Taking Care of Your Staff (Part 2)

If your organization doesn’t have an LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group (ERG), or if you have one and want to learn how it could be better, don’t miss this episode. 

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Show notes:

Welcome to part six of the Be Proud series, 10 essentials for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace. On the previous episode, I covered some things about how you can look out for your staff. There's three main components to this last time I talked about the first two, which are one having annual LGBTQ+ inclusive training for all of your staff, new hires, and once a year for all staff and the other is having a designated staff position that is responsible for overseeing the Queer inclusion compliance at your company.

So today I will be talking about the third of these ways to look out for your staff, which is having an employee resource group also known as an ERG at your organization. So to start, what is an ERG? Again, it stands for employee resource group. This is basically like a group sponsored by your company or under the umbrella of your company for the staff that work for it.

It's a place for them to come together, meet, develop community, get resources from one another. And these groups are usually centered on shared experience, shared interest, shared identity. So in this case, it would be for anyone who identifies under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, as well as allies to that community.

Why have one of these groups at your organization? First of all, as LGBTQ+ people, we love community. That is why we are often referred to as the LGBTQ+ community, because there's something really neat about having that shared experience. And there's like a lot of built in safety with knowing a lot of people in this world

are not good to us and don't treat us right and don't approve of us for who we are, so let's all come together. Develop that sense of community. Know that we are not the only ones. See other people like us see other lived experiences similar to ours. And that helps us to feel just kind of better about who we are,

and it's also fun to connect with other people that have that same experience. Also, there's just not a lot of places for Queer people to gather together, like Queer, specific Queer, dedicated spaces. Historically bars are a place where we can go and we can kind of know we're amongst our people, which like, you know, that's fun, but a lot of people don't wanna go to a bar to meet people.

Maybe drinking's not their thing. And also it shouldn't be the only way that we're able to get together and let it be a space just for us. That's also one of the reasons that alcohol use disorders are higher amongst our community, because we're kind of like forced to gather together at places where people drink.

So, and if we think about it too, it. In the professional network. Sure. Sometimes networking does happen at bars, but it's also nice to have that at a place where it can be more of a professional environment. And if we think about the workplace, historically, the workplace has not been a safe environment for people to be out an open about being LGBTQ+ it's that much more important.

To have a dedicated group within an organization in the workplace because of that problematic history. If you don't have a Queer specific, ER, G a your organization, it's a missed opportunity. You're ignoring the fact that Queer people do have unique experiences in the world, and they have unique professional challenges in the world.

Not having a group and not having a place where people can come together and gather, it contributes to members of our community feeling isolated and having that pressure to stay in the closet at work. Versus if you have one of these groups, you're giving your Queer staff a safe space to gather and develop community.

This also deepens their investment in your company, which leads to retention and other benefits, stronger work performance. People are gonna feel more connected to their teams and more connected to their organization. And people are gonna feel more safe to bring their whole and authentic selves to work.

Which leads to them doing a better job. So like, yes, this is good for your people, right? This is ways to look out for your staff, but this also benefits you as a company, beyond those things. Like a lot of what I'm talking about in this series, it looks

really good for you to be able to. Other people. We have an employee resource group specific to the LGBTQ+ community. That looks good when you're recruiting for talent. That looks good when you are onboarding new people. That looks good. When you're talking to other companies about the inclusion work that you're doing, I've seen this play out in real time.

I've seen. Companies that I've worked for, where I have started initiatives there. I've seen them then tell that at other professional networks, like for example, like in a new development at our company, we now have an ERG specific to the LGBTQ+ community. And I've seen those other people be like, wow, like not even necessarily that they personally think that's an amazing thing.

Hopefully they do. But also they're just like, oh wow. That's like, that's so cutting edge. That's so progressive. They're doing things we haven't even thought of yet to do. They're doing a good job. That's how that translates often now. Another thing to think about. If you have a perspective employee who's like considering applying for, or joining your team, if you are working on an organizational partnership, if you have someone at your company who comes out to management or to their team, with all of these things, you get to highlight the ERG and you get to give it to them as a resource.

Once you get the group going, you also get the benefits of learning about what these team members, experiences and needs are that pertain to their work for your company. And within this larger ERG, these people can form subcommittees and they can spearhead various inclusion projects. Bonus win, win, win.

