Trans inclusion and belonging in the TA space | with Joanne Lockwood

Foreign. Welcome Everybody to episode 72 of the Shortlist. I'm your host, Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And you're very welcome to this week's episode where we're going to be talking about trans inclusion and belonging in the TA space. So everyone deserves to be their authentic self at work and in life. God forbid I couldn't be my authentic self. But for many trans people, the fear of stigma and discrimination can lead to devastating consequences when it comes to looking for employment, job satisfaction and just general emotional well being. And despite a growing awareness of the struggles that trans individuals face, many employers are simply still ill equipped. Make the changes and be educated on matters that would create a more inclusive and supportive workplace culture. But what can be done? Well, joining us today to discuss this important topic is my good friend Joanne Lockwood. And Joanne is an inclusion and belonging specialist and founder of C Change Happen, a consultancy she'll explain a little bit more about in a second. And looking through the lens of ta, Joanne will share with us tactical advice in creating a more inclusive employee lifecycle and also help you, our audience, hopefully better understand the challenges that trans people face in the workplace and how you can best support them. Joe, welcome to the show. It's an absolute pleasure to have you. I can't believe we haven't had an episode together in the nearly two years that we've been running. The shortest. And it's just wonderful to have you here. Can you perhaps introduce yourself, give us a little background on the business you run and the work you do with organizations and people in, in this community.

Firstly, Jonny, thank you so much for inviting me on. It's been an absolute pleasure to be invited. And you're right, I don't know how we haven't had this happen before, but yeah, I guess Covid we've not bumped into each other at the various events. So, yeah, so as you said, my name is Joanne, Joanne Lockwood. And I describe myself as an inclusion and belonging specialist. So I work with organizations. I, I describe the organizations I work with as people people. So that's talent acquisition, l&d, od, hr, d&I departments, helping create what I've coined as a ppe, a positive people experience either in their candidates in the accessible pipelines, creating open and fair opportunity, working with HR to look at policies and processes around diversity, inclusion and of course working with organizational development to look at how we can bring those processes across the entire organization rather than just focusing on HR or candidates. So again, that ppe, that positive people experience no matter where you come in contact with the people, because it's not just employees, it's not just customers, it's around the whole brand and the whole purpose of an organization.

And Joe, this is probably, you know, it's important to underscore that you work in the general inclusion space and work with organizations on more themes than perhaps just the trans community. But it is an area that we wanted to shine a spotlight on today because I get that most organizations are working hard to be much more inclusive these days and often they tend to focus on one or two areas. We've brought this up on other shows. We talk about perhaps the lack of focus that is put on disabilities and neurodiversity. And there are so many areas of difference that organizations and the people working those organizations are struggling to get their heads around these days in terms of, you know, you have to try and be aware of so many differences in the organization. I think it's important to highlight the fact that at its core you work on just being inclusive, which doesn't, it doesn't, it ignores all those differences. Because being inclusive, and correct me if I'm wrong, as you see, it is just about accepting all the differences that are in the workforce, in society. And the approaches to being inclusive don't really change much. You know, you're being inclusive towards someone from their gender, for their race, for their background, for their beliefs. It's, it's, it's, it's just being inclusive. It's a, it's, it's a, it's a way of thinking and working that is like, that transcends these different differences. Would that be fair?

