Building LGBTQ+ Inclusion in the Workplace

June is recognized as Pride month in the United States. Pride is a nationwide celebration of our LGBTQIA2S+ community and their stand against oppression. Quick quiz - do you know all the letters and numbers I just stated? Here are the answers.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit, Plus (may include pansexual, gender queer, and many more)

LGBTQ+ inclusion is more than knowing the acronym or wearing a Pride shirt. Inclusion is “authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power” (source: OpenSource Leadership Strategies). Building inclusion in the workplace can improve decision-making and innovation, increase employee satisfaction and retention, and strengthen your brand with customers (source: Gibran Registe-Charles).

Loftis Partners offers a 2-hour virtual session called An Introduction to LGBTQ+ Inclusion. In this session, we focus on building connection with shared knowledge, language, and understanding.

When is the first time you can remember hearing about the LBGTQ+ community in the workplace? This is one of the first questions we discuss in this session. When I ask this question, I always get answers that vary across generations. It is important to understand how we were socialized toward the LGBTQ+ community from our childhood until now.

Author Bobbie Harro offers a Cycle of Socialization model that helps each of us walk through the socialization process. She says, “We are born into a world with the mechanics of oppression already in place. We are socialized by people in our early years of life and taught to play our roles and follow rules. In the early years of life, we are consciously and unconsciously bombarded with messages about who should have power and who should not by all the institutions we encounter. We are heavily influenced by during the early years of life to see the world in a certain way.”

Looking at our socialization process helps us, especially those who do not identity as queer. Queer people are having a living experience while those who don’t identify as queer are having a learning experience. This means that we non-queer people will never fully know what it’s like to be queer in this world, no matter how many people we know or books we read. Understanding this guides us to an approach of cultural humility.

Cultural humility is a personal lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique whereby the individual not only learns about another’s culture, but one starts with an examination of one's own beliefs and cultural identities (Source: University of Oregon). This also includes an examination and recognition of power dynamics and imbalances, a desire to fix those power imbalances and to develop partnerships with people and groups who advocate for others. Might I point out the phrase “personal lifelong commitment”? The work is never done.

What are some ways that we do NOT practice cultural humility? I bet you could write a long list for me. Here are some that come up quite often:

·       Making assumptions based on appearance

·       Assuming everyone has the same experiences

·       Applying a monolith lens to groups of people

·       Prioritizing our comfort over others when sharing

·       Speaking when we need to listen more

You can dig deeper into your own socialization with this free tool.

Depending on where you live and how you consume media, you may have different thoughts on how many people in the population identify as LGBTQ+ in the United States. Younger generations have higher percentages of people identified as LGBTQ+. This relates to the workplace in multiple ways. First, more people are coming out in the workplace. Two, younger generations will become a larger percentage of the workforce. Third, the LGBTQ+ community is under attack, which creates a workplace safety issue.

How does this show up in the workplace? In a recent survey by Glassdoor, 45% of LGBTQ+ employees worried that being out at work would decrease their advancement opportunities. Another 55% of these LGBTQ+ employees had experienced or overheard homophobic comments by their coworkers. When these LGBTQ+ employees were asked why they wouldn’t be out at work, they cited these reasons: people talking behind their back, people acting uncomfortable around them, people scrutinizing their behavior, being excluded from activities, and not being promoted.

For those who do not identify as queer and don’t have much experience with LGBTQ+ friendships and families, I encourage you to read this booklet – Coming Out: A Handbook for LGBT Youth by The Trevor Project. We provide several resources through our website.

In order to build LGBTQ+ Inclusion, it is important to understand the terms. Inclusion is authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power (Source: Racial Equity Tools Glossary). LGBTQ+ is an acronym that collectively refers to individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, sometimes stated as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) or, historically, GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender). The addition of the Q for queer is a more recently preferred version of the acronym as cultural opinions of the term queer focus increasingly on its positive, reclaimed definition. The Q can also stand for questioning, referring to those who are still exploring their own sexuality and/or gender. The “ + ” represents those who are part of the community but for whom LGBTQ does not accurately capture or reflect their identity (Source: Racial Equity Tools Glossary).

In our 2-hour session, we spend an hour on answering this question: What are some ways that we can support our LGBTQ+ employees? We worked through a privilege exercise, discuss potential workplace scenarios, and create a cultural humility action plan. Each session is available for up to 20 participants. We offer free sessions each year in June and October. Otherwise, the price is $500 per session, which includes a pre-meeting and post-meeting with the client.

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