I am a manager in a tech company and have a number of people report to me. One of my personal goals is on increasing diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace. To be clear this is a goal I set for myself, not a goal coming from a corporation.
A little background on myself. I am a gay cisgendered man married to another gay cisgendered man and we have an adult child. I would say I have a relatively privileged life. I grew up in a safe area and in a stable family. I ended up in tech at a very young age and found success throughout my career. The area we live in is a liberal town, in a liberal city, in a liberal state, in a liberal area of the country.
I have known I was gay since I was a child. Came mostly out as a teenager and fully out as a young adult. I have never lost a friend because of being gay. I did struggle with my identity as a young person but eventually made peace with it.
Lastly the LGBT community that I grew up in is not the same as it is today. The community (read bars) was mostly gay and lesbian. Trans people were just barely on my radar. It wasn’t really a topic anyone talked about. Intersex, asexual, pan-sexual and others were just not words I ever heard mentioned once.
What I realized was that even though I was gay, and had been gay for decades - I was actually relatively out of touch. As an example I recently purchased a sticker I like that said pride. I went to the cashier to buy it and they were all excited and mentioned the word “ace”. I had no clue what they were talking about and smiled and thanked them. I came to realize the sticker had the colors of the asexual flag.
The reason I share that is to give everyone context on who I am. My question is this. What could your manager do to better support you at work? I’m open to stories, questions, experiences, what has worked / what hasn’t worked. Really anything I’m at the start of my journey and very much in the learning phase.
To also be clear my goal is not limited to the LGBTQ+ community but this felt like a natural first step.
My question is this. What could your manager do to better support you at work?
This one is something that my manager thankfully understands and is very supportive of: many of us, because our sexuality and/or gender identity were not accepted growing up, became adults who need to come to terms with stuff through regular therapy sessions.
This means: flexible options to take time off and attend such appointments, even on a weekly basis. Ideally, you understand that what is more valuable to the company is me doing my job (rather than clocking a certain number of hours) and for that my good mental health is a productivity boost and so you don’t even ask me to make up the time.
Second best is that you allow me to flexibly make up for that time later during the week.
Another thing that would be nice, especially in the context of tech, is that any queer group in the company is not just there either for networking (which is fine) or for being used for promotional material exploitation (which isn’t fine), but you also make us part of product design when relevant.
So if you’re in the US, one thing you might be able to do, depending on your position in the company: make sure that the insurance plans offered by your company cover gender-affirming care. This has been an issue for me and my wife. Her company has a very affirming non-discrimination policy, but they didn’t know that their insurance sucked on this front because it’s a fairly small company and it had just never come up before. If you have the opportunity to head that off at the pass, do it! It will save a lot of headache for any trans people you might hire in the future.
You’ve already hinted at the first step: learn more about different queerness flavors than your own. If your company has trainings or allyship meetings organized by your queer coworkers, attend them to get to know them better and learn more about how to help directly from them. If not, maybe it’s time to help to start an initiative like an employee group and celebrate pride together? Personally I feel like my visible coworkers helped me a lot just by being there, in addition to a lot of resources and their work on systemic communication and support from my company.
From more personal experiences, as long as you’re not insensitive about it, ask people about their needs rather than assume and guess. If you feel some help may be helpful, ask rather than act without consultation. Do not ignore anyone’s identity but do not walk around on toes either - it’s as othering to be ignored, infantilized, or belittled due to who you are, as it is to feel constant “positive” dishonesty and lack of feedback from someone who is afraid of talking openly about anything including work stuff. You want to be aware, not to treat people specially in any direction. Bring awareness to other teammates - normalize pronouns in introductions and on title slides, mention local pride events during fun part of your team meeting, share what movies on the subject you found emotional (but do not do it in a way which seems to bring obnoxious attention to your one queer report, that won’t be appreciated by neither side…). All of these apply to shades of queerness same as being a woman, a neurodiverse person, or any other minority.
Thank you for this. There is a lot to process here so I’ll likely have to read it a couple of times before it really sinks in.
The one thing that instantly resonates with me is the " I feel like my visible coworkers helped me a lot just by being there". The one bit of positive feedback I keep getting is when I tell people I have a husband people have directly told me having someone in leadership so openly and casually talk about that has made them feel seen.
Because of that I have made a little effort to talk about my husband a little bit more. Wear a pride pin, wear a pride tshirt, have a pride background on zoom. I’m convinced i’m being obnoxious, hence why the ask for help here.
One thing that was a huge breakthrough for me was remote work. It really relieved various issues for me related to dysphoria and personal comfort.
The ability to work remotely also allowed me to move to a state that has a much better record with LGBTQ+ protections without affecting my employment.
Dissolve the hierarchy
Could you expand on this a bit? I’m unsure if you mean something like a ‘flat’ organization or something more radical?
When I first read your comment a day or so ago I decided not to engage with it. I assumed it was a troll. I spent some time thinking about it and decided to engage. I started this thread with the intention of educating myself about view points I don’t understand.
With that said, if you are willing I’m interested in hearing what you have to say.
Equality in the workplace starts with Syndicalism.
Thanks for sharing. Overthrowing capitalism is a bit outside my scope at this moment though.
