Working. Out.
Today is National Coming Out Day in the US, an annual event that is observed by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community to raise awareness and promote discussions about LGBT issues. The day is recognized in the UK tomorrow, and kicks off National Coming Out Week (NCOW).
Businesses around the world also have to open their eyes and ears to working with more diverse workforces, and embrace LGBT employees. Niloufar Molavi, Chief Diversity Officer at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), knows exactly how important diversity is.
“If you have a group of people from the same background, you’re always going to be driving towards the same goal. But are you not looking at opportunities that, if you had a more diverse organization, you would be thinking about?” she tells MeetTheBoss.tv in an exclusive interview to coincide with NCOW. “Buying patterns are changing, and if you are not in tune with your customers and understanding what’s on their minds because you have nobody that can relate to that constituency, then I think pretty soon you’re going to become irrelevant.”
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This week’s internationally recognized event holds significant precedence this year following the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi after a video featuring him engaging in intercourse with another man was leaked onto the internet.
LGBT issues are also riding high on the news radar after American rapper 50 Cent took to his Twitter account to lambast the LGBT community: “If you a man and your over 25 and you don’t eat pu**y just kill your self damn it. The world will be a better place,” he tweeted.
The rapper’s outburst, along with Clementi’s tragic story and a number of other recent gay teen suicides, has caused a flurry of celebrities to speak out in support of the LGBT community. Most notably, openly gay TV presenter Ellen DeGeneres nearly broke down on her talk show last month when she talked about the Clementi affair: “This needs to be a wakeup call to everyone that teenage bullying is an epidemic in this country and the death rate is climbing.”
She also mentioned other teen loses: Seth Walsh, Asher Brown and Billy Lucas. “One life lost in this senseless way is tragic. Four lives lost is a crisis. We can’t let intolerance and ignorance take another kid’s life.”
Admittedly, while attitudes towards homosexuality are now light years ahead of what there were 20, or even 10, years ago, there is clearly still a huge disparity. A new report released today by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, entitled “How Fair is Britain?” reveals that homophobic bullying is still rife in the nation’s schools for instance; particularly within faith schools.
In the workplace, issues still remain too. Just this month The Daily Texan ran an update on the push to add domestic partner benefits for employees at the University of Texas, Austin. According to the story the University currently has little in its official policy to account for the needs of LGBT employees. The issue is so bad that when a staff member’s partner was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she was unable to insure her partner while she was alive, and then, in alignment with UT’s current bereavement policy, was unable to take paid leave to mourn when her partner passed away.
Thankfully, many are embracing diversity. Of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2010, 82 companies offer both gay-friendly benefits and gay-friendly policies; while The Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) for 2011 reveals that 337 business achieved the top rating of 100 percent this year. Collectively, these businesses employ over 8.3 million full-time US workers. Interestingly, when the CEI was launched in 2002, only 13 companies received 100 percent.
This year, PwC was among those scoring full marks – a score it has been hitting hard since 2008. (For the record it previously consistently scored 86 points on the CEI, placing it joint-second for the first six years of reporting).
In her exclusive interview with MeetTheBoss.tv Molavi discusses why diversity is so crucial to company success. In a special program dedicated to how companies need to create a gay-friendly workplace she explains, “One lesson we have focused on is engaging everyone when we talk about and discuss diversity.
“When we talk about and look at gender, we engage both our men and women in the discussion; when we are looking at our minorities, we engage both the majority and minority, and explore the experiences they’re having. With respect to our GLBT strategy, at the core of that is the role that our straight allies play.”
For more key findings in diversifying the workplace, head to MeetTheBoss.tv now.
Topics: Analytics, Human Resources, Leadership
