NEW DELHI: Tata Steel, one of India’s largest steel manufacturers, is going big on diversity. The company is looking at recruiting 5,500 women by 2020, most of which will be replacement hiring. Currently, Tata Steel has about 2,000 women, or less than 6% of its total headcount of 35,000.While the planned hirings will help improve gender diversity, the company is also making an effort to induct more people with disability — the plan is to add 100 such employees every year. It currently employs 106 differently abled people. Of the total 5,500 women it plans to hire, 1,400 will be inducted in managerial positions. It currently has 660 woman managers.“Most of the diversity hiring would be replacement of positions currently held by men,” Atrayee Sarkar, chief diversity officer at Tata Steel, told ET.Also, some new positions are being created for women. The diversity and inclusion plan for Tata Steel started taking shape in June 2015. This was when the company formed a diversity group called Mosaic.It took a year to lay out concrete plans around diversity and inclusion. Unlike other companies that talk about diversity at managerial level and at industries that have desk jobs, for Tata Steel — which is an organisation that has multi-location mining, raw material and manufacturing — bringing in diversity is more complex, Sarkar said.“Trying to achieve the percentage in all our locations is a bigger challenge to us.” The strategy for improving diversity is clear: Take more women at the entry levels. Previously, just 10-15 per cent of entry-level hires were women. Now, it wants to take this to a minimum of 30 per cent— that means, every 10 new hires at the entry level will have at least three women. “We’re getting women from campuses, in the first block,” she said.The next on Tata Steel’s diversity agenda is increasing the headcount of differently abled people. “We just brought on board ‘EnAble India’ (as) a partner for recruitment, infrastructure and sensitisation for the differently abled. It is their first time for a manufacturing company,” Sarkar said. EnAble India works with the differently abled to help them get jobs and provide them with pre-employment services, supplemental education, counseling and support services. Tata Steel wants to make 50 places at its offices completely suitable for the differently abled.“The design, structure, etc., will be completely designed for the visually impaired/people with hearing impairment/physically disabled across some of our locations,” Sarkar said. The company has also worked out a ‘power engagement’ programme.In case a qualified spouse of an employee in a different location wants to be employed, Tata Steel will take that person on board on a contract basis under its ‘Spouse-Retainership’ programme. “We are also looking at our alumni. People who have left us and want to come back may do so on a contract on long-term basis,” she said.Recently, Tata Steel introduced policies such as work from home, paternity leave, 15 days special leave to the mother and two-three nursing breaks a day for women with babies.