Beyond Pride: Here’s how organizations can support their LGBTQIA employees all year round
It felt great to see the biggest brands and businesses all over the world come out and celebrate Pride in June, conveying their support for the LGBTQIA community everywhere. They spoke about championing inclusivity, equality, and respect for the community, not just through their public advertisements, special promotions, but through many initiatives and activities internally among their employees and teams too.
But Pride is not just about the month of June and literally painting everything around in rainbow colors. A brand or business that believes itself to be a true ally will do everything in its capacity to uplift the community, helping with their growth all year long, and provide more opportunities to all queer employees.
And we’re here to tell how employers, brands and businesses can support their LGBTQIA employees and the community beyond Pride month, all year long and be a true ally.
EDUCATE – Yourself and everyone around you
It is high time we all know and understand the significance of Pride month, its history, and the community. Instead of waiting for their LGBTQIA employees to educate their peers, employers must take up the initiative and try a little every day – to learn, to understand, and to grow.
And this doesn’t have to be an academic session that throws a lot of statistics and information around. It can be done through the simple consumption of various forms of media, which gives a perspective of the community, their challenges, and how everyone can be a better ally.
For instance, a movie day where one shows a movie made by an LGBTQIA artiste, book recommendations of works by LGBTQIA writers, or even a fun stand-up comedy session by an LGBTQIA comedian. It will help people shed their inhibitions and find answers to the doubts and questions in their minds.
Know your pronouns
One of the major mistakes cisgender people make while talking to or about people belonging to the LGBTQIA community is using or addressing them by the wrong pronouns. Imagine the amount of distress it would cause if someone completely ignored or misunderstood the other person’s identity and addressed them wrongly. The community undergoes the same thing almost every day.
While HE and SHE are pronouns used by people in general, while addressing someone who is non-binary or gender-neutral, we must use the pronoun THEY. And if one’s not aware of it, the simple thing to do is ASK what is the right way to address.
Many companies have made it a practice to use gendered pronouns in their official communications too. It’s a good way to start.
Make ally-ship a culture at workplace
Who are allies? Anyone, who acknowledges, understands, and respects difference and stands in solidarity with them, for the challenges the community that’s a minority faces every day. And at the workplace, it is ideal that allyship must start from the top, as it inspires and encourages everyone else to follow the practice and become a better person.
As an employer who is an ally, one must stand up against any form of discrimination at the workplace, sensitize the employees about things they must be careful about, and how not to say or act in a way that might offend their peers who are a minority.
Allyship also means supporting initiatives and movements by and for the community, creating a safe and equal working environment, treating the employees as equals while accepting the
difference, and respecting privacy by not bringing up their gender into the spotlight without their permission. Yes, it’s a long road, but the ideal one and encourage employees to make allyship a culture.
Establish clear anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies and create safe spaces.
Being an ally also means ensuring the workplace is free from discrimination and a safe space for one and all to work, grow, and thrive. It starts from the basics, like ensuring the benefits that every employee gets are equal, including for the ones who belong to the LGBTQIA community.
Create a clear and strict anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy that ensures that no form of bias, harassment, discrimination, or aggression against anyone, especially the employees belonging to the LGBTQIA community, will be tolerated. Back it up with sensitivity training for the ones in charge, like managers, supervisors, human resources, and team leaders.
And how to create a safe space for your LGBTQIA members? By forming LGBTQ support/resource groups, having inclusive forms, and avoid gender segregation as much as possible, by having gender-neutral washrooms, inclusive dress codes and activities at work.
Recruit More LGBTQIA employees and work with more LGBTQIA businesses
To round it off, all the things we talked about can make a difference only if we accept the difference. Make the workplace more inclusive by hiring more employees from the community and creating more employment opportunities for them.
Make it a choice to work with businesses run by members of the LGBTQIA community and help them grow. And this is not an obligation someone is asking employers to fulfill, but about simply being human.
Wishing you all Happy Pride once again, hoping for a better, more inclusive tomorrow, every day!