Case study 4

Case Studies: Using concepts from the chapter readings students will provide their own in depth analysis of each assigned case and answer all questions at the end of each case study. Each analysis should include an in-text citation and end of paper reference (from the chapter with a page number) that relates to the case study. In addition, an Assignment Cover Sheet is required with each analysis (see Appendix).

Case studies are listed in the course syllabus

Case 4: Straight Talk about Gays in the Workplace pg 224-231  – Answer questions 1-5 discussion questions below.

Text book name is Canas, K. A. & Sondak, H. Opportunities and Challenges of Workplace Diversity (3rd Edition). Pearson.

Please answer the five discussion questions below. Please number your answers individually. APA 2 page is required.

Essay

Selections from Straight Talk about Gays in the Workplace: Creating an Inclusive, Productive Environment for Everyone in Your Organization

Liz Winfeld, a nationally recognized expert in workplace diversity specific to sexual orientation, gender identity, and finance, discusses a wide range of topics in her book. Straight Talk about Gays in the Workplace: Creating an Inclusive, Productive Environment for Everyone in Your Organization, 3rd ed. The following essay is excerpted from that book. The goal of the various selections is to provide a basic understanding of the situation facing LGBTs in the workplace.

The Changing Landscape1

Beyond the increase in the number of states or commonwealths that have laws inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity for the purposes of employment, housing, public accommodations, and credit, there are other very significant changes in our society on issues that involve sexual orientation and gender identity. 2

· The 2000 U.S. Census found 15 million self-identified gay/lesbian individuals. Procedures for the 2010 census were revised to allow same-sex couples to identify themselves as such. Approximately 646,000 same-sex couples did so; of those, 25 percent were raising children and 131,729 identified as married. Six states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. 3

· Sixty-three percent of registered voters are in favor of civil unions for same-sex couples in the United States. 4

· About 46 percent of heterosexual Americans favor full legal marriage for same-sex couples. 5  In the group of people aged 18 to 35, this percentage jumps to 59 percent. 6

· Eleven states bar, by executive order, discrimination against gay people in state employment. Only eight years ago, there were none.

· Almost three out of four heterosexual adults believe that employees should be judged on job performance rather than sexual orientation or gender identity. 7

· Polls conducted by Washington Post/ABC, The Pew Research Center, and New York Times/CBS show that between 60 and 75 percent of Americans support LGBTs serving openly in the military. 8

· Three out of five heterosexual adults say that employees with same-sex partners should be equally eligible for key workplace benefits available to spouses of married employees in general. 9

· More than 9,000 organizations in the public, private, nonprofit, and university sectors offer domestic partner benefits to either same-sex only or same- and opposite-sex couples and their families. There were exactly 100 such organizations on January 1, 1992. 10

· Among private sector employers, 2143 include the words “sexual orientation” in their nondiscrimination policies. Overall, the percentage of organizations’ policies that include sexual orientation has increased 7 to 10 percent every year for the past 12 years. Currently, 637 private sector employers also include “gender identity” or “gender identity/expression” in their nondiscrimination policies. Eight years ago, there were less than 20. 11

· At least 30 states have adoption laws on the books or have a preponderance of legal decisions to support second-parent/step-parent adoption by same-sex couples.

· Forty-six states have adoption laws that allow people, regardless of sexual orientation, to adopt children if they are otherwise qualified to do so.

· Sodomy laws have been declared unconstitutional, signaling a growing awareness that sexual orientation is part of who you are and not entirely what you do. Recent trends indicate increasing respect for the rights of consenting adults and the privacy of individuals.