I think at a very high level, I completely get what you're saying there. But I think when we talk about being inclusive, it's about being person centric, understanding what motivates, what challenges and individual. So to say that inclusion is the same for everybody misreads the situation. When we talk about providing equity, that's recognizing that different people from different backgrounds, different ethnicities face. Intersectionality kicks in. We have to recognize we need to be very person centric. So one size does not fit all. So being inclusive person per se, maybe doesn't fit that one size. So we've got to be really careful here. We don't, we don't just put in blanket policies believing we're inclusive without understanding the nuances and the needs of the individual. So yes, fundamentally it's about treating people fairly, treat people with respect, giving people opportunity, understanding the challenges they, they face for showing up. We talk about this. When we talk about privilege, it's. It's around understanding the particular characteristic may have a disadvantage in terms of social acceptance, in terms of social capital, in terms of structural inclusion. So without beating up on the straight white guy, straight white guy, top of the tree generally in the Western world in terms of privilege. And the further you are away from being straight, being white, being male, the further or the more challenges you have. And it's not, you know, as I often say to people, it's not about the challenges you've gone through, it's about the challenges you haven't had to go through as a man, as a white person. Me as a white person, I haven't ever faced racism in those terms. When I show up, I have my own characteristic bite. But I'm never disadvantaged because of the color of my skin or my upbringing. I was never disadvantaged at school because of the color of my skin. So those are things I haven't had to go through. So it's really important when we're about inclusion is to recognize the challenges of the individual. And that's where I think organizations maybe need to focus a little bit more of, is thinking about the different types of people. Yes, fundamentally we're all human beings, but we know in society privilege does exist and that. And I think we've also got to recognize that whatever we do in the workplace often mirrors society. So the challenges we have, maybe in the uk, in Ireland, in Western Europe, are different to the challenges we have maybe in Australia, Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, Southern Africa, whatever it may be. So recognizing there are nuances, if you're in a global organization looking at the D and I priorities globally is a challenge. And you often have to look at it territorially. So bring it back to trans, if you like. We look at how the LGBT community, the broader LGBT community, has variable protection under law in countries around the world. I think there's still 70 odd countries where being gay is criminalized. And a good proportionist countries also criminalize female to female lesbian behavior as well. So we're going to be, we're going to recognize that there are many territories in the world that still have these, these challenges. And I think a quarter of the world believe that being LGBTQ plus is, it should be. Should be made unlawful. So that's. A quarter of the world believe that. And there's a frightening statistics. We're in 2021 and I don't see fundamentally huge steps forward. You know, you look at the previous administration in the United States, we look at how that Administration was rolling back LGBTQ + rights, trans specifically in more detail. We look at Poland, we look at Hungary, we look at what's going on in Ukraine, in Russia and other territories on the world. In the Middle east, we're not seeing any advances in LGBTQ + rights. And when we take out trans out of that, we look at trans as a separate entity. We're not going forward at all. In fact, in the uk, I would say we're going backwards. We're struggling to hold the rope and hold our ground. At the moment, there's a huge upswell of pull against trans rights. And yes, we may argue that that is a very small minority of people, but that small minority of people are very well funded, very vocal, very loud, and seem to have the ear of politicians and the mainstream media. And that's really, really hard to push back against. And it's psychologically damaging for trans people and their allies to read this material, read this rhetoric and this, these challenges on a day by day basis. Because it is daily, it's not something you read here and there. It's an onslaught. And there are well organized organizations and I've spoken to editors of some of the key broadsheet papers and they've told me that they will print pro trans articles if I provide them because they're being bombarded with anti trans articles on a daily basis. But the pro trans articles, it's not news. Yeah, I get up in the morning, make my, make my, make my coffee, do a great day's work, come home at night, watch telly, go to bed. It's not great news. But that's, that's the lift experience of many trans people. But they've, you can always find a negative story and that's what they're bombarding the mainstream media with and that's the challenges we face. And this is not, this is, this is not niche media. This is the BBC, this is the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Observer, all the mainstream papers and organizations in the UK are all carrying similar stories. And that, that's, that's, and I'm just talking about the UK here. So we think about what's going on in Poland and Hungary and other territories. I believe in Ireland it's not so bad. You know, from what I understand, trans inclusion. Ireland, you had, you had own modification to the Gender Recognition act, whatever it's called in Ireland. And people can change their gender markers without the complexity we have in the uk. There are some countries, I think Malta and Denmark, a few others in mainland Europe also have that rights. But for the majority of trans people around the world, it's a complex procedure. It's been pathologized, medicalized, requires psychiatric intervention. There's waiting lists and queues to be seen by medical people, which again is pushing it back onto trans people and impacting their mental health and psychological safety just to exist in society. And as I said at the beginning, workplace mirror society. So what we're seeing going on in society will bleed into the workplace. And it may not be that everybody in the organization has a, has even has an opinion, but they will be aware of this undercurrent of anti trans rhetoric that's going on.

