Along with six other ERG’s “PROUD” is an Employee Resource Group launched in June of 2021.  We tied the launch with PRIDE Month Roundtables to highlight LGBTQ+ employees in the organization who shared some of their stories and the importance of organizations supporting LGBTQ+ employees.  In doing so, several employees from the PROUD ERG shared areas of improvement where we could increase LGBTQ+ inclusion in our systems and processes and worked with us on strategizing and implementing solutions.

We partnered closely with the PROUD ERG on the following initiatives throughout the remainder of 2021:  we launched a Gender Transition Guide, revised our brand guidelines to include personal pronouns. We ensured that employees were aware that our brand guidelines include guidance on how to highlight your personal pronouns in your email signature, we added the option to include personal pronouns on company business cards and we added LGBTQ+ related scenarios in our people leader trainings.  Additionally, we reviewed all of our charitable partners to ensure that they align with our commitment to LGBTQ+ Equality, updated policies around where legal and preferred names can be used in our systems, updated our EEO language in our job postings to include sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and included a dedicated section on our external website about our commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion. We are also adding a data field to collect additional information from our employees within our HR information systems to be able to better understand how we are doing in terms of LGBTQ engagement, hiring, promotion and retention.

To date, “PROUD” has ten (10) active Site Chapters and we see encouraging comments through our employee pulse engagement surveys that speak to increased productivity based on feeling included.