Meesho, an e-commerce company, has implemented a ‘gender confirmation’ leave policy that allows employees who want to transition their gender to take up to one month of paid leave for gender reassignment surgery and other medical procedures.
The new policy adds to the Bengaluru-based company’s recent initiatives aimed at increasing inclusivity within the organisation. The company, which joined the unicorn club last year with a valuation of more than a billion dollars, is also considering allowing employees to include same-sex and live-in partners in their insurance coverage.
“Over the past six months or so, we have been revisiting our policies through a lens of inclusivity and changing them, or adding new ones, when required,” Ashish Singh, chief human resources officer at the Bengaluru-headquartered company which has 1,700-odd employees in India . “With this new policy, we want to support employees going through gender transition and ensure they have the required time off.”
Meesho joins other companies with similar policies, such as Cisco, IBM, Amazon, Accenture, Godrej, and Sapient, with this new move.
“It’s a year-long process, if not more, of ‘transitioning’ from one gender to another, starting from psychological counselling and hormonal treatments to the different stages of surgery and recovery,” said Shachi Irde, a consultant at Sisa Consulting, which helps companies define their DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) strategy.
While leave is only one component, Irde believes that organisations can walk the walk toward inclusion for trans employees by raising awareness among colleagues about being more accepting of employees’ new gender identities and using appropriate pronouns.
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