Training: LGBTQ Inclusion for HR, L&D, Recruitment modules

Highlights from the Training Session

Personal Identification – Insufficient Documentation

Starts at 00:58

• This theme is repeated throughout the training.
• Advice to make allowances for transgender people who cannot produce sufficient identification documents.
• Advice to assist staff to create a dual identity
• “Do clever things with systems in terms of having an external facing, um, gender that goes into our systems that, that plug into tax, um, banks and internal facing systems that recognize the person’s affirm gender”

Um, another key concept to pull out is when we’re talking about gender affirmation, legal affirmation, the fact that many trans people are going to be able to, are going to struggle having their, their gender legally recognized, which means they’re gonna struggle producing, uh, an ID in their affirmed name and gender.

So from an HR point of view and a recruitment point of view, that is obviously has a big impact because we always ask somebody to produce ID. Um, and where it becomes a, a problem for person, either, um, they’re not gonna be able to produce ID or they’re gonna have to have an uncomfortable conversation with us to say, and essentially come out and say, The ID that I’m gonna produce is not gonna match how I, I, um, How I’m going to present to you in the workplace.

Um, and it also potentially means that we have to do clever things with systems in terms of having an external-facing, um, gender that goes into our systems that, that plug into tax, um, banks and internal-facing systems that recognize the person’s affirm gender.

Starts at 00:58

LGBTQ People ‘Read Themselves Out of’ Policies

Starts at 3:03

• Advice that policies must counteract the “long lived experience of being actively excluded” and therefore always explicitly mention LGBTQ, even if they apply to all staff
• Incongruent with later advice to not say “mother” in maternity policy

Because we are often trained that if we don’t actively exclude somebody, therefore they are included. However, what we’ve learned with the LGBTQ community and and um, many other marginalized communities is because they have such a long lived experience of being actively excluded, that almost becomes the expectation.

And therefore, if you don’t explicitly include us, we will read ourselves out. So in order to make us understand that we’re included, um, you need to actually write us in and use this explicitly inclusive language. So what does that actually look like? Well, this can be language in policies. So for example, what we recommend is people have a look at their policies, they have a look at the definitions of their policies to make sure when we’re talking about we’re talking about LGBTQ employees, when we’re talking about their families, we specifically call out, we mean LGBTQ people.

Starts at 3:03

Policy Language

Starts at 4:45

• Cautions “older language” should be removed from policies because they are “negative” – not because they are inaccurate
• Creates additional protections as a “leading practice”
• Suggests protecting “gender expression” in policy
• Suggests protecting “relationship status” because protecting marital status is hierarchical

Um, Anti-discrimination policy. So we’ve said that, um, since 2013, the Sex Discrimination Act has protected people on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status. So they should already be covered in your anti-discrimination policy, but what we often find is, firstly there’s a lot of, um, older language hanging around.

So, um, that might have the term, um, ‘sexual preference’, you might have the term ‘lifestyle’. These are negative terms. So, um, we certainly would recommend going through auditing all of your policies, making sure those two negative terms are removed, and making sure the correct terms are in place. Um, as I said, correct terms, ‘sexual orientation’, ‘gender identity’, ‘intersext status’ are legally protected.

For, um, leading practice, LGBTQ inclusion you would add a couple of extra terms. First ‘gender expression’. That’s acknowledging that many people are non concordant with gender norms and they should also be protected. Um, second is ‘relationship status’. We often have marital status written into our policy, but ‘marital status’ prioritizes marriage in a hierarchy of relationships.

Um, and therefore a more inclusive term would be to use the term ‘relationship status’.

Starts at 4:45

Don’t Say Mother

Um, parental leave policy. We’ve already spoken about how important it is that we make sure that our definitions are, um, using inclusive language. So calling out the fact that we are covering LGBTQ families, calling out LGBTQ partners.

Um, we should also be really careful to not have any gendered language in there. Often our parental leave policies have been written, um, using a traditional view where, where a woman, um, will become pregnant, have a child take six months off work to be the primary caregiver of a child, the male husband. Um, might also take a couple of weeks off work.

Um, and, um, when we continue to use terms that buy into that, such as ‘maternity leave’, ‘paternity leave’, ‘mother’, ‘dads’, all of these terms that’s reinforcing those, those gender norms. Um, so using terms like primary caregivers, secondary caregiver, making sure we’re not referring to, um, ‘partners’ using gender terms like ‘mother’, like ‘dad’, um, is really important.

