Chronic Sex

LGBTQ+

• ‘A basic human right’: Why your benefits may be failing your LGBTQ employees
• Does Health Insurance Cover Transgender Health Care?
• How employers are failing transgender employees in a crucial way
• LGBTQ employees are more stressed about their retirement plans study finds
• Most LGBTQ workers in U.S. face discrimination that's now illegal 
• The pandemic has made it harder for LGBTQ employees to come out at work
• Your fertility benefits may be excluding LGBTQ+ employees from treatments

Examples

• Included Health and social media app Grindr have teamed up to bring queer employees better coverage
• PwC is giving trans employees $75k for their healthcare costs
• State Farm's LGBTQ employees now have access to more culturally competent healthcare
• Transgender health company Plume jumps into employee benefits space

Companies

• Folx Health 
• For The Gworls
• Global Butterflies
• Included Health
• Plume
• The Okra Project

Disability

• 3 Ways To Talk To Your Friends & Family About Their Ableist Views
• 4 Ways We Can All Challenge Ableism in the Workplace
• How To Be An Active Bystander For Academic Ableism
• How Managers Can Support Employees with Chronic Illnesses
• Tips For Handling Academic Ableism In The Classroom

LGBTQ+

• Accepting your LGBTQ employees benefits everyone at work
• Even the smallest change can create a welcoming environment for LGBTQ employees
• How to support non-binary staff in the workplace
• Here's how employers can better support your transgender employees 
• How to Help Your Transgender Employees Feel Safer at Work
  • “A major concern for many trans people at work is healthcare. Whether it’s hormone replacement therapy, surgery costs or counseling, transgender employees need insurance benefits that cover their needs. Unfortunately, 24 states and Washington, D.C., currently allow health insurers to exclude trans-specific care from their coverage plans, and only 22 percent of employers provide gender transition coverage in their healthcare plans. Even when their plans do provide coverage, transgender patients often have to jump through hoops to find a doctor or get necessary prescriptions.”

General

• Work to truly understand concepts such as privilege, including unconscious bias. Set up training and continuing education systems so that your employees can understand these vital points as well.
• Ensure that LGBTQ+ care, transition-related surgeries, and treatments for rare diseases are all included under all insurance policies and other benefits.
• Expand parental leave to include adoption, fostering, and cover all parents involved - not just those giving birth.
• Implement a plan to have all employees utilize pronouns in their emails, nametags, and more.
• Make a clear statement committing to equity work. While both diversity and inclusion are often used as buzzwords, equity, as defined below, should not be. Outline the various steps that will be taken to ensure employees are treated equitably.
  
  • "The notion of being fair and impartial as an individual engages with an organization or system, particularly systems of grievance. “Equity” is often conflated with the term “Equality” (meaning sameness). In fact, true equity implies that an individual may need to experience or receive something different (not equal) in order to maintain fairness and access. For example, a person with a wheelchair may need differential access to an elevator relative to someone else. (See Diversity and Inclusion)" (link)
  • Communicating your values publicly can also be key to increasing the number of qualified applicants to any role.
• Implement the practice of holding focus groups, not for show, but to truly understand what they need.
• Do away with dress codes. These practices not only reinforce a false gender binary, harming trans workers, but they are notoriously racist.
• Anti-harassment laws need to include each group forcibly disadvantaged by societal power structures. While not an exhaustive list, this one helps cover some of the diverse ways people may have experienced the world. Be vigilant against harassment, but especially directed towards these groups.
• Ensure that your medical plans cover mental health care, whether locally or via telehealth.
• Use internal and external media to share about policies for change. “Policies, however well written or intentioned, are of no use if either managers – or more worryingly, HR staff – don't know they exist.” (link)
• Consider addressing recruitment bias by having people or systems remove identifying information (e.g., using ‘blind’ recruitment), look into normalizing the sets of questions asked of interviewees, etc.
• Improve the way you onboard. Often, these areas are murky and can frustrate new employees, especially if they’re newer to portions of the role (e.g., not having training on a piece of software you expect them to use ASAP).
• Ensure that any workspaces you provide are accessible per the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other legal requirements surrounding accessibility. Consider going even further and working with local disability groups to truly become progressive around access needs.
• Put in place specific PTO for mental health and self-care days. Benefits to this practice include preventing longer absences, improving productivity, and creating a better environment for your employees.
• Implement flexible work policies that allow for a better work-life balance, including the ability to work remotely.
  