I think it's important to point that out. And Joe, thanks for doing so. Which is that until you understand someone's lived experience, you probably don't really understand their community, their background. And they don't all, you know, you say to somebody is black, somebody is white, somebody's male, somebody's female, someone's trans, someone's gay, someone's straight. It's not the same for everybody. Even within that, within that label that we are all different. And, and I'm so glad you came on the show today because I think a lot of folks out there just don't understand this community enough. They've maybe never talked to somebody from this community. They're reading the press, which as you say, is overwhelmingly negative because negative press sells. That's what gets promoted on Facebook. It's unfortunately the world that we seem to live in. And you're right, there are, there are better signs in some countries what it's worrying what's happening in Eastern Europe. Totally agree with you. It's just going so backwards. I thought 10 years ago that we were all making progr on these issues. I really felt that because maybe from my experience in Ireland, I felt Ireland was making progress as having grown up as a teenager where, you know, being gay was illegal in Ireland and could get you thrown into jail. It didn't change till I was maybe 16. So whilst it is better now, it's. It's still recent enough where there has been change has been recent enough. But to see it goes, go backwards is dangerous. You mentioned the news. I want to bring up some news stories to explore a little more and less on the negative news stories, more on hopefully news stories that can shine light on the community and its struggles and the potential for doing good. So let's jump into our first one here, which is from Total Jobs. And this one is a kind of report on some research that Total Jobs did to follow up on research that they did five years prior on the trans community in the workplace and was on trans experiences, understanding the community in the workplace. And just as a high level. Want to call out some stuff here and get your thoughts on it to see, is this what you see with the companies you work with? It's saying that, you know, half of trans people didn't reveal their gender identity at work. And that was back in this survey in 2016. That's risen to 65%. So five years ago, half of those surveyed, it was 400 people surveyed in this. So it's a decent number, statistically valid number that's gone backwards to your point. So that's now 2/3 not revealing their gender identity. What are your thoughts behind that? Is that what you're seeing out there? Is that what you mean by, you know, your fear, things are going backwards?

Yes, certainly. I remember the Total Job survey back in 2016 because I actually did some work with Total Jobs at the time and helped write an article to sort of bring, bring their stats to life. And I, I came out, I was open about my identity in mid-2016 and I felt that the world had turned a corner, certainly in the UK that I felt I was feeling safe. And we wind the clock forward five years. And in the uk, I mean, let's talk about the UK because that's my real field of expertise. The Conservative government at the time looked at revamping the Gender Recognition Act. Gender Recognition Act 2004 is a simple piece of legislation that allows a trans person to change their birth certificate. And what they wanted to simplify that process, what that generated was a lot of discord in society, in the media. And this is where the birth of some of these anti trans groups came up from because they, they conflated simplifying the gender recognition process with something called self ID and self determination, which they falsely identified, meant that anybody could just become a woman at any time and then change back and then become a woman again. It would allow predatory people to use this as an excuse, which, yeah, we can all see that it's a complete smokescreen. But so that, that's, that's, that came to fruition around 2018. This is where the, yeah, this is when this negativity started. And so we've now seen this negativity grow and grow and grow in these well organized groups in society, in the media. As I said, is it no wonder that trans people are now more aware of their identity and, and their place in the world? They're internalizing their own negativity, their own internalizing transphobia. They're almost believing what they're being told, that they're being triggered by reading articles on Twitter in the mainstream media. Is it no wonder that they, they mistrust maybe their employer because they don't know whether their employer is a, is a follower of these, the anti trans rhetoric or a positive around trans people. So it's unless the organization themselves have a clear external presence that is demonstrating their trans inclusive status, then I'm going to be nervous. I worry about when I walk into a room. One of the other stats, if you've got it, is that 86% of people said they were positive or neutral on trans inclusion. I always say, well what about the remaining 14 or 15%? Because when I walk into a room of 100 people, the chances are 10 or 15 of those people are anti trans. If I sit on the bus, sit on a train, walk into a new company. So I've always got these stats in my mind. So I'm looking around the room trying to work out if I'm going to be accepted every time I use the toilet, am I going to be challenged if I make a comment, am I going to be challenged by that? So I don't think it's any wonder that people are more afraid now to be open about their identity. And I think the stats also mirror for LGB people. You know, we're still seeing people in university being happy to be themselves, talk about their sexuality, living a free life, but putting themselves back in the closet to get their first job until they trust their employer and then they'll maybe open the door slightly and creep out. So it's not just trans, it's the whole LGBT community are still feeling that they've got to be cautious about their existence. But certainly looking at total job survey, the fact we've gone backwards, it doesn't surprise me at all because, because of this negative rhetoric in the UK and we see in, in Eastern Europe, I've.

Been a recruiter where I've been on assignments and asked by the client to, to uncover someone's sexuality to confirm suspicion, which is mental. This may be maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the last time I recruited and was asked such a question. But I knew, I know what happened then and you know, thankfully in the most, the last example ever happened, it was actually not a negative thing. The person wanted to just, you know, prepare the interviewer so that they weren't, you know, surprised by, by, by, by what they hired because they were hired remotely, but it could have gone the other way and the, still the person didn't have the right to ask it. But you know, people were doing it then. I suspect they're still doing it now. And recruiting. This, this, this pops up right there, there. This issue of coming out, revealing yourself in the workplace. We talked about it a few episodes ago on the shortlist, how it has such a negative impact on whether someone really does truly good work. It's holding back potential by having this thing hidden. And if two thirds of the workforce in the trans community are holding themselves back, that's a whole lot of people. It's millions of people not working at capacity. You mentioned 2016 and that being a seminal year for you, Joe, and your identity. How did it play out for you? You know, what did you face support, you know, or find yourself being very supported by colleagues, by clients you worked with at the time, or what was your own experience and what made you decide that that was the time to reveal yourself to your customers, to your colleagues?