What is behind the trend toward expanding the classifications of people who can take advantage of the civil and workplace rights that all Americans are otherwise entitled to? I think it is this: In 1990, only about 25 percent of Americans reported having a gay friend or acquaintance. In 2007, that percentage had risen to 47 percent. 12 According to the Gill Foundation in 2003, the percentage of straight people who say they know at least one gay person is 90 percent. 13  And findings from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Public Report from February 2004 show that more than 60 percent of gay/lesbian people are out to even their casual acquaintances and co-workers. 14

The data support the conclusion that seizing every opportunity to be as inclusive as possible is not only good for the individual and the collective psyche; it is also arguably good for the bottom line. Although only 34 percent of Fortune 1000 companies include sexual-orientation and gender identity in their nondiscrimination policies, 75 percent of the Fortune 500 do so. 15  A 2010 study of over 300 U.S. firms showed that companies with policies supportive of LGBT inclusion enjoyed higher levels of productivity than those that did not. How to explain that correlation? Inclusive policies express management’s concern to support the productivity of all employees. 16  To this point, Professor Richard Florida, of Carnegie Mellon University, and Gary Gates, a demographer at the Urban Institute, released data from a study they did in May 2003. 17  Some of their conclusions follow:

· New ideas and cutting-edge industries that lead to sustained prosperity are more likely to exist where gay people feel welcome.

· Most centers of tech-based business growth also have the highest concentration of gay couples. Conversely, major metropolitan areas with few gay couples tend to be slow- or no-growth places.

· Innovation and economic vitality are closely associated with the presence of gay people and other overt indicators of acceptance and diversity such as a high percentage of immigrants and the level of racial and ethnic integration.

· Creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial activities tend to flourish in the same kinds of places that attract gays and others outside the norm.

According to Florida, more than a few heterosexuals look for a “visible gay community as a signal of a place that’s likely to be both exciting and comfortable . . . . They are looking for signs that nonstandard people, and ideas, are welcome.”

This is an incredibly powerful quote and set of data because it reinforces what many believe about people and how they like to be treated. We want to see signs that the places where we reside and work acknowledge us. Furthermore, people want to know that if they exhibit creativity, innovation, or thinking outside of the box, they are not going to get slapped down for it. Places that exhibit an acceptance of diversity are more likely to also be places that will accept innovations of thought and action. This frees people and allows them to put forth their best effort.

Strategies for Inclusion in the New World18

The strategies at managers’ disposal to deal effectively with sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace are

· endorsing the nondiscrimation policies such as the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA),

· domestic partner benefits,

· employee networks/alliances—mentoring,

· marketing to the LGBT community,

· internal and external outreach, and

· knowledgeable internal resources and reference libraries. 19

Nondiscrimination Policies and the ENDA

In 2010, a huge majority of Americans—75 percent—erroneously believed that federal law prohibited job discrimination based on sexual orientation. 20  The fact is that neither sexual orientation nor gender identity is included in any federal statute, code, or law. Sixteen states and the District of Colombia have laws that extend workplace protections for both sexual orientation and gender identity, and a couple hundred local jurisdictions (including states, cities, towns, counties) have executive orders or ordinances that refer to these matters.

What this means is that LGBT people in 34 states and the majority of all jurisdictions have no protections under the law in terms of whether they can be fired or not hired in the first place just for being gay or straight, or can be denied credit or service in a hotel or a restaurant based on real or perceived sexual orientation.

The dearth of legal support for fair labor practices means that company policies make all the difference. When an organization includes the words sexual orientation and/or gender identity in its nondiscrimination policies, it is not just blowing smoke. These policies matter as statements of intent by the organization. They say, “This is who we are, and this is how we intend to treat people who work here or with whom we become affiliated.” Absent other protections, people outside the mainstream place great value on these policies, because more often than not, they are all they are going to get.

A good example of a nondiscrimination policy is the ENDA, or Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Although ENDA is largely unknown to the general public, a bill to enact it has been introduced in every Congress but one since 1994. ENDA would:

· extend to sexual orientation and gender identity those federal employment discrimination protections currently provided based on race, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability;

· block public and private employers, employment agencies, and labor unions from using an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity as the basis for employment decisions such as hiring, firing, promotion, or compensation;

· allow for the same procedures and similar, but somewhat more limited, remedies as permitted under Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act; and

· apply to Congress, with the same procedures as provided by the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, and presidential employees, with the same procedures as provided under the Presidential and Executive Office Accountability Act of 1996.

