As a landmark court battle makes headlines in the U.S., legal rights for people of different sexual orientations and gender identities in Canadian workplaces are more stable and well defined than they are south of the border, one leading Vancouver-based consultant says.
But Kai Scott, a social scientist who co-founded Vancouver consultancy TransFocus, added that while the rights of transgender and LGBTQ people are strongly protected by the Canadian Human Rights Act and B.C.’s Human Rights Code, the challenge remains for many companies to be as inclusive and supportive as possible to employees who may be transgender or non-binary.
And that lack of a comprehensive corporate-policy strategy on LGBTQ inclusion may also be increasingly hurting some companies’ bottom lines as consumers become more aware of these social issues and make their buying decisions based on a company’s stance, Scott said.
“There are huge economic implications for companies that aren’t set up properly or haven’t reimagined things in a way that benefits more people,” Scott said. “These companies are leaving business on the table, essentially. And they are doing so unwittingly.”
TransFocus has been a leading consultant for companies and groups looking to improve workplace gender inclusion for the last four years, and Scott said the last couple of years – after protection against discrimination based on gender identity and expression were added to Canadian law – have seen a marked increase in the number of companies approaching consultants like him to assess their workplaces.
The picture is considerably more hostile in the United States, where the U.S. Supreme Court was still struggling as of last week to decide whether job discrimination against LGBTQ workers is illegal under the U.S. Civil Rights Act.
And while Scott described the situation in the United States as “scary,” he noted that business executives in B.C. have mostly been open to efforts to make all workers welcome at their place of employment regardless of gender identity.
It doesn’t mean, however, that the challenges don’t remain very real and palpable, Scott added.
“People are not trying to exploit or be malicious, but those blind spots within their organizations exist, and people don’t know about it,” he said. “The forms that you provide, the visuals that you display, the words that you use – they can all turn potential customers away. Or it could be the infrastructure; if you are a business offering shared accommodations and you only have men and women sections, non-binary people will think they don’t belong here.”
What is also tricky for companies, Scott added, is the interplay between customers and employees. Inconsistencies in a company’s policy towards one and the other could be just as damaging as not having a strategy at all – and in both cases, a lack of acceptance by one group will inevitably be felt by the other.
“Oftentimes, companies think only about employees without realizing they also have trans customers,” he said. “There’s an interplay between employees and customers; if you are respectful to one, you are also respectful to the other – and that’s very important for business.
“On the other hand, if you take care of the customers’ side, the danger is for your employees to look at it and say, ‘Hey, you’ve taken care of them, but what about me?’ These things tend to go hand in hand in my experience, and you have to look at the whole ecosystem.”
One of the key challenges facing those trying to address gender identity and expression issues in the workplace is a lack of data. Despite recent high-profile cases raising the visibility of the transgender community in Canada, specific population numbers remain vague.
Scott believes that when that vast data gap is finally filled, companies will be able to become more inclusive because the complex gender diversity field will be able to be broken down into decipherable chunks of information for policy-makers.
“It’s really important to disaggregate that data, because that will determine how we move forward in the era of big data,” Scott said. “It’s search results. It’s marketing. It’s how we treat our employees. It informs so much that we just really need to get it right; otherwise, you’d get this cascading set of impacts that could be very adverse for transgender and non-binary people.”
Regardless of where the movement goes, however, Scott calls the current situation among B.C. companies “a good start,” with executives generally very open to introducing support programs into their companies for their workers. People, he said, are becoming more aware of little things – like how the use of “ladies and gentlemen” at the start of a speech might exclude some listeners – and are now more thoughtful in their actions.
“Oftentimes, it’s a bit daunting for companies to look at this, because it’s not as simple as adding a new gender category in your forms,” he said.
“And the complexity can overwhelm people, so it’s about building momentum through some easy wins right away … and then creating a longer-term goal and objective.
“We still have a long way to go, and I think corporations have an important part to play in that,” Scott continued. “We’ll get there in the long run, but it won’t be overnight.”