Well, my coming out, you know, professional coming out was, it wasn't that simple. I, I ran my own business. I was a, a third shareholder co director. We've been running this IT organization for, together for 15 odd years and during the latter part of that I was aware of my senior colleagues thoughts on transgender people. We, we worked in a shared office space in a unit in a, you know, with other 10, 15, 20 other companies and somebody in an engineering firm within that, within that building transitioned. They were, they were being open and out and the owner of that business often used to come into our office just to, you know, like owners do. They share their stories and, and talk and they were, they were sharing their, their challenges with this trans person.

And.

The language pretty quickly turned very negative. You know, they were talking about this person was referred to it a thing. There's a lot of empathy going to the business owner saying, well, it's terrible. You're going to have to put up with that thing working for you, going out, visiting customers and nothing you can do about it. So I'm sitting around the table listening to my business partners, my colleagues use this language. And I wasn't, this was probably two or three years before I was out. And I look back and I'm ashamed of myself for saying silent, for not saying anything, for not going up to this person and offering my support. But at the time I was, I was so far under, you know, in the closet, I didn't say anything and it away with me and I, I Heard my colleagues make these remarks. Other times, one of my female senior colleagues said, that thing has done something horrible in the toilets, you know, etc. Etc. And it's like. And I just, the longer I sat around the table at the board meetings, in these, in these planning meetings, working with my colleagues, the less and less respect I have for them. It just ate away from me. And I got to the point where I didn't want to work in my own business, I didn't want to work in that business. I'm not saying I wanted my business to fail, but I wanted my colleagues to fail. And it was kind of, it was really eating away from me. I lost all respect. And when I finally became open about my identity, it wasn't, I didn't, I wouldn't say I chose to do it. It became this unstoppable force inside me that one day I just had to open the box and the box blew apart. It was a really, really. I describe it as a necessity at the time and I didn't, I didn't share that at work. I came out on Facebook and yeah, Facebook is, has a lot of leakage. So I'm. With hindsight, I'm probably, I'm fairly certain my colleagues weren't ignorant to the fact that I posted something on Facebook. Even though I deleted it, they never said anything to me. I never said anything to them. And then about two or three months later, one of my business partners said, joe, I'm thinking about where we go with the business in a few years time and I've got some ideas and what I'd really like to do is take it all on my own and I'd like to buy you out. And I thought, okay, that was, that's good. I'm, I'm happy, I'm happy to, to consider that. I was looking to get out anyway. I was, on many occasions I was looking to. I even thought about just walking away because I, I really had no respect for the people I was working for anymore. I just thought I just got to get out of it, so they have to buy me out. That was like any business buyout. It was a, it's like a bare, bare knuckle fight at times. Lots of blood on the, on the canvas, you know, take it to the edge, negotiating. And it finally came out about my gender identity in the last throws of the negotiation. And because they were pushing me to find out what's going to do next, they're really worried that I was going to set up a competing organization back into It. And that was their. That was their. That was their big concern. Get rid of me. But they didn't want me competing, so they were really pushing me what I was going to do next. I said, well, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. And they said, why don't you just tell us you're trans and we can just get it out there. Yeah. So, right. The death blow, it sort of came out, but by that point, it was too late. I already knew what they thought inside their head, no matter what they said. You know, I challenged them on some of their thoughts that I'd heard them say, and they said, no, no, we didn't say that. We didn't mean it. I thought, oh, so you're. You're full of BS as well. Okay, fine. So I took the money. It wasn't a fortune. It was like a good redundancy package. But, yeah, so. But I was, at the time when I was going through this, this challenge, I was. Because I knew what my colleagues thought, my senior, my business partners thought I was concerned about having to come out to all of my customers. And, you know, we were a small business. We were. We were doing what, 1.2 million, something like that. We had a wages VAT, all the stuff, all the things you've got to pay, and we weren't rolling in it. We weren't making huge profits. We were just bumbling along. So the impact of something that major on me as a major fee earner, client liaison, I was worried that I would damage the business. Also, as a manager, leader, I had to lead my team. And if it impacted my ability to lead the team, then I was worried about. That is, you know, I almost thought if I was an employee, I could just push it onto the company to deal with. But because I was kind of owning it, I. I had to almost, like, take responsibility for myself, to help myself and to worry about my impact on everybody. So that was what was going through my head at the time. And I. I didn't have any particular reason to think my customers wouldn't be accepting, but I also appreciated the fact that there was likely to be those conversations. And I was. I didn't want to be exhausted by having to go, yeah, it's true. And, oh, by the way, and it's, you know, 40 or 50 customers, it's just. I just decided it was too exhausting. Too exhausting. And so bottling it, taking the money running, in a way, it worked for me. So, yeah, I was. But it was, I'm sure There are many other trans people who've been in similar situations, either an owner or as an employee that are faced with the same dilemma. It's, it's that, that fear, you know, we, we all know that everything you ever desire is on the other side of fear. That fear of being rejected, that fear of being discriminated against, that fear of rejection, all of that stuff is piling on your head and you just want to run away and scream and hide and just let me. Yeah, so yeah, I ran away. I took the money and ran. In a way, with hindsight, best decision I ever made.

