Anabas

Jun 27, 2021

In June 1969, a series of riots began in response to a police raid on an LGBTQ+ friendly bar, the Stonewall Inn in New York City. More than half a century later, much has changed for the better and we now celebrate Global Pride Day on the 27th June. However, across the world people in the LGBTQ+ community still face inequality and lack of understanding from peers and colleagues. Homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia are still seen across traditional and social media. In healthcare, LGBT individuals face  inequalities in terms of access  to services, clinical outcomes, and experience. Anabas works hard to improve equality across every aspect of our organisation. However, we are also aware that without having directly experienced many forms of inequality, we still have much to learn. This was our motivation for establishing our Diversity and Inclusion forum. We launched our D&I forum in April with the intention of empowering our employees to be their full and authentic selves. Our work is initially to educate ourselves fully about workplace practices and structures that can influence inequality. The forum members work across a number of our client sites but come together monthly to discuss and review the work and are in contact as often as possible. We are beginning by reaching out to advocates and charities to better understand issues such as those facing the LGBTQ+ community, what we can do better, and how we can support all our employees right from the start of their time with us. This learning is then shared through the company through managerial training. Topics cover LGBTQ+ history as well as current challenges that employees may face. “It wasn’t until 1991 that the World Health Organisation stopped listing homosexuality as a mental illness and only now is our government laying out plans to ban conversion therapy.” Members of the forum shared what learnings have stuck with them. “It’s unbelievable. For the majority of people in work, being queer was pathologized for most of their life.” There are so many things that I’ve never personally had to think about, but I’ve learned about from being part of the forum,” Dale, a floor captain at Anabas shared. “We’ve discussed sharing pronouns and helping transgender employees’ transition between the bathrooms they are more comfortable using. These things can be more complex as many employees are based on client sites so we can’t simply opt to move to gender neutral toilets, for example. It’s been a huge learning curve in many ways but it’s a privilege to know I can help to make a difference.” Share: