Supporting inclusive cultures from hiring to onboarding and beyond

Take PRIDE in your people: Supporting inclusive cultures from hiring to onboarding and beyond

June 9, 2021 10:43 AM

Over the past decade, companies have made major strides in creating more diverse workplaces. The business incentives of a diverse workforce — increased innovation, profits, and growth — are something HR teams and managers cannot ignore. Not to mention, it's simply the right thing to do.

But diversity is meaningless without the other side of the coin: inclusion. When people don't feel free to bring their authentic selves to work, it negatively affects productivity, motivation, and even creative risk-taking. And the truth is, too many LGBTQ+ employees don't feel comfortable being themselves at work. A 2020 study by Boston Consulting Group and New York City's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center found that 40% of LGBTQ+ people are closeted at work, and 75% have reported experiencing negative day-to-day workplace interactions.

Creating a company culture of inclusion where everyone feels seen, heard, and cared for is the only way to ensure your diversity efforts have a real impact.

So in celebration of Pride Month, let's talk about LGBTQ+ inclusion and what HR teams and managers can do to ensure that employees are free to come as they are.

Get on board with inclusive hiring processes

The way you present your employer brand and career opportunities — whether on your company website or in job descriptions on career sites — should give candidates a glimpse into your company’s values and inclusion practices. You can get this message across by simply outlining on the careers page what inclusion looks like at your company. Put your culture front-and-center and share what makes your company unique. Make sure job ads are inclusive by removing gender pronouns or any words associated with one gender. During the hiring process, resist the habit of asking someone their gender unless it's required. Think about the boxes you're asking candidates to tick and ask yourself if the information is essential.

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Increasingly, candidates are asking about diversity and inclusion from an ally perspective. Even your cis-gender candidates want to know that a potential employer understands the true meaning of inclusion and actively practices those values. Recruiters should be ready for this question and provide candidates with direct answers about diversity and inclusion at your company.

Help LGBTQ+ employees find each other

Consider setting up groups and events that allow employees identifying as LGBTQ+ to connect. Employee resource groups are a good way for companies to build communities within the workplace. Be careful not to "out" any employees by making assumptions about their gender or sexual orientation. Instead, HR teams can send a company-wide email to ask all employees which ERGs should exist. If your employees want to form an LGBTQ+ ERG, they'll speak up (as long as your organization has made them feel safe enough to do so). Also, an important distinction — the focus of ERGs is community-building and not education or outreach. If it's more community-oriented, empower them with a budget and additional resources and support.

Make sure your tech stack is flexible and inclusive

Are the tech platforms that you're asking employees to interact with every day flexible and inclusive? Evaluate your tech stack to make sure it incorporates more options than just male, female, and other (grouping people together as "other" is problematic in and of itself). If these products aren't inclusive, reach out to your vendors and ask if they can build more gender options into their products. If they can't, try to find an equivalent product that is inclusive. If that doesn't exist, be human and acknowledge to your non-binary employees that you're trying to do better.

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Hibob's HRIS platform, bob, was built with flexibility in mind, allowing HR teams to add custom fields to the gender list on employee profile cards. This feature enables employees to choose from thirteen different identities such as bigender, cisgender, gender fluid, femme, and genderqueer. In addition, the bob platform allows employees to list their pronouns, making it easier for companies to normalize pronoun use and for colleagues to know how to address each other. These include pronouns such as he/her, she/her, they/them, sie, hir, zie, and zirself.

Celebrate Pride at work

Take pride in your LGBTQ+ employees and celebrate Pride Month as you would any other big event. Organize a company-wide event (in-person or virtual) to make sure your LGBTQ+ employees feel like they are being recognized and celebrated.

Many LGBTQ+ employees remain closeted at work out of fear of being ostracized, suffering professional setbacks, or being the target of micro-aggressions. Companies have come a long way in hiring more diverse people and making room for a wide range of ideas, voices, and backgrounds. Yet diversity measures are meaningless if people don’t feel comfortable being their true selves at work. It’s up to HR and managers to create spaces where LGBTQ+ employees feel supported at work, where they will be met not with hostility or judgments but with open arms, encouragement, and the understanding that they belong.