How to celebrate Pride month at work

It’s been over 50 years since the first Pride march took place in the UK on 1st July 1972. In our review, Jane Farrell, Co-Founder of EW Group and one of our leading consultants, discusses how to celebrate Pride at work and what organisations can do to support their LGBT+ colleagues.

Before Pride month celebrations begin, it’s worth pausing. It’s great to celebrate, but it’s also important to understand and acknowledge why we are celebrating.

As a result of the ground-breaking and courageous work by lesbians, gay men, Trans people and their allies over many decades, in some parts of the world it is now so much better for many in the workplace. Partly due to changes in legislation in some countries, painstaking policy work, and training and development, it is less likely that LGBT+ people will experience verbal and physical attacks or be on the receiving end of the dreaded ‘banter’ (a word that is often used to excuse homophobic, racist or sexist comments) in the workplace.

What can organisations do to celebrate Pride month at work?

1. Educate staff so people understand that Pride was established as a defiant response to discrimination and prejudice.
2. Create authentic communications to ensure there is a balance between celebrating hard-fought rights, and the joy that we all feel when we are acknowledged and respected at work.
3. Listen to diverse LGBT+ voices. There are very different and sometimes clashing views within the LGBT+ community, and sometimes competing rights. We have different experiences and histories and are not ‘as one’ on many issues. Why should we be? We are diverse.
4. Discuss Pride month with different people in your staff networks or affinity groups and think about a range of activities to engage with your colleagues.
5. Fundraise to support local groups who support young LGBT+ people experiencing mental health issues. One of our global clients is fundraising to ensure LGBT+ people have legal representation in countries where it is illegal to be LGBT+.
6. Be prepared for the usual ‘what aboutery’ moments (e.g. ‘when are we having a month of celebrations for heterosexual people’). These moments tell us that there is more education and training to do. They are also opportunities to explain that heterosexual people often ‘come out’ in the first few minutes of meeting someone as they, naturally enough, talk about their partners, wives or husbands if they have one. If we are LGBT+, we often need to think very carefully about ‘coming out’ not because we are secretive but because we know it might result in discrimination or prejudice. It is the nature of privilege that if we are advantaged it’s difficult to spot, and if we are disadvantaged, we spot it in a microsecond as it is so familiar to us.
   

7. Champion equality beyond the Pride month celebrations. Truly inclusive organisations avoid appearing tokenistic and are committed to diversity and inclusion year-round. One month a year is not enough.
   

8. Recognise that the experience of LGBT+ people are vastly different, and sometimes conflicting, just like all other communities. There is no ‘one voice’ nor should there be.

Now, let’s start celebrating!

A final note on LGBT+ discrimination, prejudice and intersectionality at work

As we often say, it can be genuinely difficult to spot when we are advantaged by our social identity. When we are disadvantaged because of the way society treats us (due to our ethnicity, sex, age, religion, gender etc. or a combination of these things) we spot it immediately because it is so familiar to us.

It is great that so many organisations have policies and processes that recognise the potential for discrimination and prejudice and ensure their staff understand why these policies are needed. The best organisations also make clear the intersections with social class, race, and disability because most people in the world are experiencing discrimination for more than one aspect of their social identity. For example, disabled lesbians face compound challenges because of the assumptions that are made about their sexuality, the sexism they face as women, and the discrimination that disabled people face when traveling on public transport for example. Black gay men face racism and homophobia, sometimes at the same time.

It’s also important to be aware that the LGBT+ community is not homogeneous. There are different views and beliefs, and these are sometimes conflicting and contested. Beliefs about sex and gender are an obvious case in point. Some believe sex is a biological fact and some do not. These differences can be compounded by other differences – race, religion age, sex, nationality, cultures, for instance. This is familiar when structural inequalities are being considered and some will remember (or still experience) disagreements between some religious groups and LGBT+ groups, between some disabled people and those wanting rights to assisted suicide.

To sensitively manage and address disagreements such as this, it is crucial organisations:

1. Recognise and acknowledge that these differences exist.
2. Listen to the different views and then think their way through with sensitivity and skill keeping a focus on what can be done in this organisation.
3. Focus on what can be done to ensure that those that identify in different ways are able to feel comfortable, safe and respected in this workplace. Focus on practical steps that can be taken, rather than the differences between people.
4. Regularly emphasise that everyone at work should be treated with respect and dignity and work through what that means. As David Ruebain said in a recent blog discussing contested issues and intersectionality, much of human rights law focuses on fairness and dignity. If we maintain a culture of respect in the workplace, this will help avoid assumptions and conclusions which maintain conflict.
5. Avoid conclusions which represent ‘a zero-sum game’ – ‘for my identity to be respected yours must be denied’.

There are very few organisations where hard and fast policy decisions on sex and gender for example, are needed or enacted. Just as we know there are differing and opposing views within the disability community, organisations should start from the same assumption about the LGBT+ community, including debates on whether it is one community at all.