As Pride Month comes to an end this June 30th, let’s take stock of what all-year LGBTQ+ inclusion would actually look like in corporate culture.
Every year, around June 1st, something strange and almost ceremonial takes place in corporate offices across India. Logos bloom into rainbows. HR teams frantically schedule panel discussions on inclusion. Someone in marketing remembers the acronym LGBTQIA+ and the cafeteria whips up a rainbow-coloured dessert called Pride Pudding. It’s all very colourful, and often rather short-lived. Welcome to corporate Pride Month. That glorious 30-day period every June where diversity becomes a hashtag, equality gets a logo refresh, and inclusion is framed in PowerPoint. Then, July comes along, and everything goes back into the diversity drawer until next year.
But what if June wasn’t the starting point? What if it was the check-in, the progress report, the celebratory pause in a year-long marathon? That’s the question posed by Sonica Aron, founder of Marching Sheep, who articulates the shift. “If we think of June as a celebration of the outcomes of what we’ve done all year round, the questions we ask begin to shift,” she says. The shift, as she sees it, is away from the optics and toward the outcomes: Did we create a safe space? Did we hire meaningfully? Did we build trust?
Problems With The Pride-Only Parade
Aron reminds us that allyship is a continuum, not a campaign. Real inclusivity, she argues, means using June not to begin the work, but to reflect on the progress made in previous months. And she’s not alone in this thinking. Raghunandan Saraf, who runs Saraf Furniture, believes that companies too often reduce Pride to a marketing exercise. “June tends to be a branded-themed month,” he says, “but where inclusivity recruitment flags are raised alongside half-hearted campaigns with no real substance behind them.” For Saraf, the real work is continuous and serious. It’s about policies that don’t change with the seasons. It’s about safe spaces that don’t disappear after the parade. It’s about giving employees (especially queer ones) a seat at the decision-making table.
Ridhima Kansal, Director at English home fragrance brand Rosemoore, goes further. For her, the performative flair of temporary rainbow logos or sticker-covered coffee mugs amounts to little more than lip service. “Support should never be limited to one month,” she says. “Authentic engagement means backing queer communities all year long.” And she’s right. Because when inclusion becomes seasonal, its impact becomes superficial.
It starts with understanding that June isn’t the only month with a rainbow. There are Queer awareness moments throughout the year:
- National Coming Out Day (October)
- Trans Day of Visibility (March)
- Agender Pride Day (May)
- Intersex Awareness Day (October)
If you’re looking for a calendar of meaningful action, the rest of the year is helpfully furnished with reminders. You can launch a queer hiring initiative in January. You can roll out inclusive insurance benefits in February. You can host a leadership workshop on unconscious bias in April. And you can check in with your LGBTQ+ employees… literally, any month.
What Does All-Year Pride Look Like?
Here’s a helpful cheat sheet for organisations looking to support the LGBTQ+ community well beyond the month of merch:
- Revise policies:Ensure your policies (healthcare, parental leave, anti-harassment) explicitly include LGBTQ+ concerns.
- Train managers:Equip them to handle real conversations with empathy, not awkward silence.
- Listen. Then act.Conduct listening circles or anonymous surveys. But remember: feedback without action is just decorative.
- Support queer businesses:Partner with queer-led vendors, creators, trainers, and consultants.
- Celebrate queer joy:Not just resilience. Not just trauma. But everyday excellence, creativity, humour, love.
Companies that mean business when it comes to inclusion aren’t just painting their logos with Pride colours. They’re rewriting HR policies to include gender-affirming care. They’re auditing recruitment pipelines to remove unconscious bias. They’re inviting queer voices not just to town halls, but into leadership meetings. And most importantly, they’re building cultures where employees feel they can bring their full selves to work… not just their “work-appropriate” selves.
So as June draws to a close and the banners come down, let’s ask: What now? The future of work isn’t just about who gets hired. It’s about who gets heard, who feels seen, and who stays.