In mid September 2007, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC, Washington, DC) announced its sixth annual Corporate Equality Index, rating employers on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. This year 195 companies earned a perfect score, a 41 percent increase over last year.
It’s part of a growing trend, says Eric Bloem, deputy director of the Workplace Project of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (Washington, DC). He’s expecting another increase in 2008. He says more and more companies are considering GLBT issues a standard part of their diversity and inclusion efforts.
Good for the bottom line
The HRC index reveals that some industries are progressing faster than others. Bloem notes that financial service companies got out of the gate quickly. Now aerospace and defense companies are moving up fast in recruitment efforts and HR policies.
“It’s about having the best people come to work,” Bloem says. “You can’t afford to limit yourself with an environment that’s non-inclusive.”
Plus, “It’s good for the bottom line.” An inclusive climate helps employees stay focused on work, and the GLBT consumer market is also significant, Bloem notes. “It has lots of buying power. By doing well by GLBT employees, companies make their GLBT customers happy.”
Market necessity?
Kevin Shytle, managing director of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates (San Francisco, CA), also sees companies moving in the right direction, with GLBT issues and benefits very much in focus. “Five years ago a progressive company had a special advantage,” he says. “Today being progressive is quickly becoming a market necessity.”
Shytle says 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies now include sexual orientation in their personnel policies, and more than 50 percent offer domestic partner benefits. Like the HRC, Out & Equal sees specific industries leading the way. The technology sector was early, and progress has expanded to retail and food service.
Demographics also play their role. According to Shytle, the younger generation of workers has a different, more favorable outlook on GLBT issues. He says that a new study Out & Equal did with Harris Interactive indicates that more GLBT people are comfortable being out at work. “Progressive companies will get the best workers,” he says.
Reflecting the community
Brooke White, spokesperson for retailer Nordstrom (Seattle, WA), says the company tries to reflect all the communities it serves. “It’s advantageous for us to be inclusive, since we’re in the people-serving-people business,” says White.
Nordstrom doesn’t track the sexual orientation of its employees, but does offer life partner benefits and includes sexual orientation in its anti-discrimination policy. And while Nordstrom does not currently have any employee affinity groups, it is not opposed to them.
Diversity/Careers interviewed GLBT techies in several major industries to make its year-end informal sampling of how companies are progressing in GLBT inclusion.
James MacFawn: collaborative effort at DuPont
Although James MacFawn is now open about being gay, this was not always the case. He knew he was gay, but “did nothing about it” until he was twenty-three. Then he decided that his career was moving along well, and it was time to focus on his personal life.
He opened up to his parents first, and says it was “no big deal to them.” His family was “wonderful and supportive.”
He was more cautious about coming out at DuPont (Wilmington, DE), where he worked. But eventually “I decided I was too old to mask anything,” he says. He even joined DuPont’s GLBT team.
“DuPont is an old company, but it does not want to be behind on policies,” he says. In fact, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation named DuPont as one of the 2007 “best places to work for GLBT equality.”
MacFawn has worked for DuPont since he got his BSCS from Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY) in 1988. He also did a nine-month co-op with DuPont as a student. His computer skills go back even farther, to eighth grade and an old Radio Shack TRS-80.
Today MacFawn is a migration leader for DuPont. As part of a collaborative effort between DuPont, Dell and Computer Sciences Corp, he develops and modifies service as necessary to accommodate the varied needs of many businesses and clients.
MacFawn is responsible for leading the migration of 26,000 PC users in locations such as plant sites and office buildings. They moved to a new, standardized PC support service in North America. Over the past six months MacFawn has been rolling out the standards and adding new users.
He started with DuPont as a VAX mainframe programmer, analyzing quality information for paint formulation. From there he was sent to Madison Heights, MI to work on a Unix team developing a paint-matching application. He spent nearly four years working on color matching apps used for automotive paints. He and his team implemented a large DECnet and TCP/IP network that used DuPont’s newly expanded Ethernet network.
He relocated to Philadelphia where he was the IT supervisor at the DuPont Marshall Laboratory. He revamped the site’s network infrastructure with modern telephony equipment, gigabit network switches and a new fiber optic transport backbone, and managed a 500-person helpdesk.
MacFawn has also worked with a team to design a new factory in China. He worked closely with the DuPont information security office “to design methods to protect the company’s information assets, given the unique complexities of information protection that arise from doing business in China,” he says.
He doesn’t see being gay as relevant to doing any of his many jobs. “People’s contributions are there regardless of orientation,” he says.
