How to Facilitate LGBT Inclusion in the Workplace
Your business can greatly thrive if you have an inclusionary workplace. LGBT inclusion is important that you have to make sure that everyone feels safe and welcome in your workplace. Here are some tips on how to make your workplaces more inclusive and fit for LGBTQ+ staff.
What is the LGBT Community? And who are it’s Members?
The LGBT community stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community members. Sometimes, they are referred to in short hand as gay, queers or non binary people.
What is LGBTQ+?
It’s a statistical fact that around half of LGBT community members experience discrimination in the workplace.
It helps to understand who these people are and how they deserve equal treatment among their heterosexual peers.
LGBTQ+ refers to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. The + refers to others in the spectrum such as intersex, those born with both female and male biological traits and others including asexuals and aromantics hence the additional label +IA.
This means that you have to ensure that members of the LGBT feel safe and supported and are not discriminated on the basis of their gender identities and self expression.
Tips for Facilitating LGBTQ+ Inclusion in the Workplace
1. Review your LGBTQ+ Policies
Having LGBT policies in your HR manual is paramount. This is crucial for putting guidelines out on how to become more inclusive and how to avoid discrimination. This inclusion must be a core part of your Equality and Diversity policy, and having a separate policy for LGBTQ+ can ensure that members of the gender queer community feel safe.
2. Provide LGBT Training Seminars
Provide training and diversity seminars for your employees. Yes include the straight people but this is for everyone in recognizing the issues which the LGBT face on a day to day and making sure that none of those discriminatory practices are inside your organization.
3. Include LGBT Members in Conferences
If there are critical conferences where people must have a say then something as simple as including them in those conversations can greatly enhance their sense of inclusion and feeling a part of your organization. Asking them questions giving them a voice when they must speak is absolutely paramount.
4. Set up an LGBTQ+ Safe Space
You can also include an LGBTQ+ safe space in the office where members of the LGBT can chat among themselves. The only issue here is it might further divide them from other members of your workforce. But having an LGBT area where there are LGBT motifs and all staff are free to join? Why not.
Making them feel empowered and a huge part of your company is going to go a long way in your inclusion policies.
5. Appoint heterosexual allies for your LGBT team members
A lot of liberal folks in the workplace may want to air their support for the LGBT+ community and allowing them to do so gives more freedom and a recognition of your gay and lesbian colleagues where all sexual orientations are voicing support for their inclusion and talents.
6. Include special pronouns in the office
If you’re up for it you can also include special pronouns for those who may be intersex or trans. He or she or they/them may not be as binary as you think it is when it applies to the LGBT community.
You can make it a policy to add pronouns in signatures and emails to make sure that heterosexuals and LGBT’s can unite and assert their own gender identity.
7. Appoint LGBT Staff in Management
You should make it a point to place LGBT community members in leadership positions. If they perform well, this should always be the basis for promotion and this shows all your staff that you value the opinions and the strengths of those who are among your queer counterparts.
8. Celebrate LGBT History in your office
You can include national pride day or trans day of visibility among your holidays to celebrate. If you can make it an official policy to make these paid holidays? Then great, but if you cannot, then at least recognizing these special days is an important step in making LGBT recognition official.
9. Collaborate with LGBT staff in drafting your policies
Include your staff in drafting your policies. Make sure they have a voice. Rules like not allowing people to behave hostile or to use discriminatory slurs are good to enforce so that your workforce can peacefully co-exist in the same space. It also helps if you allow your LGBT staff to draft policies in general. This means they have a say in all affairs, and not just those pertaining to their issues.
10. Promote acceptance and inclusion in general
You can also promote acceptance and inclusion in general. For example, you may employ older employees and those who are past their senior years as long as they are able and make them active members of your staff.
This sets the tone in allowing all people in and not just those in the LGBT but everyone who can contribute to your organization.
How Outsourcing can Empower LGBT Workers
Outsourcing can promote your in-house LGBT workers
Instead of getting your in-house staff hampered with tedious routines, you can focus on their growth. Giving out rote tasks such as data entry, bookkeeping, appointment setting and number crunching can work well because outsourcing to a trustworthy company gives you and your internal team much more fredom.
Outsourcing can allow your LGBT staff to become leaders
You can then appoint your in house staff to supervise your outsource team. This works through giving them a much more influential voice. Influencing others and standing as leaders in your company assures you of quality output because you are now allowing your staff to work in their own terms while helping an outsourced team of employees develop their own skills.
Outsourcing gives you more freedom to focus on sales.
You can focus on sales. You can increase your marketing funnel. With growth comes the opportunity to grow your business and establish even more connections, thus giving you authority that you never otherwise had if you were relying on quaint processes in your operations.
Outsourcing gives higher job satisfaction
If your workers are able to stay in a position of influencing others, while giving them higher functioning tasks, that means you value them. This certainly is true if you include your LGBT staff for growth after you outsource some of your repetitive tasks. High job satisfaction among your staff also translates into better productivity.
What are your Outsourcing Needs?
Outsourcing resources for Small Business Owners