But it's understandable from the context. Like the same Total jobs article points out that 56% of trans people believe it's harder for them to find a job. So again, you're looking at your financial prospects, you're looking at your perceived ability to get a job. And more than half of trans people in the survey saying, you know, they're thinking it's harder to find that job if they're out in public in their workplace environment. So you mentioned earlier though, Joe, that if you are interested in attracting trans talent and being open to trans talent and hopefully taking advantage of other companies lack of awareness and trying to attract them, you were saying you need to position yourself and demonstrate you are a trans friendly employer. Tell me about how an organization should go about doing that. I don't want to just point out the obvious stuff. Tell us about what works. What have you seen that works that actually would positively affect application rates in the trans community and give companies a real advantage in a perhaps overlooked community?

All right, let me, let me unpack that total jobs thing about the 56% believe it's hard to find a job. So when I first sold my business, I just, I thought, well, let's go back into it contracting. Let's look for an interim position just to figure out what to do. And I had some very open conversations with agency recruiters, explained about my gender identity. And I said to them, how does that fit? You know, and almost all of them were candid enough to say it would have a severe impact on my employability. This was agency recruiters being very honest and quite a few of them, some of these are big brands, big names, you'd have heard of them said that it limited their, their scope for clients they could put me forward to. So whether that was knowing the client and their bias or whether it was their own bias, they, they weren't willing to put me forward to because how, how would it reflect on them? So Yeah, I had it from the horse's mouth from agency recruiters and I, I even did a, a true event, a true London event, probably back in 2017 or 18. And I was talking about trans inclusion and people in the room who are, as you know, are in house agency, different sort of recruiters. So people in the room actually said, yeah, you'd be a tough person to place. You know, you're not the easy candidate. And I've stood on stage and I have a slide behind me and it says, so would you hire me? And I, I throw it to the audience like, come on, would you hire me? And you can see people go, oh, yeah, we're an inclusive company secret. They go, yeah. And, and that's, that's, I know that that's what people are thinking. So let's not, let's not beat around the bush here. Not everybody, not every. I appreciate there are many companies out there that don't think that way, but there are many hiring managers, many agency recruiters, many, many organizations who do a double take. So you say, what can organizations do? Well, be honest, be honest that this is what's happening. Be honest with yourself to say you're not giving gender diverse individuals, gay people, lesbians, queer people, black people, disabled people. You're not giving them genuine opportunity. So you can educate your staff. Yes, you can run lunch and learn. Yes, you can do trans 101. Yes, you can, you can do all of this. But what you've got to do is recognize the lived experience, the struggles that trans people face. You know, workplace mirror society, the stuff's going on in society, the pressures that you feel, and how can you be genuinely inclusive? Who is championing it? Who is, who is owning this internally? Do you have a staff network, an ERG for a pride network where trans representation is part of that pride network? Are you proud of your trans people? Are you featuring them? Are you spotlighting them? Are you amplifying them? Are there senior trans people? Or we just talk about trans people on the tills, on the coal face, or are we actually seeing trans people progressing in the organization? So if you're not, and you know, I, I hear people trying to hire their way into diversity, you know, but we've got to look at your, your existing people. And if you employ 100 people and you say, well, we don't have any trans people Here, well, statistically, 6 to 10% identify as LGB1, 1 2% identifies trans or gender diverse. So if you, if you're not seeing that level of representation, ask Yourself. Why? Either you've been statistically unlucky to never recruit someone who's lgbt, or people are too frightened to come out. So it's about fixing your internal culture first. So let's not try and hire people if your culture is broken. Don't. Don't bring me in for interview and then make me feel uncomfortable. Don't bring me for interview and misgender me on the phone because my voice is deep. Don't give me the double take and go. You're not quite the Joanne I was expecting and you know that, that look you get. So I want to walk in, I want to feel embraced, I want to feel celebrated. I want to, I want people to. I don't want to hide my transiness, if you like. I wanna, I'm quite proud to be out and open and many trans people are. It's part of who I am. So, you know, when you say, you know, I don't see color, I don't see gender identity, what you're doing is you're erasing a part of me by not seeing me. I know there are plenty of trans people out there that, that want to submerge their transness and be seen as a woman or be seen as a man or be seen as non binary. But recognizing that some people are quite happy to be open, you know, we don't all have the, the privilege of passing the privilege of looking like we're not trans. Recognizing that not everybody is male or female. Recognizing that the non binding people out there, there are gender fluid people out there. So does your process work to the