Reference no: EM133178862
Abstract
This case focuses on two simultaneous problems at a fictional company: (1) The mistakes and assumptions made by an HR department concerning the policies and practices for their LGBTQ+ employees, and (2) internal communication issues that prevent feedback from frontline workers from reaching the decision makers in the organization. This case follows the Director of HR, Charlie, who discovers that despite well-intentioned changes to the organization, the HR team has "missed" on crucial needs of the LGBTQ+ employees during a time of extreme pressure: the nomination of a prestigious organization-wide diversity and inclusion award. The case outlines, in the LGBTQ+ employees' own words, how sometimes written policy and organizational practice do not always align. This case assists leaders in examining how well-intentioned diversity initiatives can fail and what internal communication features are needed to ensure that marginalized individuals can communicate with senior decision makers
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this case study, student should be able to:
- Develop competencies in diversity awareness and communication assumptions;
- Outline the distinctions in need-assessment for marginalized populations;
- Recognize the need for frontline worker input for organizational decision-making; and
- Identify strategies that can demonstrate ally status without forcing disclosure.
Workplace Policy: A Starting Point
One of the biggest appeals of joining the workforce is landing a position with an organization that has an excellent benefits section and comprehensive workplace policies. The rise of benefits has an interesting historical context, starting as a means of ensuring worker safety and offering protection and representation (Aldrich, 2001). Presently, a comprehensive workplace policy can be a selling point, with many competitive organizations vying for the best candidates by using prime benefits as leverage. Policy is often tacitly understood as an exchange: employers outline workplace benefits and employees expect those benefits to uphold the basic tenets of fairness in meeting their psychological contracts (Ryan & Wessel, 2015). Policies can also be considered as a form of rules or guidelines for employees and can fall into official formal written rules (e.g., contract outlining vacation pay and time allotment in a new-hire contract) or unofficial and informal practices tacitly understood by employees (e.g., everybody in the office leaves at 5:00 p.m. exactly and you may be ostracized if you stay later because one member staying later reflects poorly on the group) (Hoffman & Cowan, 2010). Unfortunately, there are still some gray areas surrounding policy and benefits for many LGBTQ+ employees, often due to unclear construction, which results in constraints and limited access (Compton, 2016). Giddens (1981) discussed how organizational structures are self-replicating in that organizations seek to produce and reproduce existing power relations. In other words, once a set of policies and practices are put into place in a workplace, they become difficult to change. The replication of these power relations through structures such as policies can be beneficial in solidifying protections for employees but can have negative consequences if the policy does not include all members of the organization effectively. These policies can do additional harm if policy is written in a manner that is inadvertently discriminatory.
Kalidexo and the LGBTQ+ Diversity Award
Charlie was thrilled. As the HR Director for all 235 employees, Charlie was the first to be notified of Kalidexo International's 1 nomination for the Excellence in LGBTQ+ Diversity Award given by the city of Shalleyville. Shalleyville had started this award three years ago to recognize organizations that had taken steps to initiate new inclusive policies and procedures and offer greater resources to their employees. Charlie thought back to all the great initiatives that Kalidexo had put in place over the past three years. The HR team had created a think tank to tackle some of the issues pertaining to the specific needs of their LGBTQ+ employees and had generated a pretty robust list of changes. They had retrofitted all the bathrooms on all seven floors from men's rooms and women's restrooms to single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms; they had altered their family leave policy to include extended parental leave; and they had supported the creation of the organization-wide Employee Resource Group (ERG) that gave marginalized employees a safe gathering spot. They had even offered to remake the name plates for each employee who wanted to add their gender pronouns to their workplace signage. There were over 110 employees at Kalidexo who identified as members of the LGBTQ+ community. "We are going to win this award!" thought Charlie.
The award committee was set to arrive in two short weeks. The committee would be looking at all the tangible markers in the organization that marked allyship and support, and reviewing the policy changes, and they would be talking to volunteers within the organization who self-identified as LGBTQ+ members to get their first-hand narratives about their experience working at Kalidexo. The award committee has also been invited to attend one of the Employee Resource Group's monthly meetings. The topic of the meeting was going to focus on gaining more support from coworkers.
A Troubling Conversation
As the days leading up to the award committee's arrival grew near, the chatter and the excitement in the office began to pick up. Charlie stopped at the kiosk in the lobby to grab a cup of coffee before heading up to the office. Ahead of Charlie in line were Linda and Jeremiah, two members of the marketing department, who were open and out, were talking in hushed tones. Charlie was just about to say hello but stopped when the tail end of the conversation raised a red flag.
"... I know. HR has been trying for years to get up to code, so to speak, on better and more inclusive policies but they keep missing the mark. I think that diversity award committee is going to be able to see through the bells and whistles," said Linda.
"It makes sense," said Jeremiah. "A lot of people around here just kind of smile and nod whenever a new diversity initiative comes out in the newsletter. Seriously, though. They are so uncomfortable. I know that HR has good intentions, but they don't see what's going on in the trenches here. New bathrooms, cool. But that just doesn't cut it all the time." They grabbed their coffees and headed toward the escalator.
Charlie was shocked. The HR think tank team had read hundreds of articles and consulted with two external consultants on how to make the office more inclusive for LGBTQ+ individuals. What were they missing? Charlie got upstairs to the HR office and called a meeting with the 10-member team. As Charlie relayed the conversation, more and more of the members registered shock. Collectively, they could not understand what they had missed.
"What should we do about this?" said Ash, the Assistant HR Director. "That award committee is going to be here in less than three days." Ash focused mainly on the implementation of new policies and had been the one to oversee the bathroom renovations.