That's just adding inclusivity to your company and it's doing it in a way where you don't have to do any additional work. Like let those people be like, we see what the needs are here. We wanna take this on. We will implement these changes for you. Great. Thank you. Go for it. I had the opportunity to.

Start one of these groups at one of my former companies that I worked for, where I was doing a lot of LGBTQ+ advocacy work. And as I was doing that work regularly, I would have people in that company approach me and be like, it's so awesome that you're here doing this work, by the way. I'm also a community member too, which was really cool.

And so. You know, steadily, this was happening. And I was realizing we have all these Queer people here. No one knows that. And like, there's no way for us all to get to know each other and to develop that community, they were coming to me because my position there was Queer specific. So like that had some kind of built in door opener to be able to come out to me.

But I was like, we could do better. Like, let's all have a group for each other. So I had built some good relationships with some of the higher ups at the company. And so I approached them and I said, Hey, I've been thinking about something at the time. I didn't know the term ERG or employee resource group.

I just said, I would love to start a staff group here at this company for people that are LGBTQ+, and for allies to that community. Now keeping it real at first they were open, but they were kind of. They did not have any existing employee resource groups, which looking back now, it's kind of strange, cuz this was a big company, but they didn't have any of these groups.

So they were sort of like maybe, but what do you mean? What would it be? They were like do some more research and come back to us with like define it a bit more. What you're asking for us. You know, I went around to the campus and I started like approaching the people that had come to me one on one and said, Hey, I'm trying to get a staff group started here.

Is this something you'd be interested in? You know, what would you like to see out of it? And then from there, I just sort of came up with some of the logistics. I was like, all right, we'll meet once a month. We'll meet on. I think it was, I don't know, the first Wednesday of every month, why don't we do it during the lunch hour?

That gives an opportunity for people to come. Then once I got all of that together, I had something more clear and concrete to pitch to them. And they were also sort of like, uh, if we let you do this, like, what are you asking of us? So at the time, the answer to that was nothing like you all don't have to do anything.

I am gonna take care of this and like, you know, sidebar, essentially. I was like, I'm not asking for any kind of funding here. Like, I don't need money. I just wanna get everyone together. I just wanna develop sense of community and just kind of see what happens from there. After I kind of presented all that to them, they were like, okay, why not go for.

I named it company name allies, which I'm keeping the company name private, just cuz I don't have their permission to share it and you know, et cetera. But so blank allies was the name of the group. I made some flyers. I posted them all around the organization. I started kind of telling people, please come to the group, like, you know, I've gotten the permission, I've got some pressure on me.

Now they're curious to see what this is gonna be like. So, you know, help me out here. And so it was awesome. We had a good turnout, you know, again, this was a big company with multiple branches. The site that I worked at probably had. I don't know, ballpark 200 employees. And I would say that very first meeting, we probably had about like 20 to 25 people show up, which was awesome.

It was a really good turnout. And so, you know, we would just like, first of all, we would get to know each other, you know, we did introductions. What do you do with this company? I also had an optional invite to share how you identified. That was relevant, right. This was a Queer specific group for Queer people and allies to the Queer community.

And so like, you know, you could kind of see, people were like wondering, they're like, Hmm. So, and so's here. Are they part of the community or are they just an ally? And we don't always get safe opportunities to get to share how we identify. And so I also wanted to make. Priority and sort of have intention around that.

And I was clear that nobody had to share if they didn't want to, but it was really cool to see, like, you know, you could tell some people were like a little uneasy with it. They're like, I've never said this at my job before. My name is so, and so this is the department that I work in and I'm gay. I've been told covertly in a lot of different ways to never say that at my job.

And here I am about to do it, but it was really cool to see. And one of the neat things that happened was the HR director at this organization approached me a few kind of meetings in, and she was. Hey, thanks so much for spearheading that group here. This is really cool. And she was like, I had no idea how many, I forget exactly how she said it.

I don't know if she knew the term LGBTQ+, but how many members of the community there were at this company?

She had attended one of the meetings. So she actually referenced a specific person and was like, I have worked with him for like 10 plus years. And I had no idea that he was gay and that was so neat to get to learn that and that he felt comfortable to share that. And like, I, you know, I just had no idea and you know, which I was like, great.