Domestic Partner Benefits

Currently, over 10,000 organizations in the U.S. offer domestic partner benefits (DPBs) for same-sex couples, and about two thirds of those had DPBs for heterosexual couples. These companies were of all kinds, of all sizes, and in all market segments, which is to say, public entities, including cities and states; private companies, including a majority of the Fortune 100; colleges and universities, including those beholden to state legislatures for funding; and private, nonprofit organizations, unions, and associations.

Why the explosion in DPBs? It is for two simple reasons. First, the population of people, gay or straight, living in families absent marriage has been steadily increasing for more than 20 years. The results from the 2010 census have yet to be fully analyzed, but the 2000 and 2002 U.S. Census studies gave us counts of how many gay Americans there are (about 15 million self-reported on the 2000 census; that was probably low by about 10 million or so) and 600,000 gay, self-reported heads of or partners in households with or without children (again, probably low by several millions), and the U.S. Census in 1994 and 1998 had already reported that the number of Americans living in unmarried-partner households had increased at five times the rate of married households. In 1998, 5.9 million people in the United States were living with a partner; by 2007, that number had risen to 6.4 million. Of these, approximately 28 percent were in same-sex relationships.

The second reason for the sharp rise in DPBs is that almost two decades of data firmly support the notion that DPBs are a low-cost, high-return way to demonstrate inclusion that results in little or no backlash. Study after study unequivocally bears out that upward of 90 percent of Americans believe that if you have a family and you work to support them, you deserve the benefits of that labor. Aside from Americans’ support for fairness, the LGBT consumer market is worth courting; as of 2010, the LGBT population represented $769 billion in buying power, and they are more likely than other consumers to education themselves on company policies. One way to alienate LGBT consumers and their allies is to discriminate in hiring and benefits. The Employee Benefits Research Group found in a survey of 279 HR professionals representing 19 industries in the United States that DPBs are the number-one recruitment tool for executives and the third-ranked recruitment tool for management and line workers. 21  DPBs were found to be a more effective hiring incentive than telecommuting options, hiring bonuses, stock options, and 401(k) plans, among other things.

Employee Networks/Alliances—Mentoring

Employee networks of any kind allow people with similar interests or characteristics to interact with others who are like them. In the case of a group formed around sexual orientation, the existence of such a group may serve to help individuals who are gay or transgender know that they are not alone. Feeling like “the only one” is a depressing condition common to many gay workers.

The following structure for successful employee networks has been implemented at a number of organizations, large and small.

1. Identify a leadership team for the employee network. These people will likely, at first, be the ones who led the charge for the employee network to be formed and probably have also done a lot of “underground outreach” to others in the organization. The network’s leadership team will typically have four to six people on it and, thanks to technology, they do not have to be located in the same place.

2. The leadership team organizes subcommittees and appoints a person who is not on the leadership team to head up each one. These subcommittees can be in as many areas as are deemed necessary or desired. They can be for budget, for community outreach, for internal education, for internal and external policy, for cooperation with other employee groups, for marketing and assisting revenue generation, for liaison with HR, for communications, for Pride events, for growing membership activities. There can be, in short, a committee for everything the network thinks it would like to be involved in.

3. Each member of the leadership team is also the primary liaison between a committee (or, if necessary, more than one) and the leadership team. It is this person’s job to know what the committee is doing, what it would like to do, what it needs, and so on so that he or she can present those things to the leadership team.

4. A member of senior management is appointed as a liaison or mentor for each person on the leadership team and, therefore, to a committee. The communication that the leadership team member shares with the team in general is also shared with his or her management liaison. In this way, an effective and orderly communication channel is created between all the committees and the organization as a whole. This structure allows for maximum participation across the enterprise while also providing for maximum oversight of all activities of the network, communication of those activities, and control over who is doing what without it appearing as if “big brother” is watching.

