They have also onboarded a LGBTQIA+ inclusion focused organization as an approved talent acquisition partner thereby being deliberately inclusive in all their external hiring activities. They have various Inclusion and Diversity commitments in place which can be categorised under gender, disability advocacy network and Pride Alliance to ensure an equal and safe work environment for all genders.
GE is an equal opportunity employer and employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.