forms? I still see some shocking application forms. The first question is gender and it's male, female, trans man, trans woman, gender queer. And I think, no, no, those aren't genders, those are descriptions. So it's male, female, non binary. Do you identify the same as what you assigned at birth? Yes or no? That tells them that I'm a woman and that I don't identify as I was assigned at birth. Therefore you could deduce from that on trans woman. So you ask the questions in a very polite way. Matter of fact. And I've seen some shocking narratives around the question which effectively other. They create this trans people as being other. And so look at the documentation, look at your application forms, look at, look at your website, hold a mirror up, ask, ask trans groups, you know, pay a trans consultant to take a look at you and say, would I apply here? Does the health care. Is it, is it, is the health care fair? Does it support same sex marriage, does it support adoptions from same sex couples? Does it support IVF? Does it support gender diversity, surgery, etc. Etc. And surgery is not everybody, every trans person destination, but it is for some and it's how you respect that it's important. I've, you know, I've had a hair transplant recently, which technically is surgery. So surgery comes in different ways. Mental health, we need to think about, have you got support? I've, I've worked with companies over the last few weeks and further before where they've had some of the trans colleagues have been misgendered at work and it's caused that, that colleague to feel significantly impacted. So what's the company result? What's the company's response? Is it quick to respond? Stamping on it, suspending the person who was the perpetrator? Is this offering counseling? Is it offering support? Or do they just panic at the time, go, what do we do now? Which is the impact of the two companies I dealt with recently. They didn't have the first process. So it's building those relationships up with counseling, coaching with trans specialisms, looking at your red lines, look at your acceptable language policies, looking at what is discrimination, what you see as bullying and harassment, making sure that people understand the employee's responsibility for working in our office means that this is what the company believes, this is how we want our employees to behave. So there's no misunderstanding. If misgendering has occurred, bullying occurs, joking or banter occurs. We're absolutely dead clear on this. There is, there is a red line there and you've crossed it. I'm sorry. And that to us is Grossman's conduct. This isn't the place for you. So it requires that level of intolerance to transphobic behavior. In the same way we have the same intolerance is racism, etc. Etc. So I'm not trying to equivalence transphobia with racism. We've got our own challenges, but we've got to decide what is, what is or isn't acceptable. If it's not acceptable, stamp it out. So all of this is a collection of culture changes and what we don't want to do is little performative tweaks a quick lunch and learn a quick trans 101 and expect everything to be fixed. We need to really look at it, look at lived experience, involve staff who are trans or gender diverse, involve external consultants and pay them properly to come and look at your processes and test it out and do, and do an audit if that's what that's what it takes and implement the recommendations.

Yeah, sorry Joe, I was gonna say your comment of performative tweaks brings me on to just, if I can squeeze it in another article we were looking at which, which was published in the Wall Street Journal recently, which itself is normally quite a conservative right wing publication, let's be be honest here. But they, the article is about why gender pronouns are becoming a big deal at work. And, and you know, there is a comment or an opinion in that that perhaps some organizations or individuals who are have begun using gender pronouns, their email signatures, their zoom, etc are just doing that, being performative. Performative, just kind of saying ticking a box and not really going deeper than that yet. You know, I know that recently in our organization we rolled out our good friend Sam Arwadani's training on allyship. And in that she puts it into perspective, which I thought was wonderful. And the article repeats it here that you know, it isn't about you when you put down your gender pronouns. It's about saying that I am. It's revealing that you're, you're, you're open to that conversation. You're somebody who understands you're an ally for that community, that when you list your gender pronouns on an email signature on a zoom, it's not about you. Like this isn't about me saying he, him. I'm not sitting here thinking somebody needs to go is Johnny preferred as he or him? That's not what it's about that you do it. So you're giving license to others to understand that you're, you know, you, you're, you're, you're, you're an accepting person, you understand or want to understand that community and that's what it's about. Allyship, what are your thoughts on some of the ideas proposed by the Wall Street Journal article? We'll share the link in the show notes and online to those listening live to check it out and make their own decisions because it can be quite controversial. You typically don't get universal acceptance and the companies in the article, I think all of them have said that they've made it optional. They don't want to enforce this on any employee to do, but they've seen great acceptance that it's building. And LinkedIn they mentioned, of course has introduced the ability to add your gender pronouns on LinkedIn profiles. But what are your thoughts around some of these topics? Because you've mentioned it a couple of times already in the last few minutes.

