Safe to come out?

Does the culture of your organisation encourage lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBandT) staff to feel comfortable to come out? Have you asked staff who are out in your organisation for their answer to this question? Did you know that in April 2020, a gay engineer was awarded £175,000 for his ‘nightmare’ treatment after coming out?

An engineer was awarded 175,000 after taking his employer to the employment tribunal for the way he was treated after revealing he was gay. Mr Allen had been working as a quality manager for his employer for 8 years but things turned sour when he made enquiries into adoption leave in 2018, when he and his husband were looking to start a family.

Mr Allen said ‘I’d started to come out to select people in my team, as well as the HR director. I confided that we had started to look into adoption. That’s when everything changed.’ Mr Allen faced numerous homophobic comments including limp-wristed gestures, being called camp and an email depicting two stereotypical gay characters with comments directed at him. He said: ‘I’d taken a leap of faith to come out at work, and all this horribleness was evolving in front of me. It was almost as if my worst nightmares about coming out at work were happening. These were senior managers, people above me, these weren’t people who were part of my team.’

This case reminds me of research conducted in colleges and universities to assess organisational culture in relation to sexual orientation. One of the key findings was the frequent ‘mismatch’ between HR and senior staff, who held the belief that the organisation was inclusive and LGBandT friendly, and the experiences of LGBandT staff in the organisation who recounted issues of homophobia and discrimination.

You might want to consider:

• approaching LGBandT staff who are out in the organisation, to ask them their views of how inclusive, friendly and welcoming the oganisation is to LGBandT staff. And specifically asking about how comfortable staff feel about coming out and any barriers that LGBandT staff face
• carrying out a survey asking questions such as if people feel free to be open about their sexual orientation in the workplace. Further information on capturing this type of data can be found in the Stonewall publication ‘Do Ask, do Tell’, which can be downloaded here.
• Delivering training on sexual orientation equality. My popular training course ‘LGBandT equality – valuing and nurturing difference, tackling trans and homophobia’ provides staff with the knowledge, skills and tools to confidently champion LGBandT equality and tackle homophobic and transphobic bullying. Updated with the very latest findings from Ofsted, this workshop shares best practice in the sector. You can download publicity about this workshop here