Marketing to the LGBT Community

The gay market segment is, according to Mulryan/Nash and the Simmons Market Research Bureau, one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing demographics for products and services in the United States. 22  That statement was true when first written in 1998, and it is still true today. Since 1997, which was the first year that ad revenues in LGBT media topped $100 million, they have continued to grow in that market at a rate of more than 25 percent per year.

Witeck-Combs and Harris Interactive reported that there are 15 million self-identified gay and lesbian people as of the 2000 U.S. Census and surveys done in 2002. 23  According to their report and later updates, buying power for the LGBT community was $451 billion in 2002 and projected to reach 843 billion in 2011—a cumulative increase of more than 53 percent. By comparison, African American spending power was projected to reach one trillion by 2011; Latino/a spending power was projected to reach 1.87 trillion; and Asian American spending power was projected to be at $578 billion. 24

If you want to leverage the LGBT market, you have to first know what is important to it. The research shows that the LGBT market is among the most attention-starved, loyal, and easy mark for marketers to build early dominance in if they take the plunge. There is great truth in the theory that the gay market is open to organizations that take its requirements into consideration, both as employees and as patrons.

What follows is a description of what matters to the LGBT market, and I think that this information is significant not only in and of itself, but also because it can now be gathered with a great deal more reliability than just targeting people who subscribe to particular magazines or online social media. 25

· LGBT consumers have a deeper trust for products and brands that target gay consumers, but even more for products offered by companies that have progressive policies toward all employees, including but not limited to LGBT employees.

· Fifty-six percent of all LGBT people sampled agreed that they more often trust brands from progressive companies, with 41 percent reporting that they strongly agree.

· The most important public policy issues to LGBT consumers are

· • Protection for LGBT people from workplace discrimination

· • Passing laws that discourage antigay bias crimes

· • The right of gays to parent, including adoption

· • The right to civil marriage for same-sex couples

· • Securing federal benefits such as social security, pensions, and family and medical leave

· • HIV/AIDS funding, care, treatment, and prevention

· • Specifically including gender identity in all public and private protection policies

· • Ending the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy

· • Research for women’s health issues, including breast and cervical cancer

· • Equal treatment of bi-national couples

· • Securing benefits administered at the state level

· By a ratio of 47 percent (LGBT) to 18 percent (heterosexual), gay consumers are more likely to make a purchasing decision based on their awareness of a company’s diversity policies. A 2011 national survey found that 74 percent of LGBT adults are more attracted to brands that support causes they value, even when they could pay less for a brand that does not support those causes. 26

· With all other factor being equal (such as price, quality, value, and function) LGBT consumers were more likely to favor one organization’s products and services over another if they knew that the salesperson or representative was also LGBT. This was 56 percent of the total for financial services; 51 percent for health care; 49 percent for large purchases such as cars and houses; 42 percent for everyday purchases such as groceries; and 42 percent for computers or home entertainment products.

· Eighty percent of LGBT respondents to an August 2001 poll said they would be willing to recommend a particular company or vendor to others based on favorable inclusion policies. This was compared to 26 percent of heterosexual respondents to the same question.

· Fifty-six percent of LGBT respondents said they “shop at stores that advertise to people like me.”

· Ninety-four percent of LGBT people said they shop at stores that make them feel welcome as compared to 88 percent of heterosexual people.

What should leap out from these various statistics is that the growing awareness and visibility of differences of sexual orientation and gender identity encourages people who were once considered to be very much on the fringes to be willing and able to make spending decisions based on information about a particular organization’s policies regarding employment and social equality—for everyone.

Internal and External Outreach Strategies

Internal outreach means ensuring that all communication uses inclusive language and that all people, regardless of background, are made to feel welcome. 27

In this day and age, it is also very important that all employee groups have equitable use of and access to internal electronic bulletin boards or intranets as a way of publicizing events or engendering communication among members. Again, if some groups have full access to these systems and some groups do not, this does not send the right message (often, quite literally).