Yeah. First of all, can I just say that your explanation was absolutely top Notch, perfect. And I couldn't have said it better myself. The it's not about you, it's about how what you're communicating to other. It's the same as a rainbow flag in the cafe window. It says, this cafe is safe, this person is safe. And I actually say to people who come to me and say, should I put my parents on my profile? And my response, which often shocks people, is, no, you shouldn't. Because if you feel you have to ask that question, you haven't truly understood your part in, in that responsibility. So being an ally is not performative. Being an ally is understanding what sharing those pronouns means. And as you say, it's about saying that I, I understand the issues, I understand why it's important to normalize the sharing of pronouns in society. So, yeah, full stop. And I completely agree that organizations should not make sharing of pronouns compulsory. It should be an optional thing. I've had conversations with people of privilege, I won't go any deeper than that, who argue and say, it's the world gone crazy. I don't see why I should have to share my pronouns. I don't see why we have to have this new language coming in where it's becoming trendy and kind of snowflake territory. And I said, that's fine. You don't have to get it. I don't expect you to get it, so please don't. And I know that when I look at you and your LinkedIn profile, you haven't done it. I'll be more wary. That's fine. I'll go my suit of armor on, and I'll be, I'll be tooled up, ready for the, Ready for the discussion. But when I'm. When I'm browsing on LinkedIn, when I'm. When I join a zoom call and I see people's pronouns there, you and I both got our pronouns on this, on the stream yard. It says to me that we're here, we're showing up. I don't have to explain myself. I don't have to. I. I feel I don't have to say, oh, hi, my name is Joanne Lockwood. I use the pronoun she, her, because I've got them here, that it says there. And when I stand up on stage, I've got my slide deck and it says joanne, look, she, her. So I'm announcing it in other ways. And it does. It creates this safe space. It means that I'm free to be me and I can tell who else is positive. And I also know the Length. Some companies have had to go to to have this pronoun policy approved. We think about huge organizations, marketing, brand, the layers of management, the layers of complication to get something like this approved. So when a company of a global company has, makes this statement, I know that this wasn't a kind of like yeah, let's just do it. They put this through legal and they put this through legal in, in all continents of the world to make this happen. So that really says to me that this company really does care globally. They may not get it right everywhere but they've actually done something here. And so I've seen solicitors and law firms, big brands who now have their staff have it on their email signature. And I think yeah, you've really done that because that person wouldn't be allowed to do it without corporate approval. So yeah, so I think there is a significant amount of respect where large companies do this because I know what they've been through to get it to happen. So they've really thought about it as an organization. So that's really powerful. I think smaller organizations, maybe we're looking at the SME market, we're looking at organizations that maybe I haven't, I haven't thought about this. It may seem like a lot of work for them or maybe they're worried about the impact it'll have on their clients. What will people think of me if I share my pronouns? It's again, it's all about me, me, me. What, what about me? So it's about, yeah, it's about just trying to educate a normalized pronoun sharing society. Because not everybody identifies as, as male or female. There are people who are non binary, non binary people don't all use they them pronouns. There's lots of neopronouns and various other neopronouns. If you haven't come across those, do Google neopronouns neo pronouns. And also I've seen a lot of people who are non English first language speakers now putting their, their first language pronouns in their signature. So people are French, people are German. So again that signpost to me that they're not native English speakers. So that's also a benefit. And we don't all have a typical Anglo Saxon Western name. So there are many people from different ethnicities. You as an English person, I can't tell their gender or even guess their gender from their name. So by sharing pronouns it also allows non English first language speakers and non Anglo Saxon type names to identify their gender if they so wish. So I Think there's a whole load of benefits beyond just the LGBTQ community about bringing acceptance and inclusion into the world. I know many female friends who are Joe, and they often get misgendered and then we can. There's many other names where even. I've got some female friends who even have Joe, and they get misgendered all the time, you know. So I think, I think it does help have that conversation and it goes way beyond just the LGBT community.