But also we need to consider the types of leave or the types of ways families are created to make sure leave is available for them. So, um, obviously traditionally we would view, uh, becoming a parent is through, um, the meeting of an egg and a sperm and a woman gets pregnant, gives birth, and they’re the primary caregiver.

The, the husband may be the secondary caregiver.

Within LGBTQ families, that does not happen quite so easily and often. Um, Uh, families are created through different ways such as through, um, surrogacy arrangements or through adoption arrangements or fostering arrangements. So making sure that you explicitly call out these type of parent parenting arrangements within your policy and making sure that, um, there’s equitable leave available for those types of families.

Starts at 6:26

Types of Family Violence

Starts at 12:30

• Claims that “Withholding somebody’s medication” is a type of family violence that “happen within the LGBTQ community, which people outside of that wouldn’t have even have considered” that “happens not just between intimate partners, but between family members”
• Trainer notes that “Um, there are often cases we hear of, of women’s shelters who wouldn’t accept trans women” but fails to note that most do (in compliance with the Sex Discrimination Act, and there are also projects such as the Transgender Homelessness Support Service which only support transgender individuals.

Um, and we also need to include that there are some specific types of family and domestic violence, um, that happen within the LGBTQ community that we wouldn’t even think about if we are not part of the LGBTQ community. So things like threatening to out somebody or threatening to withhold somebody’s medication are types of, of, uh, domestic and family violence that.

Happen within the LGBTQ community, which people outside of that wouldn’t have even have considered. So again, when we’re writing examples of what family and domestic violence looks like, it’s really important that we define it properly. We say, um, this happens in all types of relationships. We say it happens not just between intimate partners, but between family members.

Starts at 12:30

Personal Identification – Gender Markers

Starts at 15:26

• Allow staff to change their identity at work “without massive amounts of documentation”
• The message is repeated at several points during the training: identification requirements should be changed or reduced for some individuals

… and that we have the ability to change or allow people to change their gender markers within our HR systems and within our profiles with relatively, uh, little problem not requiring, um, you know, massive amounts of documentation.

Documentation, not, not requiring any legal proof of gender change because as we know, there are many people who cannot actually have their, their gender legally recognized. So if we require that, um, we are creating an unnecessary barrier, we are not required to, to ask our employees to give us any, um, any legal proof to acknowledge their gender on our internal systems.

Starts at 15:26

Gender Affirmation – Policies

Starts at 26:03

• Suggests proactively creating policies that invite staff to “come to work in their affirmed gender” including non-binary and transgender
  • Produce guidelines for each link in the management chain, the team and the transgender person
  • Advises to use “lived experience” rather than data and statistics in formulating the policy
  • Recommends auditing all “preferred name systems”
• Include non-binary gender and “gender expression” under the policy: “we, we often fall into this trap of believing that, um, men will be, uh, presenting in masculine ways women will be presenting in feminine ways.“

Uh, another key area for you to think about as HR professionals is gender affirmation guidelines. More and more we are doing work in, um, in our members to help support employees who are affirming their gender in their workplaces. And, um, often this comes a surprise. Often we get a call because somebody’s gone to their manager and say, Oh, I want to affirm my gender.

The manager’s gone to HR and HR have gone, Dunno, dunno how to do it. Dunno what you’re talking about. Never done it before. Then we get a call going, help. Um, and obviously we can help, but, um, it’s really good if you can have thought about this a bit before, so that when you come to the, the, the time that somebody does come to you and say, uh, we want to affirm our gender.

Uh, we want to affirm our gender in our workplace, um, you have a clue what to do. You have some processes laid out. Um, it’s not quite such a panic. You can get started on there and you can talk confidently around how to help it, help your employee. So it’s really good practice to develop a policy and some guidelines.

And what we would recommend is a general policy calling out. We support people to affirm their gender. We support people to come to work in their affirmed gender. Um, you know, uh, transgender gender versus non-binary people. And, um, call out some specific, uh, considerations, but then produce some good guidelines.

And the, the three key audiences that we re would recommend that you produce guidelines for is firstly the person who’s affirming their gender to explain what sort of processes that we’ll be covering, what sort of support they can expect, the things that they would need to think about. Secondly, the employee’s manager, so that the manager understands what sort of support they will be required to give and how they can help that process.