DuPont BGLAD
DuPont’s Bisexuals, Gays, Lesbians, Transgendered and Allies at DuPont (BGLAD) network (www.dupontbglad.com) was formed in 1991 and has 350 members. DuPont network leader and Six Sigma champion Gayle Gibson notes that sexual orientation became part of the company’s nondiscrimination policies in 1992.
BGLAD operates in strict confidence, for the comfort of members who may not be out on the job. But that’s where the support and counseling of the network can help, Gibson says.
DuPont, which scored 100 percent on the HRC Corporate Equality Index, recognizes that the network helps improve productivity by freeing people’s energy to focus on their jobs rather than on hiding their real identities. It also helps focus some of the tremendous GBLT purchasing power in the business world today.
It all comes down to treating everyone with respect, which starts with creating awareness, says Gibson.
Dave Hughes is an automation engineer at Intel
Dave Hughes is an automation engineer in assembly/test technology development at Intel’s Chandler, AZ facility.
He traces his interest in IT and software engineering back to high school in the 1970s. “It was clear that IT would be a high-growth field for years to come. I enjoyed the computer programming and systems design courses I took in college and realized that I had aptitude in those areas.”
He also realized he was gay. “I accepted my gayness to myself after my junior year in college. I remember walking past the office of the GLBT student group many times, but I never stepped inside.”
He graduated from Ohio State University (Columbus, OH) in 1979 with a BS in business admin and a double major in accounting and computer IS. After college he worked for seven employers, mostly in the Washington, DC area. He joined Intel in 1996 and came out at work a year later. “Being out, a GLBT employee resource group leader and a diversity advocate afforded me good visibility with upper management,” he notes.
In fact, he was asked to deliver the keynote speech at the Chandler site’s annual diversity leadership awards in December 2006. He won the top award in 2003.
In his eleven years with the company he’s moved from individual contributor to management. Now he oversees nine employees that support computer systems on the manufacturing floor. As new products are introduced, Hughes’ group configures the computer systems to do the job.
His performance, he notes with pride, is not measured by the work he does himself but by how well he manages his team. He’s focused on team productivity and employee satisfaction. He has a great group, he says.
Being out is not always easy for Hughes. “I deal with international colleagues in countries where being homosexual is still considered a crime, and there is much less awareness of GLBT people and issues.
“I need to be acutely aware of this when I travel to those countries on business,” he notes. “But when I’ve occasionally come out to colleagues there, I’ve found them to be largely supportive.”
Hughes sees that Intel goes to great lengths to create a welcoming workplace for GLBT people. The company has offered domestic partner benefits since 1997, an important consideration for Hughes, who has been married for two years. He brings Jeff to company functions and introduces him as his husband. “There’s a photo of us cutting our wedding cake on my desk.”
Hughes participates in Out & Equal Workplace Advocates’ annual workplace summit every year, and is national president of Intel’s GLBT employee resource group. He has also started a GLBT resource site (www.GLBTworkplace.com), and hopes someday to move into speaking, consulting and training on GLBT workplace issues.
Tech director Jes Constantine: GLBT issues and more at the IHS
Jes Constantine is director of information technology at the Institute for Humanist Studies (IHS, Albany, NY). IHS is a think tank promoting public awareness, understanding and support for humanism and humanists, defined as nonreligious people who value science, reason and compassion.
The mission of IHS, Constantine explains, is pioneering new technology and methods for the advancement of humanism. The institute provides information to the media, academia and the general public. Duncan Crary, director of communications at IHS, notes that humanists advocate for human rights, which include GLBT issues, and model their activism after the successes of the gay rights movement.
The Internet and technology are vital to the IHS. While there are millions of humanists scattered across the globe, only 40,000 self-identifying humanists live in the United States. That’s why the Web is a vital networking tool for them.
Besides keeping up with programming and tech maintenance, Constantine produces a weekly e-mail magazine, co-hosts a monthly podcast and designs Web pages. She also provides tech support for some 120 clients who get free Web hosting from IHS.
Constantine graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) in 2003 with a BSIT and a minor in science and technology studies. Her focus was the social aspect of technology.
While in school, she interned at a local YWCA, setting up its network and resource center. She did another internship at a YWCA in Botswana, helping teachers with computers. Constantine has been out since her eighteenth birthday, but she couldn’t be out in Botswana because homosexuality is illegal there.
Back in the U.S. she decided to combine social work and technology, and spent the next few years in human services at the YWCA. While her jobs focused on domestic violence education, coworkers often drafted her to help with their computer woes.
Then the job at IHS opened up. “I found everything I was looking for,” she says. “We work on racial justice, GLBT issues, reproductive rights and church/state separation.” She likes podcasting, and has produced two segments on lesbianism. Her job also gives her the opportunity to be active in GLBT causes in other countries.