I can't believe we're at time. Joe. I could genuinely chat for much longer. I've had an education and it's been fascinating talking to you and I think you articulate some of the challenges, some of the fears and some of the practical ways we can overcome them really, really well. And you've done that today, and I thank you for that. Hopefully that's been an education, insight to our audience and helped individuals who want to do something really think about what they can do. Before you go, as I do with all of our guests on the show, I'd love if you could leave us with a piece of advice. Your tip for our shortlist of tips, it being the 72nd tip to add to the shortlist, what piece of advice would you leave our audience that either you have gathered from your own experience or you have had passed on to you from others? That resonates with you.

When we think about trans people, I think don't just focus on the trans individual. A trans person has a family, they have colleagues. And I know from my experience, my wife went through a huge trauma herself and her workplace didn't see that. So if the work, if her workplace had put in trans inclusion policies, she would have been far happier as the wife of a trans person to be out and open because she was very scared to bring me to the company barbecue to take me to the Christmas party for fear of what would happen, whether I, you know, they misgender me or they stigmatize her. So I think the bit of advice I would give is think beyond the person in front of you and think about the entire 360 around, around the people and understand the, the trauma that life, that very long term colleagues may have when they've known me for 30 or 40 years, how they suddenly got to get used to a new me. And they may well need counseling as well. So as I say, the biggest bit of advice is don't just look at the individual trans person. Think about the 360. That's what I would say to people.

I love that it moves it from being 1 to 2%, being multiplied that by four by five, by six, by those who are going to be touched by that, family member or friend who might want to ask questions, who might want to just say, I want to work for an organization who supports friends like mine, family members like mine. Even though we don't necessarily have someone who identifies like that open in the workplace, we certainly will have people who are touched by that. So that's a great piece of advice. Joe, thanks so much for coming on the show. Let's have you back next year. Love to continue the conversation, be wonderfully enlightening. And Ari, thank you for being candid, open, honest and sharing your story here as well today. Joe, really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Appreciate it. Jonny, thank you.

Thank you for listening. Taking the time here with us today on episode number 72, I'm going to ask you to perhaps give a little bit more time to an event we're running in a couple of weeks that I'm hoping you will find of interest and worth 90 minutes of your time. Our latest Social Talent Live is happening in November. It comes up on November 18th, so it's just shy of three weeks away and it runs on the 18th of November at 4pm UK Irish time, 11am on the east coast of the US 8am on the west coast. It's a free event to register for and we'll be talking about hiring at scale during the Great Resignation. We've mentioned the Great Resignation many times here in the show, but we're going to have a panel of guests, two panels and an interview. In the middle we've got Barbara Lee, who is SVP of HR with Nielsen Entertainment Group Kim Pope, who's the chief operating officer of Wilson HCG Kevin Blair who's VP of Global Talent Acquisition with Celonis based out of Germany and Daniel Monaghan who's VP of Global Talent Acquisition and Mobility with Uber. Joining us with our friends and guests Bev Kay and Jason Laurenson and myself to basically run those panels and interviews to get different opinions on, you know, why? Why the Great Resignation? What's causing it? Why are leaving and droves their jobs? How can we stem that? And then what organizations do to recruit the talent. You'll need to fill that with some case studies and stories being told. So go to socialtalent.com forward/live@socialtown.com forward/live to register for free now. But before then come back next week. We have another show. Show 73 will be back with us next Wednesday our first of November and we're going to be talking about talent strategy for hyper growth. So keeping with that same theme, another perspective and this time from Peter Colson, who is a manager in the global of global talent acquisition for Spotify. So Peter's in a very high growth organization at the moment, Spotify, doing wonderful things all around the world and growing like crazy. And their talent strategy is very much affected by the great resignation and just general growth of their product and services out there. And Peter's going to be talking a little bit the talent strategy he looks at in an organization like Spotify, but that is growing through hypergrowth and hiring through hypergrowth. And you can find out more and register by going to socialtalent.com the shortlist, or just subscribe. If you're listening to the podcast now on Apple Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts, or if you're joining us live on YouTube or LinkedIn, come back this time next week. We'll be at the same place for you to have a chance to join the live conversation with Peter and myself next Wednesday. So thanks for joining us this week. It's been a pleasure having you join us with your comments. Good or bad. We expect all the comments that come into us on the live part of the show. If you haven't listened to us live, do try and join us next week or in the coming weeks, but if not, check out our podcast. Hopefully it will enlighten you as to how talent is progressing in 21:22, some of the great ideas that are out there in the market, how leaders are coping with these issues, how advocates like Joanne are coping with these issues, and how you can transform your organization to build better teams for your workplace. We'll talk to you next week.