After the Rainbows Have Come Down

Reflections on inclusivity at HFC

Aaron Brocken is Head of Technical Solutions at HappyFunCorp and has been with HFC since 2013. In addition to working with clients and engineers to solve difficult technical challenges, he is also an indefatigable source of positive energy and an accomplished musician, fashion designer, and visual artist. — Ed.

It’s September. Pride month has passed. Everyone puts up rainbows and fun graphics, and feels all the feels about Pride. Now you have taken them down — but your LGBTQ+ employees, colleagues, friends and family still exist. So what can be done to ensure that these employees feel supported and accepted the rest of the year?

Some of my fellow LGBTQ+ colleagues have commented that HappyFunCorp is the first place they have worked where they haven’t been the token LGBTQ person. When I was still living in the Midwest, I remember navigating the daily coming-out process every time I started a new job. HappyFunCorp is exactly what I had hoped for in a workplace: my queerness is accepted and embraced as part of what makes me who I am. At HFC we are not tolerated, we are celebrated.

We know that not every company is like HappyFunCorp — but every company can take steps to be more like us in this way. Affirming your LGBTQ+ colleagues — and clients — and accepting the spectrum of what being LGBTQ+ looks like doesn’t need to be hard. (Because many of the things you can do to create welcoming spaces can be applied to many marginalized groups, we will be referring to marginalized groups as a whole below.)

First, some (of many) questions to ask yourself:

As a company:

1. Do we have trouble working with and hiring from marginalized communities? If so, why?


2. What do we do to make sure our space is a welcoming environment for marginalized communities?


3. Are there things we could do right now to make our space more welcoming?


4. When recruiting or expressing interest in collaboration, do we reach out to marginalized communities?


5. If we do reach out to marginalized communities, what have we done to create a place where people from these communities want to work and feel safe?

As a person:

1. Do I assume people’s sexual orientation, gender, religion, or cultural background, experience is the same as mine?


2. What do I do to be an ally to marginalized communities or communities who are differently marginalized from me?


3. How do I bring that allyship into the workplace?


4. Do I know how to handle myself if I accidentally misgender or make another incorrect assumption about a coworker or client?


5. Am I putting in the effort to see change at the company I work at?

What to do with the answers to the above questions:

Companies must be intentional about the environment they create. Just saying you are happy to work with clients and colleagues from marginalized communities is not enough; it assumes the people you work with are welcome, but are responsible for creating their own space inside your organization. What you want is to start creating that space before people join your company.

Will it be perfect? No. But it shows that you are willing to do some of the work, and not offload your “diversity” to the people you are trying to hire.

As a company and as individuals, do we conduct interviews in ways that don’t assume we know the person in front of us? For example, a small gesture you can use is stating what pronouns you use in person and in your email signature. It shows you are willing to normalize stating pronouns and any clients or candidates can do the same if they choose to. Proactively taking the responsibility on yourself means others don’t have to worry about being in an environment that supports the spectrum of gender identities.

Have you tried hiring people from marginalized communities but think they are just “hard to find”? In this case: What does your company do to make it clear that marginalized groups are not just welcomed in your space, but safe and supported? Many times this is a deeper issue: If your contacts or networks tend to be the same kind of people, that indicates you may need to broaden your professional horizons into the greater community. Without putting in the effort to expand your landscape of friends, colleagues, and community members, even a genuine welcome for people from marginalized communities can seem a lot like tokenization. If you haven’t done the work to create a space, it feels empty.

As a person, are you treating the people around you as people? We don’t exist in a vacuum, even at work: People bring their whole selves to work, and what goes on in the world affects all of us. Do you take time to relate to the people around you as people and not as producers of work?

And finally: Are you comfortable with not being perfect? You will inevitably say the wrong thing or make an incorrect assumption; it happens. Do you know how to handle it? For example, if you assume a woman wearing a wedding ring must be married to a man and she corrects you that she has a wife, it is not weird to apologize. Saying “I’m sorry” is important. Many people try to get past that uncomfortable experience as quickly as possible, but saying sorry is worth the time and shows that even though you made a mistake, you are willing to take ownership of it.

Many of the things we talk about here are about what you can do for others to create a space where they feel welcome, beyond telling people they are welcome to show up. Are you putting in the effort to create a space that others want to be in? It can be hard: if you feel comfortable where you are, it is easy to assume that others would be comfortable too. HFC is pretty great, but we have a lot of work to do — and just because I and my LGBTQ+ colleagues feel good here, that doesn’t mean that other people will. We must keep creating more welcoming spaces, especially for communities of color.

So, our goal is to do a better job showing the world what a wonderful community we have created in HFC. While we have things we can improve, we have shown we have the ability to do it — and now we need to show our responsibility for putting in the effort for other marginalized groups. Creating and maintaining a positive and affirming community within a company is a journey not a destination and we are excited to see some of you on that journey with us!

Love,

Aaron