Jobs are the litmus test for inclusion: Rajasekharan Pazhaniappan, Co-founder at v-shesh
02/18/2022“Jobs are the litmus test for inclusion,” said v-shesh Co-founder Rajasekharan Pazhaniappan, in an interactive session on the sidelines of the Inclusive India Summit organized by Rangam. Speaking to Rangam Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Nish Parikh, Rajasekharan said, “When a person gets a job, it means that inclusion is happening in the society. It builds the self-esteem of an individual, and friends and relatives start believing in that person.”
The organization that Rajasekharan co-founded in 2008, v-shesh, works in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) space across five cities in India.
Rajasekharan said, “Working and earning is a fundamental right for all of us but that often gets deprived. That’s where we view employment as inclusion.”
As an organization, v-shesh helps persons with disabilities (PwDs) find sustainable employment. It actively works to eliminate the conventional biases and generates awareness about hiring neurodiverse talent to make workplaces more inclusive.
“While the Covid-19 pandemic had a far-reaching impact on everyone, the biggest positive outcome has been the flexibility in work,” said Rajasekharan. “Differently-abled people, even to get a reasonable workplace accommodation, had to go right up to the CEO to get it approved. Now, with remote work becoming the norm, many of the hurdles have been ironed out.”
Rajasekharan believes that enablement, employment, engagement, and empowerment should be the “practice area” of any organization. Empathy and equity, he said, should be the core values of companies. “Had a framework like this been in place even a decade back, a lot of people would have been in the workforce, especially in a country like India where there’s not even accessible public transportation for differently-abled people, leave alone workplace accommodations,” he added.
According to Rajasekharan, “You have to go out to attract talent. You can’t remain passive and expect the best talent to approach your company. It should be the other way round. You have to work with partner organizations and show the commitment to hire. Tell them that you are ready to extend all reasonable accommodation. Outreach is extremely important to hire the best talent.”
While the pandemic provides a big opportunity to trainees to adapt digitally, the bigger challenge to have people access technical devices still remains, reminded Rajasekharan.
He said, “Training the trainer has always been a big challenge. But the number of people we have touched with our sensitization programs has increased a lot.”
The Chennai-based company has created a sign language program for hearing impaired people. The program contributes to the whole neurodivergent hiring ecosystem by involving human resource (HR) managers and talent recruiting teams.
“Neurodivergent people are customers to us. We at v-shesh exist only because we are able to connect with our customers. Training a person can’t be seen as a favor. It’s a job of all people involved in the ecosystem. That’s the principle we follow,” said Rajasekharan.