"Maybe we should go over the consultant notes and some of the articles to see if we missed anything that we could have done better," said Casey, who worked on benefit approvals.
"Hmm, maybe our issue was that we didn't think to ask the people here what they needed concerning their circumstances," said Charlie, thinking back to the conversation from this morning. "We probably should have thought about that too."
The team brainstormed for a few minutes trying to figure out an action plan for when the award committee arrived. After an hour, they decided to administer an anonymous digital survey to the employees asking for feedback by the next afternoon so that they could at the very least figure out what they had missed. They focused the questions on the survey to specifically ask about what they had missed in their rollouts and what suggestions their employees had for what they could do. They also asked each participant who took the survey to volunteer their sexual orientation but made sure to include that sexual orientation was not mandatory for the survey. The survey went out that night.
Response to the Survey
In the morning, Charlie was shocked to see that there were dozens of responses. Charlie opened the spreadsheet to read some of the accounts and was shocked at the candid nature of the responses. The first one, from a woman who identified as a lesbian said:
I appreciate that Kalidexo implemented better parental leave, which would have worked out well if my wife worked here. While she delivered our kid, I also became a "mom" and while the benefits are great if it's your own biological kid, I don't get coverage or paid leave because I didn't give birth. I would have gotten coverage if my wife gave birth and I was a guy.
"That's horrible," thought Charlie. "Did we really not write a policy that included parental leave if the person isn't the actual biological parent?"
Another account caught Charlie's eye, and this time, the matter was an adoption. There is a straight woman on the third floor who adopted her kids two years ago and our HMO covered that process. All of it, but when it comes to gay men, like myself, trying to adopt a child, all of that financial burden lands on us. Why would the insurance chosen by the organization support adoption efforts of heterosexuals, but when my husband and I went to adopt, we were told it would all be out of pocket?
Another employee who identified as a transgender woman mentioned how her surgery leave was not covered either.
A few years ago, when I was transitioning, I knew that I would have to be out for 4-6 weeks for surgery. I'm not asking for anything above and beyond, but it's comparable to maternity leave. I was not approved for that and didn't qualify for extended paid leave. I was trying to make the comparison to maternity leave and somebody in HR told me, "Well it's not a national policy." I get that it's not national policy but what about being the right thing to do?
Each story that Charlie read felt more and more horrifying. One employee talked about the bathroom situation, a development that Charlie and the team felt that they had made great strides on.
Listen, I appreciate that you all changed the bathrooms to be more accommodating to my gender queer status. That's great. But I bet you don't know that every time I see the CFO, I just get asked about how the bathroom is. I keep thinking, "Is that going to keep happening? All we're ever going to talk about is the bathroom? Great." I usually just say, "It's a room with a toilet. Thank you."
Charlie cringed. Emerson, the CFO was great, but this comment definitely felt like a sticking point that needed to be addressed.
There were other comments about interactions that people had with other coworkers:
I've had experiences where I've tried to teach my boss something about trans rights and terminology and he just didn't believe me, basically. He was calling someone a transvestite and I told him, "That's not the right word." But he just wouldn't believe me. He also still calls one of my transgender coworkers "she" and "her", despite being asked to use preferred pronouns of "him" and "he".
Another employee shared her account about feeling like a token:
Another big issue is the people that have been with the company long enough to have known me before the transition. So many times when we have a new hire, I will get introduced as, "Oh, that's Joan. Guess what? Joan used to be a guy." That is a big issue. I've had to mention a couple of times to people that I don't want people to know that I am transgender. Besides my height, you'd never know that I was born male.
Charlie felt disgusted. How had the entire HR department missed all of this? A few responses from the survey indicated that there were comments made by coworkers that had put the LGBTQ+ employees on the spot. One response included:
I know that HR tries hard to support the LGBTQ+ employees and I love the resource group but the group is kind of for us. There are still a lot of issues with some of the people around here who aren't LGBTQ and who don't know or don't care. I had a conversation with somebody recently where it turned into a conversation about how his son really liked to cook, and that made him uncomfortable. It ended with him saying, "Well at least my son isn't trans." There was nothing in me that knew how to address that.
"I guess we assumed that all of the employees would be on board with the new initiatives but clearly there were instances that were falling through the cracks," thought Charlie. "I am not sure what to do about these kinds of comments."
The last account was especially heartbreaking:
I feel like HR depends too much on bureaucratic paperwork. I am transitioning, but legally I haven't done a name change yet. I look like a guy. I present like a guy, I dress like a guy. I am married to a woman. And yet on all of the internal communication, I'm still listed by my birth name until I can provide legal documentation. I've been told by the IT staff that I have to provide a driver's license, a birth certificate, and/or a social security card to the company to switch over my name on email. So, if you email my work email, it comes up as but when clients show up in person for meetings, they are really confused to meet Michael Westburn. Seriously HR. why is this so hard to be accommodating?
At the meeting with HR, Charlie was disappointed and sad while sharing the comments with the team. "These are the real accounts from people that work in this building, in our offices. Clearly, we have missed the mark and there are issues. I don't know if we should even still keep ourselves in the running for the award?" Charlie asked the team.
"What can we possibly do to fix this whole thing?" thought Charlie.
Discussion Questions
- What is the most pressing problem facing the HR team?
- What are the challenges that the LGBTQ+ employees are expressing indirectly in the survey?
- How do you recommend that leadership fix the communication feedback problem between HR and the frontline workers?
- What are some recommendations for training that you can provide to address the concerns from the anonymous survey?
- How should the HR team handle the LGBTQ+ Diversity Award Committee?