APCOM and the Australian Embassy kicks off Pride Month Highlighting LGBTQI Inclusion and Covid-19
Covid-19 Recovery and LGBTQI inclusion: A perspective from the Business Sector
“I want to highlight a couple of key themes from each of the panels that I found particularly striking…And on the second panel on business. K. Bupgawadee spoke about the system, policies allowances and employment conditions that Krungthai-AXA has in place to ensure effective inclusion for LGBTQI team members, how they are constantly looking at those and reviewing them. K. Isriya spoke about ensuring inclusive gender recognition practices in corporate policies and hiring processes. And Vicool spoke about the use of diversity recruiting and integrating inclusive principles into human resources policies and practices. So to me that emphasises the importance of systems and of integrating inclusion by default. And when you put it like that it sounds really simple and easy – we all should be doing it, but it is something that requires real thought, attention, and leadership from company executives. So I’d like to applaud Krungthai-AXA, LINE MAN Wongnai, and Agoda for their efforts in this regard. They’re setting the scene and leading from the front and good on them!”
H.E. Mr Allan McKinnon, Australian Ambassador to Thailand
Panel 2:
Covid-19 Recovery and LGBTQI inclusion:
A perspective from the Business Sector
Moderated by: Paul Thompson,
Founder of LGBT Capital, and Chairman of Equality Wealth
In this session various businesses explained how they integrated LGBTQI inclusion into their organizations and explored how businesses are dealing with LGBTQI inclusion as part of their Covid-19 recovery plan.
Bubphawadee Owararinth
Chief People Officer, Human Resources Department, Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance PCL.
Krungthai-AXA has implemented a come back to work in the office plan, by handing out PPEs, deep cleaning their office, vaccination plan for their staff and providing telehealth services for both their staff and customers. Also, the company provides psychological consultation with hybrid working and digitalization of work. As part of their core value in treating everyone the same, they implemented this value into their policy by giving out the same benefits to all LGBTQI staff such as. spousal benefits, gender reassignment surgery, parental leave, and adopted child benefits.
Isriya Paireepairit
Head of Public Affair, LINE MAN Wongnai
The employees are mostly young and tech savvy that operate in both tech and non-tech world. They are open to fresh new perspectives, being young and diverse staff – LGBTQI community is viewed as part of our society that needed to be included and already a part of their generation. With this in mind they implemented progressive policy by using where staff are known by the gender pronoun they wished to be known as including during interviews, the career page uses gender neutral pronoun. Senior positions within the company have LGBTQI representation, and there are positions open for people with disabilities in the company.
Vicool Patel
Senior Manager, Global Workplace Experience,
Diversity & Inclusion,
Agoda
A diverse company where there are 87 nationalities, 49:51 male to female ratio and the average workforce age is 31 years old. The 4 values that Agoda holds are; take ownership, experiment & measure, move fast and be the best. The company also has a diversity and inclusion policy; awareness, understanding, appreciating and leveraging. For 2021 Agoda has a strategy in further implementing diversity and inclusion into their workforce by attracting more talent, eliminating bias in hiring, and sourcing more diverse talents. Grow an inclusive environment where everyone feels safe in their workplace and retaining talents.
