International Pride Month takes place throughout June. The event aims to promote and celebrate LGBTQ+ rights to improve the experience of LGBTQ+ citizens across the globe. Here at Each Person, we are passionate about extending our rewards and recognition services to help employers ensure that their employees feel appreciated and supported. One way to do this is to celebrate occasions that are significant to employees, such as cultural holidays and minority awareness periods.
Pride month is an important celebration to mark in the workplace to encourage inclusivity and acceptance. Inclusivity is crucial to retaining talented employees and maintaining job satisfaction. 73% of employees are more likely to perform better when they feel their voices are heard at work. On top of this, genuinely inclusive teams are more likely to make better decisions 87% of the time.
There are countless ways employers can celebrate pride month, so we’ve put together a guide to help you through.
Educational Training Days
Education on LGBTQ+ issues is a fundamental component of making positive changes to improve workplace inclusivity and knowledge. There are plenty of organisations that offer courses on LGBTQ+ inclusivity in the workplace, such as Free Courses in England, Stonewall, High Speed Training and many more.
Training days ensure that your team know how to make considerations for their co-workers and make sure they feel accepted at work. They are also vital to tackling unconscious bias. Although everyone in a work environment might be supportive of gay rights, many people are unaware of their internal bias against LGBTQ+ people. More than anything, education on these issues offers employees time to reflect on their behaviour and enables them to make a conscious decision to change for the better.
Open And Inclusive Communication
Pride month creates an opportunity to promote an open and inclusive communicative space for LGBTQ+ people to express themselves. Stephanie Huckel, Senior Global Program Manager of Diversity and Inclusion at IGT, expressed that 50% of non-LGBTQ employees do not believe there are any LGBTQ+ workers at their company. However, it is unlikely that this is correct; 46% of the LGBTQ+ community have admitted to hiding who they are at work.
One way to overcome this is by ensuring an open environment where everyone is heard. This allows workers to feel comfortable expressing themselves or to come out in their own time.
Flexibility For Pride Month Events
One way to celebrate pride month at work is to let your employees celebrate in their own time! This means being particularly flexible in June to allow workers to attend pride events. Pride marches and other events are a fantastic way for the LGBTQ+ community to come together and unite.
These events also act as a vehicle to campaign for more positive change. While great strides have been made in the past few decades, there is still much to be done to make our global society more inclusive.
Fundraisers
Show your people that you care about them as an individual by supporting LGBTQ+ charities. Fundraising is a great way to spread awareness about issues while also providing a little bit of fun for employees. There are many great charities out there, such as Kaleidoscope Trust, Just Like Us, ILGA and many more.
However you decide to celebrate pride, it is essential to mark the occasion. Ultimately, employers should do what they can to support their employees. This will help foster a positive and open work environment for workers, no matter how they identify themselves.
Why not celebrate your LGBTQ+ employees this pride month with a rewards and recognition platform that allows you to not only say thank you for your hard work, but also celebrates what is important to your employees. We help our clients let their employees know that they support them and their individuality.
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