HR Pulse

Top 10 Methods for corporate leaders to support our LGBTQ+ employees and colleagues

Here is a positive approach for the corporate world to honor and respect its LGBTQ+ employees for Gay Pride Month, just days away now, and all year long. They are as follows:

• Be a corporate sponsor of the local Pride celebration. Public support matters, but don’t stop there.
• Review the recipients of your PAC contributions. Stop giving money to sponsors and supporters of the anti-LGBTQ legislation that’s showing up in state houses nationwide.
• Ensure your employee benefits package includes same-sex partners, whether or not the partners are legally married.
• Ensure your health care benefits include coverage for gender-affirming care, fertility treatments, and mental health services. Include your employees’ partners and dependent children.
• If you don’t have executives who are outspoken members of the LGBTQ+ community, find out why. Then fix the problem.
• Properly fund and staff the team that runs your company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and your Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).
• Remember that people live in the intersection of LGBTQ+ and other marginalised identities. If the only voices in your Pride ERG are non-disabled, white, cisgender, gay men (and white women allies), find out how you can ensure the space is more welcoming and affirming for Black, brown, trans, nonbinary, and disabled queer people.
• Offer leadership training, career coaching, and other professional support designed explicitly for LGBTQ+ professionals. Could you help these employees show up authentically to fulfill their potential in your organization (or risk losing them to a competitor)?
• Provide allyship training throughout your organisation. Make this training a requirement for all leadership positions. (Don’t stop at LGBTQ+ allyship. Remember, allyship must be intersectional.)
• Set an example by including pronouns in your email signature, Zoom window, and social media profiles. Be a vocal champion of your organisation’s advocacy and allyship work. Listen to your employees, and learn from past mistakes.