Gays at work
An interview with GABA president Johnny Givins.
The passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill twenty years ago has had major effects on gay people in the workforce, says Gay Auckland Business Association (GABA) president Johnny Givins. Greater acceptance has empowered gays to be more effective and productive at work, Givins says.
“It’s the practice and the attitude of the people around you that really is either the stumbling block or the supporting block to your employment and equal opportunity. And that’s what’s changed.
“The environment has changed and the support networks that allow people to be out in the workplace are well in place.”
“Before, people were fearful about coming out at work, because they thought that their fellow workers would not want to deal with that. Nowadays you can turn to them and say ‘Well get a life!’ Because what we’ve found now is the problem is not the gay person’s problem, it’s the straight person’s problem.”
That is a paradigm shift, he says, and feeling safer at work has had huge implications on gay people’s ability to work effectively.
“It’s about safety. If people don’t feel safe in their work environment, they will not perform. If it’s not there, then that leads to illness, to absenteeism, below par performances, and it means we’re cutting off the potential of employees because they’re not feeling safe to say things and be how they are within the workplace.”
Givins cites Wellington’s Westpac Stadium as an employer with good EEO policies. Last year one of their employees who made homophobic comments “was very quickly sat upon”. Employers have to be active, not passive, to send a clear message that homophobic behaviour is not condoned, and the Westpac Stadium did that.
“One of the things that we’re very supportive of is making sure that all senior corporate companies have an equal opportunity part of their human resources packages that are about how to work with gay and lesbian employees and supervisors. Westpac Stadium has a very good one of those.”
As queer people gain more acceptance in society, Givins feels there is less need for them to project themselves as being special or extraordinary. Gay people sometimes need to balance their out behaviour and their professional behaviour, he says. “If you turn into a screaming queen at work, then there is a bit of a problem, if it’s too loud!” He says people don’t have to hide their sexual orientation either, but should be aware of how they relate to their fellow workers.
“What happens in the workplace is that a gay person has to be responsible for their behaviour in the place. So, there’s sexual molestation policies, there’s policies that different companies have, which are just as valid for a gay person as for a straight person. All the policies around harassment apply equally for men and women.”
One issue that bothers Givins is that there is very little data on lesbian, gay and transgender people, so it is hard to know how and where they work and what their needs are. “There’s more data about dogs than there is about gay people. It’s extraordinary that we don’t know how many people are out and gay in the community. Their numbers are not being entered into the census data, so they’re not being written the social policy.”
Quashing Homophobic Remarks
Westpac Stadium’s attitudes towards GLBT people came under scrutiny last year when a staff member commented negatively on a same-sex couple filmed being affectionate during a cricket match at the stadium. The media rang up for an opinion and got one from somebody that hadn’t seen the TV clip, says stadium marketing manager Steve Thompson.
The organisation was quick to state publicly that it did not support homophobic attitudes in its staff, he says. “The next day we got right onto it and said, ‘We’ve no policy against that. We have a policy where people’s sexual orientation is not our business’.” The main thing was that Westpac Stadium management was willing to admit publicly that the homophobic comment was wrong, he says. “We do have an official policy and the one time we went public with a dumb comment, we went back right away and said we’d got it wrong.”
Thompson says the organisation’s staff policy handbook states that everyone has the right to enjoy a working environment free from all forms of harassment. “We’re quite a small organisation. In a smaller work team environment there’s no secrets, and it’s important that we all get on together.”