And, and, you know, if the person is part of the team, how they can help, um, smooth that journey for the team. And the third set of guidelines is for the team themselves. And again, guidelines to help them understand how they can support their colleague, um, inclusive types of behaviors, what sorts of expectations we would have on their behavior.

Um, good things to include in guidelines and making sure that we’ve got solid definitions. Uh, this is often a, uh, uh, un poorly understood area. Um, people are not super clear on it. Often people don’t know any, any trans people. So if we can give a really good set of, of definitions and terminology so people understand what we’re talking about is great.

Lived experience is a great thing to think about, including, um, we know that when we can talk about people’s, um, lived experience, personal stories, that is really impactful, that that really does help to make a cultural change and increase understanding more than. , you know, data, statistics, bare facts often does, and a protocol for changing, um, somebody’s gender within our organization.

And this is really important coz this is often where it falls down. Um, there are so many places in most organizations where, um, somebody’s name or gender will appear in HR systems or in phone lists or in, um, you know, business cards, name plates on desks, uh, organizational, um, charts with hierarchies.

There’s, there’s hundreds of places that we have to think about. We have to audit and we have to work out who needs to change it, who needs to be involved, and how to keep that information confidential until such a time as we announce that this is happening. Um, we also have to understand, as we said, that some people are not ablely to have able to have their gender legally recognized, which means we might have to do two sorts of things.

We might have to change our internal systems. Um, the, the non, um, facing-out systems where we are required to use legal gender, um, while still keeping somebody’s legal gender in our payroll systems, for example. We need to understand how we do that without the external, um, old name and gender being visible to anyone internally.

So looking at things like our preferred name systems that we were already have in our organization, making sure we use them appropriately, making sure that we don’t accidentally out somebody by having visibility across different systems. Um, again, making sure that we are recognizing the breadth of the trans and gender diverse community.

Often, uh, we fall into the trap of just writing gender affirmation guidelines for, for people who are affirming to binary gender. So men, people who who, um, were assigned female at birth, but identify as men, people who were assigned male at birth, but identify as women. Um, make sure that we are also picking up people who are affirming their gender in a non-binary way, making sure that we’re also calling out gender expression because we, again, we, we often fall into this trap of believing that, um, men will be, uh, presenting in masculine ways women will be presenting in feminine ways.

Um, but we need to understand that, that that doesn’t necessarily work for everybody. So we, we call out, people are able to express their gender in ways that are authentic for them too, as well as their identity.

Starts at 26:03

Gender Affirmation – Special Leave

Starts at 31:18

• Staff should use sick leave for medical appointments
• “Shouldn’t expect” staff to use personal or annual leave for “other reasons that they may need to be physically away to be able to manage these aspect of their, their gender affirmation”
• Include additional leave for gender transition unrelated to medical appointments

Key things to consider is firstly, making sure that we provide special leave. Now, um, many people who affirm their gender will undergo or access some sort of, um, gender affirming healthcare.

Those healthcare processes would be covered under somebody’s sick leave. However, there will be lots of other reasons that somebody who is affirming their gender may need time away from work. There are lots of other reasons that they may need to be physically away to be able to manage these aspect of their, their gender affirmation.

Um, and we shouldn’t expect that this comes out of somebody’s, um, personal leave or, or annual leave. So it’s really good practice to include some amount of, of non-discretionary paid special leave to cover these other aspects of gender affirmation.

Starts at 31:18

All-gender Toilets

Starts at 32:54

• Non-binary people don’t identify as neither men nor women, they “are neither men or women“
• All-gender toilet facilities are for non-binary individuals, and staff in the early days of affirming their gender

Uh, the third thing that we really need to consider is, uh, availability of facilities, so toilets and changing rooms, and anything else that is typically gendered in our building infrastructure. So we really need to think about the provision of all-gender facilities, and there’s a number of reasons for this.

So, firstly, you know, the, the obvious reason is we have non-binary people, um, who are neither men and nor women, and therefore we don’t, we don’t have toilets for them. Um, the second consideration when we’re talking about gender affirmation is, is many people who are affirming their gender, even if they’re referring, affirming their gender to a binary gender, will not necessarily feel super comfortable straight away using the toilet that aligns with their gender identity.

Starts at 32:54

Reading this Document

This is a non-exhaustive summary of the training session provided by Pride in Diversity. It is a sample of the way that LGBTQ issues are represented by ACON, and the messages that are presented to member organisations about how to approach workplace policies and how to prioritise LGBTQ staff members.