I am a manager in a tech company and have a number of people report to me. One of my personal goals is on increasing diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace. To be clear this is a goal I set for myself, not a goal coming from a corporation.
A little background on myself. I am a gay cisgendered man married to another gay cisgendered man and we have an adult child. I would say I have a relatively privileged life. I grew up in a safe area and in a stable family. I ended up in tech at a very young age and found success throughout my career. The area we live in is a liberal town, in a liberal city, in a liberal state, in a liberal area of the country.
I have known I was gay since I was a child. Came mostly out as a teenager and fully out as a young adult. I have never lost a friend because of being gay. I did struggle with my identity as a young person but eventually made peace with it.
Lastly the LGBT community that I grew up in is not the same as it is today. The community (read bars) was mostly gay and lesbian. Trans people were just barely on my radar. It wasn’t really a topic anyone talked about. Intersex, asexual, pan-sexual and others were just not words I ever heard mentioned once.
What I realized was that even though I was gay, and had been gay for decades - I was actually relatively out of touch. As an example I recently purchased a sticker I like that said pride. I went to the cashier to buy it and they were all excited and mentioned the word “ace”. I had no clue what they were talking about and smiled and thanked them. I came to realize the sticker had the colors of the asexual flag.
The reason I share that is to give everyone context on who I am. My question is this. What could your manager do to better support you at work? I’m open to stories, questions, experiences, what has worked / what hasn’t worked. Really anything I’m at the start of my journey and very much in the learning phase.
To also be clear my goal is not limited to the LGBTQ+ community but this felt like a natural first step.
So if you’re in the US, one thing you might be able to do, depending on your position in the company: make sure that the insurance plans offered by your company cover gender-affirming care. This has been an issue for me and my wife. Her company has a very affirming non-discrimination policy, but they didn’t know that their insurance sucked on this front because it’s a fairly small company and it had just never come up before. If you have the opportunity to head that off at the pass, do it! It will save a lot of headache for any trans people you might hire in the future.
I never even considered this was a thing. I set a reminder for myself to check on this Monday morning. I’m unsure how much I can change but I can at least start a conversation. Thank you.