Add an Inclusion Clause to your Contracts to Protect Your Business

Check out this ep to know what to do if one of the organizations you partner with has an instance of anti-Queer bias. 

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Welcome to Part 10 out of 10 of my series LGBTQ+ Inclusion in the Workplace. On the previous episode, I talked about the importance of sponsoring Queer organizations at least annually. And on this episode, I'll be talking about all the do's and don'ts of partnering with other organizations to start, why is this important?

Why does this matter? Partnering with other companies is just a part of doing business depending on what your business is. Most of us want to do this. We want to form relationships, we want to work with other organizations, and ideally we want those to be long term. Of course, you probably won't. Enter a partnership with any business who has already had a known instance of bias against a marginalized community.

The tricky thing is, one, you may not know about it if they have, and two, what happens if you've already entered in to a professional relationship with an organization? And then after that, something happens. That's why it's super, super important to have a formal commitment to only partner with organizations who actively demonstrate Queer inclusion.

And a great way to do this is to have it be a written statement, and it should be a part of any contractual partnership. That way if something does happen, You're already protected there. You don't have to figure it out, and that company can't say, Well, hey, you're bound by a contract, so you have to stay with us.

If part of that contract stipulates partnerships must demonstrate inclusion. Why is this important? Anti LGBTQ+ bias is a systemic problem, meaning it exists. And it exists throughout all different types of spaces, and certainly it's rampant in the workplace. Companies on the whole can make mistakes and can demonstrate bias, or individuals who represent those companies may make a mistake, and either way, if you are in a partnership with that organization, that impacts you as well.

I've gotten back into LinkedIn in the past couple years as part of the inclusion work that I'm doing. Shout out, Follow me on there at you guessed it, Be Proud With Eric, and one, I really enjoy it. I think it's a great way to connect with people. I think it's a really neat way to network and see connections of your connections.

And the algorithm on there, on the feed is pretty cool. So while I really like it and enjoy it, I also see a lot of things that people will say on there that is pretty astounding to me. Yes, there are microaggressions against the Queer community. There are misinformed and uneducated statements left and right, but also straight up homophobic and transphobic comment.

Especially in response to people posting LGBTQ+ empowerment posts. Again, anti Queer bias is a systemic problem. Everyone has grown up hearing messages that being straight and cisgender is being better than being Queer. Some people don't like it when people post things proclaiming who they are, sharing their real experiences, just talking about what happens in their day to day life and at work.

And a lot of people are activated, in particular when people are proclaiming who they are in an empowering way. So here's what happens. They see this post and at first it. An anger response, a frustration response, and it's hard to make sense of how can these people who I've been told are wrong by the system my entire life?

How are they on here claiming who they are, as if it's a good thing? And so that kind of manifests itself in a lot of different ways, like some people. Can hold that and tolerate that and work through it on their own. And some people can't. And so they act out. They act out in the comments. They troll people.

They say things like, This is LinkedIn. This isn't Facebook. You shouldn't be posting things like this. Right? So there's like lots of different things going on with that kind of comment. But sometimes people will just say, Really overt homophobic and transphobic things. I'm not gonna repeat any of them on here.

No need to do that. It's triggering enough to see them on there. So when I see that and when I read comments like that, and then right after I read the person's name with their profile picture, And their company name listed right there with it. I'm like, Whoa, what are you doing? You're making yourself look bad.

You're making your company look really bad. You could get fired for this. So like this isn't, I'm not talking about cancel culture here. This isn't not allowing freedom of speech. Sure, you are free to say whatever you want on there, but if what you say is hate speech against a marginalized group on a professional platform that is essentially you're living resume, there are consequences for that.

Think about what happens if somebody from your company does this? How do you respond to that? And also, this might not be on your radar as much, but what if someone from a company that you're partnered with does this? Then what are you going to do?

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 beproudwitheric.com/inclusionchecklist

Interfacing with people in professional spaces. What I've tended to see is this is just not on a lot of people's radar. They don't think it will happen to them. They're not prepared for it. When it does, and here's the thing, it's way more likely to happen than it is to not. So when it happens, If you have a written statement in your mission statement in your company culture, and most importantly in your contracts with organizations that you partner with, you're protecting your company if you need to amend or end that relationship.

So that is A foundational piece to have that there, to have that in writing, have it be part of the conversation. That's actually a great idea too, even when you're just in talks to work with companies. That should be, no, we only partner with companies that are inclusive and here's what that looks like and here's what that doesn't look like.

It's also really important to have a corrective procedure in place if an existing partner demonstrates anti Queer bias. You might not want to end that relationship and you don't necessarily have to. I guess that's up to you to decide. It depends on the gravity of the situation as well. So if you don't want that relationship to end and you want it to continue, you may be able to, but you can't just let it slide.

You definitely can't ignore it cuz that's gonna look really bad. So if you don't have anything set up at ready, you're gonna be scrambling when it does happen, and then you're gonna be coming from a place of panic if you have it done and you have it ready and you let it be known before you enter into collaborations, you can feel the relief of knowing what to do when it happens, and feel the relief of knowing that you protected yourself and your company on the front end.

If you're working with me, I'll give you the exact language to use to vet out potential partnerships and to include in your contracts. I'll also give you the corrective procedure to use. If one of the organizations that you have a partnership with does demonstrate anti LGBTQ+ bias and spoiler, me working with that company to repair the damage is included.

So I am taking care of this for you. You're welcome. But don't mention it because one, it's my job, and two, I love it. All right. This is the last episode of my LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion series. I laughed, I cried. I was triggered. I found it really healing as people have been engaging with the content along the way.

They've been reaching out to me, they've been sharing their personal stories of navigating being Queer in the workplace and in the world. And I've also gotten a lot of positive feedback from my audience about how helpful this information has been for them and how they've used it to begin increasing inclusion at their organization.

And that feels really good to me. It feels really energizing. It feels very inspiring. So I am going to keep going. To borrow a line from JLo's recent acceptance speech. And let me tell you something else. I'm just getting started. So I am gonna give myself a break first 'cause this series has been a lot of work, but it's super cool.

I now have this as a living library, as a resource that I can give to companies so that they can listen to it whenever they want to. And their wheels can start turning and they can start thinking about this and digesting the information and hopefully taking it to the next level by implementing tangible changes so that there can be greater safety and empowerment for my community members.

My obsessive compulsiveness is also very pleased that the series is in multiple of fives. In other words, This Workplace inclusion series consists of episodes five through 15 in my podcast, so bonus there. And also a reminder, that's where you can check out the other episodes in the series if you haven't done so already.

And I am just tickled that going forward I can tell anyone who needs to know, check out episodes five through 15. Just something about it makes me happy. I had to do some reworking in there when I realized that somehow 10 episodes would actually be episodes five through 14, and that gave me a, a bit of a tick and I had to do some reworking there, but it worked out really well if anyone recalls,

taking care of your staff was a two parter, so that sort of multiple purposes. One, it's my favorite topic in the series to talk about. It's super important to take care of the people that work for you. So there was so much there that it worked great to break it up into two episodes and to end it on episode 15.

So for now, that is a wrap on my LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion Series. Thank you so much for listing. Until next time, stay proud.

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