Gay Workplace Diversity

Ian Johnson, Out Now
October 3, 2007

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TOPICS: Gay workplace diversity. Gay and lesbian diversity. Proctor & Gamble. Equality and diversity policy. LGBT workplace issues. Gay and lesbian equality at work. Gay and lesbian staff recruitment in Canada under Procter and Gamble lesbian and gay market workplace diversity policies. Gay workplace diversity news. Big business hires lesbian and gay recruits on campus at university.

Gay Market News today covered the latest news on gay workplace diversity in the UK mainstream media market.

Big business understands the importance of hiring the best recruits for graduate training programs.

New recruitment though can also send a proactive message on workplace diversity and the importance placed by the company on all staff, including LGBT staff. In this extract about university graduate LGBT recruitment in the Canada graduate recruitment market, The Eyeopener student university newspaper offers an interesting article on this trend, focusing on three companies - Procter and Gamble, McKinsey Company and IBM. Here is an extract:

The Eyeopener
Big business courts queer students -- Jesse Trautmann

One of the world's biggest companies wants you, especially if you're queer. Procter and Gamble, the largest consumer packaged goods company in the world, invited lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) Ryerson students to its annual career info session last week.

"We want to be not only the largest but also the fastest-growing company, and to do that you need diversity," said Tim Penner, President of P&G Canada.

"For the queer community that's been marginalized for so long, this is an important step," said Lali, third-year sociology student and RyePRIDE events co-ordinator. "I think it's important that P&G's doing this," he added. 
RyePRIDE received an invitation to the cocktail meet-and-greet from David Hutchison, co-chair of GABLE, the queer network within P&G that supports and advocates for LGBT employees. The e-mail read "specifically, we want to attract LGBT students to the company."

The goal of the recruitment and info session, Hutchison said, was to inform LGBT students of the company's inclusive, queer-positive workplace environment. For Robert Klienman, a law student at the University of Toronto who attended the meeting, a workplace environment that embraces gays and lesbians is essential.

"I would be 'out' right from the interview," he said. "I have my work as an executive of U of T's gay group on my resume. I will find a job where I won't have to hide my sexuality." Students in the queer communities at U of T and York also received the invite.

P&G is hiring for a variety of full-time and summer internship jobs, which include positions in marketing, sales, human resources, finance and IT. "I always get positive feedback from executives about the talent calibre from Ryerson and different schools," Huchinson said.

"A transsexual can't just walk up and get a job anywhere. He or she will often be discriminated against," Lali said. 
He added that he might have been a teacher if it weren't for enduring prejudices among parents about gender roles. P&G-style recruitment is extremely rare because "people don't think we're disadvantaged," Lali added. He also said that P&G organized the event because they happen to have a "huge queer segment" within the company that wants to "give back" to the queer community.

P&G Canada, the company that brings you Crest, Tide and Gillette, has offered same-sex partner benefits since 2001. Spouses of queer employees are entitled to the same medical, dental and life insurance perks that partners of heterosexual employees get. They also get the same adoption leave offered to the company's straight workers.

Proctor and Gamble isn't the only large company tapping into the pool of LGBT students as a fresh resource. Earlier this month both IBM and McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, held meet-and-greet events in Toronto advocating workplace diversity and encouraging students to network with IBM employees, including 'out' executives.

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