SAP Labs India celebrates Pride Month With A Pride Parade

It was July 2, 1999, when a bunch of 15 people got together for what was called The Friendship Walk but was a much more profound point of inflection in India's history in LGBTQIA+ activism. It was later deemed the Calcutta Rainbow Pride and was the first pride walk in not just India, but South Asia.

But the meandering path to social justice hasn't been any different for topics of gender identity and sexual orientation. If anything, it has had even more setbacks than anyone could expect, and has undoubtedly been a tough ride.

The cultural context in which we currently exist is tumultuous but also hopeful. With the decriminalization of homosexuality almost 4 years ago, the battle for equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community finally took a leap in the right direction, but a bigger battle towards more far-reaching and inclusive outcomes still continues.

And when one talks about inclusivity, a rather vital cornerstone is the freedom to be authentic in all facets of life. Just as important as it is to not be harassed for cross-dressing at a social gathering, it is also equally important to not feel out of place, unsafe, and threatened for identifying as LGBTQIA+ in the workplace. Afterall, we spend a sizeable chunk of our waking hours at work, and it goes without saying that organizational support to topics of identity and inclusion must be the norm, not the exception.

At Pride@SAP, we believe in the same ideology - each one of us deserves to be their truest, most beautiful and diverse selves, all the time, including at the workplace. And authenticity needs trust, a safe space to unravel our deepest emotions, experiences, and desires, and it is a rather challenging, but also very fulfilling task, to help bring about that environment.

Over the past 20 years, our global employee network group, and the various regional chapters within, have tirelessly worked to make inclusion a reality of every employee.

While the journey of Pride@SAP in India has been much shorter, it is no less remarkable. Within 5 years, we feel immensely proud when we look back at what we have achieved. With the amazing support of a management team that vociferously endorses pride topics, and the honest intentions of self-motivated employees and allies, we have been able to break new ground with each policy, plan and program.

Whether it is insurance coverage for same-sex partners, financial support for gender reaffirmation surgery, an exhaustive family care policy including, but not limited to, adoption leave, and compassion leave for same-sex partner miscarriages, our policies and frameworks are a well-thought out bunch of carefully thought out inclusive practices.

We are also consistently working in the area of LGBTQIA+ hiring, and the coming months look promising in the area of growing the diversity in our workforce.

Even our campuses reinforce the idea of inclusion in the form of all-gender restrooms. And over the course of the year, with hybrid working kicking in, a facilities audit with specific attention to pride aspects is on the horizon as well. Another interesting program we are planning out is creating more visual spaces, on campus, dedicated to pride topics, with the intention of making pride a part and parcel of everyday life and mindset of the employees.

A phenomenon that organizational initiatives often fall prey to is tokenism. Everyone talks about the importance of diversity but there are no actual efforts spent to bring about inclusion of such diversity.

But being the purpose-driven organization that SAP is, the vision of inclusion and the tangible ways to make it a reality are deep-rooted in all the initiatives we plan. At Pride@SAP in India, we have made a focused move from event-based activism to more impact-based activism.

Yes, getting people together and talking about things has its charm - you network, interact and share ideas. But a culture shift is often tough to bring about and also measure when things are only focused on engagement.

We have been working to curate a sensitization curriculum for all SAP entities, with local nuances and touchpoints, to ensure that not just allies but all employees are introduced to and sensitized about topics of identity and expression.

In 2021 alone, our cohort of 8 trainers was able to educate 2500+ employees on the basics of the gender and sexuality spectrum, and the relevance of these topics in the workplace.

We have also tried to gamify the approach, with an escape room based activity, which makes it easier for people to consume the content in a format which ensures higher retention and completion rates. This will soon be rolled out for entities in India.

And our penchant for creating awareness is not just limited to our organization. We revel in community outreach, and we are currently working with an NGO, EmpowerAnanya, to help young women pursuing their undergraduate degrees to already cultivate an inclusive mindset as they prepare for the college-to-corporate journeys.

A rather landmark achievement for us was the launch of the Coming Out Support Framework, a dedicated set of policies, facilities and an employee support group for employees considering coming out at the workplace. The sensitivity and empathy with which topics around confidentiality and disclosure are treated at Pride@SAP is definitely something we feel extremely proud about.

With June globally celebrated as the Pride Month, we are currently working on bringing back our Pride March, an annual onsite march that was a highlight for SAP campuses in India. We are extending the gamified learning approach by leveraging a microlearning format presenting Pride topics in an easily consumable format, as a small challenge running throughout Pride Month, with different missions and tracks for employee to learn and benefit from.

Further, in a bid to create safe spaces, we experimented with hosting listening circles, allowing people to join in and decompress on any topic, with no judgement or cross-talk, just simply providing people a compassionate group of people to interact with. Seeing the amazing response, we are bringing it back this year and hope to help some people vent out and feel a little lighter and happier at the end of the interaction.

But Pride isn’t just a topic for June, and we have a lot of other exciting areas to explore and experiment with in the months to come. Hopefully, we make the world a more inclusive place, one little step at a time.