That's awesome. That's kind of part of this. And it's not an accident that you have no idea because, you know, I gave her just sort of like a quick little, historically, people have not been given safety to be out about being LGBTQ+ in the workplace. So if you give them an affirming, safe space to do so, it helps with that.

And that's probably why he came. And that's probably why he said it in that meeting. She was receptive to that. She was like, oh, that makes so much sense. And at first she was like, now I feel bad. Like we could have done this sooner, you know? And I was like, okay. But like, you didn't know, and now you do, and now you're doing it.

So like, let's just go with that. And let's just kind of let this be a win here.

Hey everyone. Eric here with a question for you. What's your company's inclusion score if you're like, um, I don't know. How do I measure that? Don't worry. I've got you. I've created a free checklist of the 10 essentials. Your organization needs to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. It only takes a few minutes to discover your score and you'll get practical ways to make it higher.

Hashtag winning to level up your diversity, equity, and inclusion. Head over to Be Proud With Eric dot com slash inclusion checklist.

Now there were some hiccups that we experienced with this group overall. It was awesome. It was just a success. People really enjoyed it. I loved it. A couple things that didn't work so well. So one, we had no financial backing. I initially almost like I, I just understood the subtext that that was almost a stipulation of it.

You know, they. Expressly said this, but they were sort of like, you can start a group, but like, we're not giving you any money for it, but like, you can start one if you want. So that's kind of problematic, you know, if your company is sponsoring a group and if that group requires certain things, it's nice to give them some financial backing so that they can.

Do some stuff, you know, host events and make change and affect change. And so we didn't have any of that. So that was, you know, at the time I didn't even really realize that that was a problem until we kind of started wanting to do some things and we didn't have any money for it. So note out there to all HR people and business owners, if you do have employee groups, show them that they matter by giving them some.

Now I mentioned the HR director had attended these, uh, meetings. Some of them, not all of them that she didn't come in the beginning, but somewhere along the way she did, which. I was sort of naive to this. I didn't register it as a problem. Um, I also had a really great relationship with her and friendly relationship to her, but then afterwards people approached me and were like, uh, why was the head of HR here?

And that's not comfortable for us. And like, we held back from saying certain things and you know, things like that. So that's just something to think about. Um, Other hand, it can be nice to have representation from executives and from people that can help affect change, be a participant in the group. But my recommendation there is like, if they are let it be a talked about thing about why they're there and, and something like that, that was something that kind of got overlooked, just because I didn't think about it until afterward.

And then it sort of organically just worked out because she didn't kind of keep coming to the meetings, not in a bad way, you know, she'd always be like, oh my gosh, I really wanna come, but I have this offsite event or I've slammed or whatever the case. So it kind of worked out well because then I never had to be like, you know, some people are uncomfortable with having you there actually, but that is something to think.

Another setback that we experienced was. So the group had started, we had probably had, I don't know, five or so meetings under our belt. And we were meeting around June, which is national pride month. And somebody in the group was like, we should host a pride event. On the organization, you know, almost like a mini, we could do a parade or we could just, you know, we could have tables and we could have games and food and you know, all these things.

And we all just like, loved this idea and we got so into it and we, you know, had all these fun things we wanted to do. And again, I kind of let it be known. They're not gonna give us any money, but we were all just like, we will just fund this, you know? We don't have to like ball out here. We don't have to break the bank, but like, we can make this happen and this can be really fun.

And, you know, Woohoo, let's go pride. So, so I then was like, cool. You know, I know who I can get the approval from. I know they're gonna love this. This is gonna be so fun. And I had a really good relationship with the vice president of the company who was also a really big Queer ally and helped to get a lot of the Queer inclusion that happened for this organization.

She was a big part of it. And. Essentially. She was like, um, no, I hear you. I get it. I think it would be fun, but the answer is no. And I was like, why? Like, what's the, what's the problem? Like, we're not asking anything of anyone we're gonna take care of everything. No one has to do anything, you know, and like why?

And essentially she was like, look, I'm gonna keep it real. I think what you're doing here is great. A lot of people think what you're doing here is great, but some people aren't super happy about it. Not that they were like, we don't support the LGBTQ+ community. You know, it wasn't that, but she essentially said that like some people thought the company was doing too much to show its Queer inclusion and.

