This week our Medical Director Dr Rebecca Brady will host an internal session for our employees, alongside Helena Territt, an experienced inclusion and diversity professional. The session will focus on psychological safety in the workplace and like other companies, given that it’s Pride Month, will be discussing LGBTQIA+ awareness and understanding how psychological safety is impacted.
It’s great that 96% of our employees agree that they are treated fairly regardless of sexual orientation when responding to the Great Place to Work® survey last month.
But we, like other companies, still have work to do. Pride Month has certainly helped raise awareness as a seasonal event – but people are not seasonal.
Bringing your whole self to work is something that many people struggle with – what do you and don’t you share with your colleagues? It’s sometimes hard to know what’s appropriate when life and work seem more intertwined than ever. But to feel that you must actively hide fundamental parts of yourself will impact not only you, but may influence work relations too.
According to the LGBT in Britain – Work Report, over a third of LGBT staff have hidden the fact that they are LGBT at work because they were afraid of discrimination. Reasons reported include:
- the prevalence of homophobic and transphobic remarks in the workplace
- feeling uncomfortable when people presume the gender of partners
- believing that it would jeopardise job prospects
- not wanting to be a topic of workplace conversation.
There is much to be done to ensure people no longer feel this way in the workplace.
Education
In this article we’ve referred to LGBTQIA+ and LGBT communities. What’s important is what people identify with, rather than what is imposed.
People who are LGBTQIA+ are also learning. Violet Tyler is one of our Rehabilitation Case Coordinators at HCML. They say, “As a non-binary and queer individual, I heavily involve myself in politics and learning more about LGBTQIA+ events.”
Engage your LGBTQIA+ colleagues to help in training and understanding the whole workforce. What’s important to them, what do they think people need to know? What do people who don’t identify as LGBTQIA+ want to ask? Provide a safe environment for people to be open.
Policies and procedures
Employee policies and procedures must be fully inclusive of LGBTQIA+. This could include things that don’t necessarily spring to mind, such as pensions and health insurance. Of course, ensuring your LGBTQIA+ colleagues are protected with the relevant diversity and inclusion policies and procedures is a given, but can be challenging as a result of current legalities, as Violet explains, “I also do not have the luxury of legally being recognised as non-binary, with this recently being a discussion within parliament and being referred to as “non-bindery”. This was proceeded with “we need more information on this”, while there are non-binary people who can give them that information.”
Create allies
From education comes understanding and the opportunity for people to support the LGBTQIA+ community and confronts the challenges they face. Violet explains that this is now more important than ever, “Due to an uptick in queerphobia (largely transphobia) and rollback of rights (attempting to remove a ban on conversion therapy and trying to make trans youth unable to access lifesaving medication), it’s becoming more important to have people educated and be active allies.”
To be an ally you:
- don’t have to know everything, in fact it’s important to recognise that and be open to understanding more
- can choose to be public with your support or express it in ore personal ways through the language you use or conversations you have
- stand up and speak up against behaviour that is offensive
Be public with your support
Things will only change in the workplace if we get comfortable talking about it. Employers need to be talking about it and showing acceptance and support. LGBTQIA+ employees and help identify opportunities and advocate the company (as can allies of course!).
Small changes can make a huge difference as Violet says, “Putting people’s pronouns in email signatures (albeit with it being voluntary, so as not to out people as trans, or have people who are questioning their pronouns feel forced to do so) is a simple but clear sign of being supportive and always makes me feel better to see them in emails, and I and others have been using pronouns in my signatures since I started back in September.”
We’re on a journey and we know we have more to do, and that’s why we want to share these thoughts with others and say it’s ok, it’s a work in progress, but we are committed to this.