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.
This one is something that my manager thankfully understands and is very supportive of: many of us, because our sexuality and/or gender identity were not accepted growing up, became adults who need to come to terms with stuff through regular therapy sessions.
This means: flexible options to take time off and attend such appointments, even on a weekly basis. Ideally, you understand that what is more valuable to the company is me doing my job and for that my good mental health is a productivity boost and so you don’t even ask me to make up the time.
Second best is that you allow me to flexibly make up for that time later during the week.
Another thing that would be nice, especially in the context of tech, is that any queer group in the company is not just there either for networking (which is fine) or for being used for promotional material exploitation (which isn’t fine), but you also make us part of product design when relevant.
Thanks for taking time to write the comment.
On your first point of flexibility I’m very pro that and practice that. I never considered your particular examples before so I’ll keep them in mind going forward.
On your second point of product design I’ll be doing some research and educating myself on that topic. Thanks again.