At Kinnect, inclusivity, equality, and diversity are actual tangible processes ingrained in its DNA. Being strongly culture-centred, Kinnect has strived to create a culture where people of all genders and identities feel safe and welcomed to be their authentic selves. Since 2019, the agency’s #KinnectPRIDE initiative aims to promote workplace equity and to encourage all individuals to take PRIDE in who they are.
Kinnect’s initiatives aim to go beyond mere tokenism, and promote allyship, awareness, and sensitisation within the society, towards the plight and rights of the LGBTQ+ community. While in the past, its PRIDE celebrations were centred internally, with employees being the main focus, the agency has gradually increased its scope and aimed to impact the larger LGBTQ+ community.
This year, Kinnect has collaborated with The Humsafar Trust (HST) to raise funds for delivering critical ration support to LGBTQ+ individuals struggling due to the pandemic. The agency is using its incremental reach and marketing skills to encourage more people to donate to the cause, in a unique way- it has created custom-designed ‘Unapologetic Love’ T-shirts and is delivering these to every person who makes a donation of Rs 1000/- to HST. The donation can be made directly on HST’s website and donors simply have to visit kinnectonline.com/pride2021, upload the receipt, and claim their very own T-shirt!
Earlier this year, the agency marked International Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, by updating its email signatures to include and reflect gender pronouns. Through this, encouraged and gave all Kinnectors the opportunity to self-identify. Nirati Majmudar, Sr. Copy Supervisor at Kinnect and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, while speaking about the initiative said “What this did, at the very base level, is that it sparked conversations. The moment we received the mail and started adding signatures, conversations like ‘yeh hum kyunbatarahe hain’ came up. And slowly people understood that someone is using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun and the reason behind it. Such conversations may have happened only in certain work circles earlier but are now permeating to the very bottom.”
Kinnect has also on-boarded LGBTQ+ supportive counsellors to provide free counselling services to all Kinnectors and conducts periodic workshops that help in sensitising and educating people around gender and sexual identity. It has also created various social media campaigns in the past such as awareness-building videos when Section 377 was abolished, entertaining myth-busting films, and more. Kinnectors also recently spoke at a Clubhouse panel discussion centred on the theme- Maintaining PRIDE at Workplace.
Leveraging its advantages of being heard more often and using the power to reconstruct the culture within which it exists, Kinnect strives to become a true ally to the LGBTQ+ community and to help make the world a more considerate and inclusive place, for all LGBTQ+ identifying individuals.