Internal outreach also means doing everything possible to encourage participation by all types of people in the organization and going out of the way, perhaps far out of the way, to work to provide a safe environment where closeted gay people can come out or, short of that, participate in some way that feels safe to them.

Community outreach means getting involved in some of what is going on in the communities in which you operate. It means supporting local organizations such as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) 28  or endorsing ENDA to Congress. It also means allowing your employees to participate in community speaking programs and/or to work on behalf of your company in support of Meals on Wheels programs, Habitat for Humanity, or the fight against breast and ovarian cancer. Put more than your money out there; give people the opportunity to represent you in these causes in their community. The PR you will get from this will be well worth the negligible expense.

Knowledgeable Internal Resources

Make sure there is a resource room, kiosk, or person who is up to speed on all of what is going on relative to sexual orientation in every single facility that you maintain. Other strategies that the organization may want to consider spearheading include the following:

· A hotline to report all forms of harassment and discrimination including, but not necessarily limited to, sexual orientation;

· A system of accountability for a nonhostile work environment by division, work group, business unit, geography, or other criteria;

· Expansion of existing reward/award programs to include recognition of superior efforts to engender a safer, better working environment for all—with an emphasis, perhaps, on sexual orientation; and

· Encouragement of gay employees to bring their partners to appropriate enterprise-wide events, or to display items from their personal lives.

If the organization and individuals therein adopt some or all of these strategies for inclusion, benefits will be reaped in terms of greater productivity that is the direct result of almost universal increased job satisfaction.

Tools and Techniques29

What follows is a summary list of tools and techniques that a manager can implement as a way to become a more effective manager and leader within his or her organization.

1. Educate yourself about sexual orientation in order to formulate, and where necessary express, a position that balances your own opinion with the change-agent behavior encouraged by the organization.

2. Try to avoid making heterosexist assumptions; that is, do not assume that everyone you work with or come into contact with is heterosexual.

3. Share anything you have learned about human sexuality and homophobia that might encourage others to adopt productive behaviors.

4. Use inclusive language whenever possible in all communications.

5. Encourage gay and transgender co-workers to be part of the social groups you form at work, including bringing their partners to functions when appropriate.

6. Take time to understand the local laws and ordinances that relate to sexual orientation and gender identity, and especially your organization’s nondiscrimination policies. If you have questions about these policies, ask.

7. If you have questions about orientation, use organizational resources or trustworthy resources on the Internet to try to get answers.

8. Display items in your workspace, such as books, magnets, and posters that demonstrate your awareness of inclusiveness.

9. If someone asks you a question or confronts you with an opinion about sexual orientation in the workplace that you feel unprepared for, feel free to say that you do not know how to respond, but that you will get back to her or him. Then reach out to the organizational resources available to you so that you can respond in a meaningful and helpful way.

10. Refuse to laugh at antigay humor.

11. Cite company policy about nondiscrimination or simply walk away from a group that is indulging in verbal discrimination. If you feel comfortable doing so, personalize the issue by saying, for example, “What you just did/said offends me.”

12. Encourage other people to read books or attend education sessions on sexual orientation in order to avail themselves of other points of view if they seem particularly troubled by the issue.

Discussion Questions

1. 1. Why, do you think, is the number of gay residents in a community associated with the innovation and economic growth of the area?

2. 2. Is it a good idea for businesses to offer domestic partner benefits? Who should be eligible for these benefits—just gay couples or unmarried heterosexual couples as well?

3. 3. What is the most inclusive way to invite employees to come to company-sponsored social events?

4. 4. How can managers accommodate people who have conflicting opinions about homosexuality? In particular, what should they do when some employees are uncomfortable with others?

5. 5. What alternative responses can you use when coworkers are making disparaging remarks about gays?