Reader Letter

There’s a very nice letter from a reader of Insight Into Diversity about the article on transgender people in employment that was in last month’s issue. She writes:

Hundreds of the top employers in our country don’t think so (IBM, Xerox, Apple, Starbucks, universities, city and county governments, to name just a few). Thanks to education, activism, and the medical profession the reality is that many employers are now supporting transgender workers in ways never seen before. They do this because it makes business sense to retain talented and very loyal employees. They have effectively integrated transgender employees into their workforces by developing trans-friendly policies, insurance coverage providing for trans-health related services including surgeries, and have begun working hard to retain their talented employees and managers. Speaking of policies, I differ from the author on a small but important point: Most employers realize that requiring transgender employees to use specific bathrooms is not inclusion, so their employees use the bathroom appropriate to their expressed gender.

I’m even more pleased to have been a part of it.

Trans in the Workplace

A magazine called Insight Into Diversity recently did an article on transgender issues in the workplace. I was interviewed for it, as were Jillian Weiss, author of Transgender Workplace Diversity and Vanessa Sheridan, author of The Complete Guide to Transgender in the Workplace, amongst others.

Dr. Weiss indicates that the issue of being transgender is increasingly coming to the fore. More people are in an environment where they feel more comfortable coming out, so more employers will be experiencing transitioning employees. “The time to prepare,” she says, “is now. If you have a decent size workforce, it’s likely that you will deal with a transitioning employee. It’s a question of when, not if.”

Sheridan agrees that the acceptance factor is growing. “It’s a reality of business life now,” she says. “The general public needs to be aware that transgender individuals are coming out in record numbers and that they are more visible in the community than ever before. It’s a social phenomenon gaining
increasing visibility.”

The article starts on p. 22 of the .pdf.