LGBT+ inclusion: moving from words to action

I’ve been invited to talk about how we move words into action in the realm of LGBT+ inclusion at work.

But why should you listen to me?

I’m currently the Chair of the Civil Service LGBT+ Network; the employee voice group for staff with minority sexual orientations and gender identities in the UK Civil Service. We represent the interests of around 3,000 network members and dozens of local departmental and agency networks across government.

I’ve been Chair of the cross-government network for around 2 years, but I’ve been leading LGBT+ staff networks in one form or another for almost a decade.

I was also the Head of Sexual Orientation Policy and LGBT+ Safety and Sector Sustainability Policy at the Government Equalities Office for 3 years.

So I know a little about running big networks in complex environments and I understand the evidence base about what works.

Today’s conversation is focused on three themes:

1. As leaders, how do we balance personal passion for inclusion, the role as a representative of both LGBT+ staff and of the organisation? How do these impact one another?
2. The importance of the relationship between staff network leaders, HR/D&I teams, and the senior sponsor. How can these most effectively work together?
3. Examples of positive action to enhance LGBT+ inclusion in the workplace

And I have 3 lessons I want to convey; things I’ve learnt as a Chair of a network and as a policy lead in the UK government.

I’ll start by talking about activism, change making and the purpose of staff networks.

There are many views on the purpose of staff networks. There are probably more competing views on that topic than there are staff networks!

But, for me, the purpose of a staff network is three-fold:

First, they exist to build community. They ensure people have other people like them that they can identify with to build a sense of belonging.

For the Civil Service, the logic is simple. You can’t deliver great public services if the people making and implementing policy all look and think the same. More inclusive organisations attract and retain the best talent. Staff networks can be really effective at helping to achieve this by making staff feel like they belong.

Second, they exist to enable staff to feel safe. They enable people to be their authentic selves at work. They create the conditions where people feel comfortable being “out”. And if staff are spending less time hiding who they are, they can spend more energy delivering.

Third, they exist to supporting staff in their careers. They help staff to progress, in whatever way that means for them.

Staff networks are often best placed to provide the evidence to support career development. Sometimes, as I’ll come back to, they are uniquely placed to do the work too.

The emphasis you place on these priorities isn’t fixed. In my experience, it changes develops over time.

In the Civil Service LGBT+ Network, much of our early focus was on community building. As the network grew and the workplace environment of many departments started to change, we then moved on to other things like contributing to policy development or building programmes to support career development.

Whilst these purposes are not linear and not always the primary focus, they are additive. What we’ve learnt is that you need to give an LGBT+ network the space to build a community, and the rest of the value to your organisation flows from there.

When staff networks really focus on those three elements they start to improve the workplace, meaningfully, for the LGBT+ staff they represent and for service users those staff serve.

And on the flip side, in my experience, where things start to go wrong is where LGBT+ networks drift from that core purpose.

Some staff networks end up in what you might term an “activist” space, where they think their job is to act more like a trades union or students’ union society; campaigning for change in a politicised way.

This can become disruptive, both to the organisation but more importantly to the networks themselves. Networks can lose the trust of the wider business and lose their influence. They then can’t deliver on any of the purposes I spoke about, because they’re too busy shouting from the sidelines or, indeed being sidelined, to make meaningful change happen.

Some networks have the opposite problem; they become mouthpieces for their organisation. The networks haven’t just shaped policy, but they’ve become accountable for policy in your organisation. They can’t deliver on their purpose because they’re too close to the organisation to be effective advocates for any real change. They can’ represent the interests of staff at all.

My theory is that you get change when your staff network is able to sit bang in the middle of the two.

So how do you get a network to operate in that middle space?

You’ll have heard of the the equality iron triangle. The 3 cases for equality²; business case, moral case, legal case.

When it comes to effectively delivering change for LGBT+ staff, I like to think about a second iron triangle…

Networks, to show what needs to be changed.

HR teams, to establish how it can be changed.

And champions, to unblock anything preventing the change.

Champions don’t exist in every organisation, but I think they’re critical. For us, they are usually senior roles that sit on the Board of an organisation and have sway.

Change happens in an organisation when all three of these things are working in harmony, and respecting and supporting the boundaries of the other two parties.

But this relationship is rarely explained to those who take up the role of staff network chairs or champions. I suspect HR teams have little appreciation of it either.

You need all three.

Without networks, HR teams lack the insight into the real experience of employees, and champions have no one to inform their advocacy at senior levels.

Without HR, networks and champions don’t have a trusted delivery partner – either to deliver for them or to constrain their enthusiasm.

Without champions, networks have no one with significant sway to advocate up the line, and HR teams don’t have someone who can act as a bridge between LGBT+ staff and the rest of the organisation.

So I think this is relationship is crucial.

Networks inform. HR teams implement. Champions unblock.

I’d encourage to you to reflect on whether you have these elements in place, and if you do, do all of the parties understand their role in change making?

I started by talking about the unique value of staff networks, and that networks go on a journey.

I want to end by highlighting one example where our network added unique value, and delivered meaningful impact, whilst leveraging the second equality iron triangle.

As a network, the core focus for much of our existence has been on building a sense of community through social activities. We have focused far less often on learning and development. But in the pandemic we decided to try something more ambitious.

For years, we’ve known in the Civil Service that LGBT+ staff:

1. can’t identify people like them in senior positions and
2. felt like they have worse development opportunities than other staff

We decided to construct a mentoring programme to address this.

We considered a couple of choices at the outset: we could try building a business case to do something led by HR or we could try doing it ourselves.

We chose the latter.

That created some constraints. We had no money. We had no way of knowing how much demand there would be. We had the volunteer time of 1 person (me!).

But we had a good evidence base, and we were willing to try, even if it failed.

This was clearly within the scope of our purpose. If it worked, it would give people senior role models they could identify with – creating community and the conditions where they felt safe – and give them development opportunities – so they could advance their career.

This is where the iron triangle came in: as a network, we leveraged our relationship with HR to get access to the tools we needed to do the work; and we leveraged our relationship with champions to drive take up. As a network, we focused on the things we could uniquely do – using our knowledge of what people wanted, to build a programme that worked.

And it did.

We’ve now supported 2,000 mentors and mentees through the programme over the past 2 years. We estimate that somewhere in the order of 6,000 hours of mentoring has taken place because of this; and we’ve exposed hundreds of junior staff to senior role models they can aspire to emulate and follow.

And importantly, we know it has worked – because people have told us they’ve been promoted, or changed professions, because of the support we facilitated.

This wasn’t a formal, HR function-led programme. It was delivered at no direct financial cost to the business. It leveraged the unique position and strengths of each part of the equality iron triangle to drive real change. It put the LGBT+ network in the space of being change makers.

That’s where I wanted to end – on a positive note.

I’ve talked about where I think staff networks should be focus their mission, so they can be effective change makers.

I’ve talked about the importance of the relationship between champions, networks and HR teams.

And I’ve talked about how it’s all come together to deliver meaningful impact for some of our staff.

Thank you.