Constantine and her partner plan to marry next fall. She says that being gay has been a non-issue in her work. In fact, she once worked with her partner. Her co-workers were concerned about that, she recalls with a smile, but no more than they would have been about the same situation with a heterosexual couple.
Judy Disco, director of administration at IHS, considers herself a lesbian feminist and brings that approach to the workplace. Diversity at IHS, she declares, makes a statement to the other organizations the institute works with.
Eric Thalasinos is an IT training pro at Schering-Plough
Eric Thalasinos returned to technology when a friend at Schering-Plough (Summit, NJ) alerted him to a job at the pharmaceutical and healthcare company. Now in his fifth year there, he’s a senior IT training specialist, part of a team of seven involved in end-user training, employee development and learning management systems. He’s fluent in Spanish and conducts some of the training sessions in Spanish.
He graduated from Amherst College (Amherst, MA) in 2002 with a BA in interdisciplinary studies. His primary technical training was in high school, at the Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology (Hackensack, NJ).
Thalasinos was out in college, and chaired Amherst’s GLBT group. He’s out at work too. He says he was worried about it at first, but is now pretty comfortable.
He admits that he has occasionally felt some awkwardness, but on the whole, he finds Schering-Plough very supportive, and points out that the company supported the Garden State Equality 2007 Legends dinner.
Thalasinos himself helped to start Schering-Plough’s informal rainbow network, now an official group. He remains an active member.
Kelly Moyer: fixing bugs at Sun Microsystems
Kelly Moyer joined the San Diego, CA campus of Sun Microsystems (Santa Clara, CA) in 1999. Today she’s a member of tech staff, basically a software engineer. Much of her work involves fixing high-priority software bugs.
Moyer is part of a group responsible for a broad portion of the Solaris OS. She likes the variety of the bugs she works on and doesn’t feel constrained: there’s a constant challenge, she says. She has also architected, designed, implemented and sustained Solaris kernel modules for midrange and high-end SPARC-based servers.
The work is fine, but it’s the Sun culture that keeps her working at the company. In 2003 Moyer, who was born a male, came to terms with her female identity and decided to begin the process of gender reassignment.
Many transgender people also switch jobs as part of a complete new beginning. But Moyer had lots of friends at work and a job she loved. She wanted to stay, so she began explaining the situation to her colleagues. Her manager, a lesbian, gave Moyer a big hug and said she was proud of her.
Moyer then spoke with Sun’s GLBT Group, which put her in touch with the HR department. The HR folks formed a transition team, and months were spent preparing fellow employees for Moyer’s transition at work. In January 2007 Moyer had surgery, and came back to work as a female. She says that everyone has been “respectful, very supportive, and flawlessly courteous, even if they may be slightly uncomfortable.”
Moyer got her BSCS from the University of California-San Diego in 1996. She started out to be an ME, but happened to take a Fortran class and liked it enough to switch majors. “I could do ME but I loved programming more, and still do,” she says.
Following several IT jobs for smaller companies in the San Diego area, Moyer joined Sun in 1999. All her jobs have been in software, and she’s made several lateral transfers to expand her breadth of experience. Her passion is hardware code.
At Sun she works on a team of nine, and there have been no issues. “Sun isn’t simply accepting, it encourages diversity,” says Moyer. “The company goes to bat for you!”
Moyer likes the culture at Sun, which is relaxed, accepting and progressive. Although more than half the company telecommutes, she comes to the office, about a mile away from her home. “Working from home would just feel too decadent,” she says with a laugh.
Moyer is a member of her site’s recreation council and a member of the Gays, Lesbians and Friends (GLAF) employee resource group. Right now she’s busy creating a set of gender-transition guidelines for Sun to use when other transgender employees transition on the job as she did. She’s also active in San Diego area transgender community events and on steering committees for local organizations that provide advocacy and services for transgender people, and leads discussion groups on GLBT issues.
She plans to remain active in the GLBT community and keep doing her job at Sun. She looks forward to more lateral moves where she can do new programming, learn new platforms and complete new projects.
“Don’t be afraid,” Moyer says. “The world is changing. You can do what you need to do and be who you are.”
Global inclusion at Sun
Shari Slate is Sun’s director of global inclusion. She says that Moyer’s experience illustrates the competitive advantage that inclusion gives Sun.
“Sun was founded on innovation,” she notes. “Today the world is flat and people can collaborate 24/7 across the globe. They don’t all look alike,” says Slate.
She explains that Sun looks at inclusion holistically. Company policies protect GLBT employees, which Slate calls “leadership beyond compliance.”
At Sun, inclusion and protection are not options. “It’s who we are,” says Slate.
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