What makes cafeterias at offices in India peculiar is neither the wide array of cuisines nor is it the snaking queue of employees. It’s the conversations.
The small, almost invisible courtesies that happen in these spaces: someone pausing mid-sentence to ensure a teammate’s mic is unmuted on Zoom, a manager asking a young mother how she’s adjusting to work after maternity leave. These aren’t the grand acts of inclusion you’ll see emblazoned on glossy annual reports. They don’t come with hashtags or corporate videos.
But according to Sonica Aron, Founder and Managing Partner of Marching Sheep, these are the “real behaviours that allow people to be their authentic selves.” And if there’s one thing that can change a workplace culture faster than a leadership memo or a shiny new inclusion policy, it’s the sum of these tiny, human moments.
Small Shifts, Big Changes
Imagine a multinational like Amazon India. Thousands of employees, multiple cities, dozens of nationalities and languages. The idea of “inclusive culture” can sound like an HR fantasy. But the moment a team lead remembers to schedule meetings that don’t collide with Friday prayers, or a colleague switches to accessible fonts in presentations, or someone simply says, “I don’t know much about your festival… tell me about it,” something shifts. The air becomes lighter. People exhale.
There’s a curious thing about large organizations: they love scale. Everything is measured, optimized, and dashboarded. Yet culture, that most essential glue of corporate life, tends to resist quantification. It grows not in the boardroom but in the everyday details: in emails, meeting rooms, pantry chats, and Slack messages.
“Inclusion,” says Aron, “isn’t about a one-time workshop or declaring yourself an equal-opportunity employer. It’s about the way we make others feel. The tone of an email, the language in a job description, the simple act of listening in a meeting.” Marching Sheep has worked with global giants (Accenture, PepsiCo, and Mahindra), and what they’ve observed is delightfully consistent: when inclusion becomes habit, culture follows suit. A team that celebrates festivals from all communities without reducing them to token gestures. A manager who doesn’t assume why someone needs flexibility, but simply says, “Take your time, we’re here when you’re ready.”
When Inclusion Loses Its Capital Letters
The word “inclusion” has become so inflated today that it risks floating away. Every multinational company operating in India (from Microsoft to Unilever) now has diversity councils, allyship badges, and glossy microsites filled with smiling employees of varying ethnicities, genders, and hair colour.
But Abira Bhattacharjee, CHRO of Embee Software, says, “Real inclusion doesn’t begin with policies or programmes, it begins with people. With how we listen in meetings. How we support someone going through a tough time.”
At Embee, they’ve discovered that the hardest part of inclusion isn’t intent; it’s bandwidth. HR professionals are often the most overworked people in the building. “When you’re managing workflows, approvals, and reports,” Bhattacharjee explains, “it becomes harder to be present for the moments that matter: listening to an employee who’s struggling, checking in during a life change, or simply recognizing someone’s effort.”
It’s a paradox: the busier the company becomes with managing people, the less time it has to actually see them.
From “Culture Fit” To “Culture Add”
One of the most subversive shifts Marching Sheep has encouraged clients to make is moving away from the term “culture fit.” It sounds harmless enough, like matching socks. But in practice, it often translates into “people who look, sound, and think like us.” “Instead, we talk about ‘culture add,’” says Aron. “What new perspectives does this person bring? How might they expand the collective intelligence of the team?” The manager who once hired based on comfort begins to hire based on curiosity. Teams that once operated in echo chambers begin to evolve.
This philosophy is catching on across India’s MNC landscape. IBM India, for example, has been championing neurodiversity hiring programmes, welcoming individuals with autism into roles that suit their unique cognitive strengths. SAP Labs runs “Autism at Work,” a global initiative that has found enormous success in its Bengaluru office. Tata Consultancy Services has implemented flexible working policies not just for women returning from maternity leave but for anyone managing a life transition be it caregiving, studying, or health challenges.
Belonging: The Hidden Metric
The corporate world loves its KPIs: Key Performance Indicators. But belonging doesn’t come with a dashboard. It’s measured in sighs of relief, in laughter that isn’t forced, in how long someone lingers at the end of a meeting because they feel heard. Bhattacharjee puts it succinctly: “Inclusion isn’t just about who’s in the room; it’s about how people feel once they’re there.”
And in that simple line lies the essence of Global Diversity Awareness Month. For all the summits, webinars, and press releases that October inevitably brings, the true measure of progress will never be the posters on office walls. It will be the conversations that happen when no one’s watching.