  • If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught many companies, it’s that work can generally be done more effectively from home for many employees. This also increases your potential applicant pool by looking great and being more accessible.
  • Consider instituting a policy that allows employees to seek assistance with obtaining regular internet access if this is a barrier to their ability to work from home.

LGBTQ+

• Establish Employee Resource Groups for LGBTQ+ folks.
• Ensure that any financial benefits, such as 401ks and pensions, allow for non-related adults to be set up as beneficiaries without extra hassle.
• Ensure that health insurance does not require a diagnosis of infertility to get assistance with fertility-related benefits. This winds up gatekeeping a number of LGBTQ+ folks.
• Celebrate LGBTQ+ history, not only Pride. Instead of creating rainbow products or iterations of your company logo, work with local non-profits to improve access to care and services locally. Take real action to show your allyship to the community.
• Look to other companies.
  
  • Here’s how 8 companies have supported their LGBTQ+ employees. Note that these are also many of the things mentioned here.
• Implement additional inclusive policies as raised by employees.
  
  • "A study in the US by Out Now titled ‘LGBT 2020 – LGBT Diversity Show Me the Business Case’ found that the US economy could save $9 billion annually if organisations implemented more effective inclusion policies for their LGBTQ+ staff. This is partially attributed to avoiding costs from stress and ill-health associated with LGBTQ+ staff who need to hide their identity at work or experience discrimination. The study also cited the customer loyalty and buying power of the LGBTQ+ market. Additionally, customers are likelier to leave businesses who have cases of discrimination made public." (link)

Transgender

• Learn the history and keep up with anti-trans legislation in your area. Work to fight it.
• Develop a diversity training specifically related to gender identity - and make it mandatory.
• This is another call for anti-harassment. Here’s part of why this is so important.
  
  • "For example, a 2015 survey of 27,715 trans individuals residing in the United States revealed that a staggering 77% of those who had held a job in the year prior took active steps to avoid mistreatment at work, such as hiding their gender identity, delaying their gender transition (or living as their true selves only after work and on weekends), refraining from asking their employers to use their correct pronouns (he, she, they, ze), or quitting their jobs. Sixty-seven percent reported negative outcomes such as being fired or forced to resign, not being hired, or being denied a promotion. And nearly a quarter reported other types of mistreatment based on their gender identity or expression—for example, being required to present as the sex assigned to them at birth to keep a job, having private information about their trans identity shared without permission, or being denied access to bathrooms that align with their gender identity." (link)
• Best practices for managers and HR representatives
• Establish transition guidelines.
  
  • Create transition plans with your HR team to help support employees transitioning while on staff.
    
    • Developing a workplace transition plan
    • Sample workplace transition plan – employee’s manager
• Implement rules that allow for gender-neutral facilities, such as bathrooms, to be built. Allow employees to use the restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, etc., that either align with their gender or in which they may feel most comfortable.
• Treat time off for transition care the same way you’d treat it for other health events. This includes allowing the use of sick time, additional paid time off, unpaid time off, FMLA, shared leave, and/or leave as a disability accommodation.
• Ensure that the short-term disability plan your company utilizes is aware of and covers transition-related outages (e.g., following surgery) as non-elective procedures.
  • Ensure that any waiting periods before benefits such as short-term disability kick in are transparently communicated and easy to find.
• Allow for the use of a “preferred” name in emails, business cards, directories, ID cards, personnel files, and more. Share transparently what someone would need to do to change their name legally within the company. (This not only helps trans folks but those getting married and/or divorced, too.)