She didn't wanna rock the boat essentially. And she was just sorta like a, a pride event and a pride parade might be pushing it a little too far. So that was a really tough one. Like I knew it wasn't personal coming from her, but it was a big disappointment. It didn't seem fair. There was a mixed message there where it was like, we'll let you have this group, but don't push it too far.

So then it kind of sucked cuz I had to go back and tell everyone, uh, Hey, the company said no, and that was disheartening and everyone was pretty disappointed. And then it had people starting to question how much the company actually cared about celebrating the Queer community versus, you know, were they doing it for other reasons?

I guess another encouragement to HR and business owners out there is. Support these groups and let them do the things that they want to do. It's kind of the whole point is to have programming and to have a voice. So some additional considerations here, if your company is very big, like a huge company, not only can you have an LGBTQ+ ERG, you may wanna consider having multiple sub ERGs or affinity groups within.

That greater Queer community. So for example, you might have a group for Queer and trans black indigenous people of color. You might have a group specific to trans and gender nonconforming people. You may have a group specific to trans-masculine people, one for trans-feminine people, one for the non-binary community.

It's also important to give these groups access to decision makers. There's lots of red tape within companies. And even though people have ideas and things that they want to do, they need to get the approval. So it's a good idea to have someone who is sort of the touchpoint for that, who has some power within the company.

And like I mentioned earlier, they don't have to be a member of this group. There's ups and downs to them being a member of the. For anyone out there listening, what can you do? What can you do with this info? So one, if you're a company that does not have a Queer specific ERG, where you can start is just vet the interest.

You could just put it out there to your staff. Like we are considering the idea of an LGBTQ+ you can call it an ERG. You can call it an affinity group. You can call it whatever your company already calls these type of groups. We're wondering if that might be something that would be beneficial to everyone here, you could hold like an informal kind of interest meeting.

If you do want to do this show up at this place at three o'clock on Thursday, and we wanna hear what your ideas are. If you are somebody who like. Works at a company. It doesn't even matter what your position is. You don't have to be on the leadership team, but if you feel inspired to start one, you might be a Queer person, or you might be an ally to the Queer community.

If you're like, you know what? This is super cool. And why not? Like it's not gonna hurt at all. And it's gonna help a lot. Maybe I'll start one at my company. I say, go for it. I say, do a, do some light research. You know, you don't have to have all the answers. I didn't, when I started one, it just started with like the idea and wanting to do it.

And then you kind of figure the rest out from there and then you pitch it. So like find someone who's got some clout at the company, have a bit of a rough idea of what you can present to them. Sort of like the scope of the group, the logistics of the group, and then pitch. It looks really good. I think, I think it shows initiative, you know, Hey, here's something that could not only be good for our company, but could be great for the people that work for it.

And I'll take care of it. Right. I've got this. I'm not asking anything of you. I will do this. How I can help if needed is number one, how to start an ERG is a core part of my inclusion certification program that I have for companies. So if you are a listener, whoever goes through that process, this is automatically gonna be a part of that.

Not only am I gonna tell you how to do it, I'm gonna walk you through the entire process. I can also assist with just that. So if you don't want to necessarily do the full inclusion certification, that's okay. If you're like, you know what, though, we could start with just having an ERG and we want some help with doing that holler at your boy.

I will help get that started for you. Here's the other way I can help. You may already have a group like this. I hope you do. And that group might benefit from some improvement. Maybe some things aren't working so well, maybe the group is like struggling with traction or struggling with activity or knowing what to do next.

Let's talk. This recently happened to me. I had some people reach out to me who were the co-chairs for their Queer ERG within their university that they went with. And they were like, we started this group, we're having a bit of a struggle getting sort of like member retention. And we're also having a bit of a struggle getting some buy-in from the.

Administration and getting some approval for some things, and we're not quite sure how to approach it. And so I was happy to kind of talk with them about that and talk them through some of the things that I've gone through and that worked well in doing those things. So that is a wrap on employee resource groups, main takeaway here.

They're very, very important to have. They look good for a multitude of reasons and they're not hard. So if you don't have one consider starting one. That is it for today. Until next time stay proud.

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