Since 1994, Common Ground has consulted to dozens of organizations - Fortune 10 to 10-person startups - on issues related to workplace diversity as concern sexual orientation, gender identity and DP Benefits. We have expanded these to encompass gender role at work, successful integration of religion/spirituality, and more flushed out strategies for ERGs and in the realm of Executive Coaching.
Employee Networks' Implementation & Action Plans
Employee groups of any kind allow people with similar interests or characteristics to interact with others who are like them. In the case of a gay employee, the existence of such groups helps the individual simply feel that he or she is not alone. Feeling like 'the only one' is a depressing condition common to many gay people in the workplace. In so far as the organization is concerned, such ERGs leverage the commitment to diversity for revenue gain. HR managers can help gay employees start a support group; more importantly, they can provide crucial organizational support.
To facilitate these results, Common Ground has developed a uniquely effective Employee Resource Group Progress Paradigm that is used to clarify the goals, mission and methodology of Employee Resource Networks. In brief, the Paradigm:
- Helps the ERG clarify its mission and goals
- Couples the mission and goals with strategies to actually attain them
- Creates a measurable, but fluid, timeline to keep ERGs from getting stuck or traveling down an incorrect path for too long
Please contact us for more details.
Gender Identity in the Workplace: Transition Planning, Education and Communication
More companies and organizations than at any other time in history find themselves with an employee (or employees) who choose to undergo sex reassignment due to their status as transsexual people. And many more are finding themselves asked to accommodate instances of gender identity expression that approach, but don’t include, sex reassignment. This is a growing area of workplace diversity that is also taking form in public policy whereby seven of the seventeen states that protect us as citizens on the basis of sexual orientation also extend those protections, particularly to the workplace, to transgender people.
Organizations usually find themselves in reactive, rather than proactive, mode upon finding out an employee is transgender and wishes to express as thus, or transsexual and undergoing or planning transition. Common Ground can assist with education, transition planning, and communication of programs and policies to your entire workforce or whatever subset of it you choose. Our methods include live facilitation, written resources such as position papers and best practices guides, web-based programs or teleconferencing programs designed to bring (for example) all your HR staff up to the minute on policy changes and program implementations. We can help you decide what your policy should be and how you should go about implementing and communicating it.
Please contact us for more information.
Gender Role at Work:
Common Ground’s work in the area of gender roles fosters an environment for understanding how gender expectations and stereotypes affect performance, retention, and job satisfaction. The program is based on what the most current science says about similarities and differences in men’s and women’s ability to perform in the workplace.
There are several key points to this work:
- appreciating that “gender” is not a code word for “women,” and that people of both sexes deal with stereotypes.
- understanding that conflicts about gender roles arise between women and between men as well as between women and men.
- being able to recognize the difference between fair treatment and special accommodation based on gender.
- becoming better acquainted with what the most current science really says about similarities and differences in women’s and men’s ability to perform in the workplace.
- understanding better how gender roles and stereotypes affect people’s experience of the workplace.
- developing practical strategies and greater confidence about dealing with gender role expectations in the workplace.
- recognizing the factors that affect the retention of women in a male dominated workplace; or the retention of men in a female dominated workplace.
Domestic Partner Benefits
Common Ground has helped hundreds of organizations - from Ford Motor Company to small insurance agencies and law firms- implement these benefits.
Common Ground's popular consulting seminar is called "The Ins and Outs of Domestic Partner Benefits" and it answers all of the relevant questions about these important workplace benefits. A small sampling of what the 2-3 hour seminar covers is:
- If the organization has a policy of non-discrimination that includes sexual orientation, how does it stand behind that statement?
- How much will domestic partner benefits cost?
- How do you determine a domestic partner? Does the term imply same/gender only, or are opposite gender partners included?
- Will our insurers allow us to offer these benefits?
- What will be the impact of this decision both internally and externally?
- What are the laws and tax codes governing these benefits?
- How do we communicate this decision to our employees?
- How do we best educate about these benefits and the need for them?
Common Ground consults to organizations about these benefits in the form of on-site presentations or in the manner of preparation of customized research & informational reports.
For any of this information, or more, please contact us directly.
Religion/Spirituality:
There is an overwhelming sense in most organizations that ERGs or workplace education initiatives formed around sexual orientation are automatically in conflict with those that take various religious viewpoints into account. This need not be the case when people focus on what both of these groups or endeavors have in common, as opposed to those areas in which they do, sometimes, conflict.
Beyond the challenges seemingly inherent in bringing ERGs that are coming from two so-called disparate places, many organizations are similarly finding themselves being asked to allow the formation of ERGs that are just about “religion”. Unfortunately, “religion” in the workplace has become code for “conservative Christianity” in much the same way as “sexual orientation” is code to some for “homosexuality”. Neither is true, but as long as the perception exists, the challenge does.
The issue is not whether there is something inherently good or bad about one religion over another; the issue for employers is that there are about 2200 religions or theologies on Earth and so the scope of what may be requested of them is what makes the conversation potentially problematic.
Common Ground believes that if you can change the paradigm of the conversation – in the workplace – from “religion” to ‘spirituality” you can in fact begin to act on people’s needs to have theirs accommodated.
This work is undertaken by Common Ground with small groups of senior leaders or HR professionals charged with investigating the feasibility of such implementations in their workplace.
Please call or email us for more information about our work around Workplace Spirituality
Executive Coaching:
Senior leaders didn’t get to be senior leaders by demonstrating ignorance of a subject. Unless they are fully cognizant of a topic, or at least feel as though they have a grasp of the salient facts about it and the language to express themselves, they are not likely to want to engage. How many times, therefore, is a leader’s perceived unwillingness to engage with employees, colleagues, customers or the public on issues related to sexual orientation and/or gender identity real reticence or simply just an inability to articulate what he or she thinks? Common Ground believes that there can be no dialog without all parties to the conversation having the necessary language skills. And we think that a great many (especially) corporate leaders who are accused of benign homophobia (at best) are simply just people who no one’s taken the time to explore the language of the topic with them. Given skill in the form of what words to use, leaders can…will and do…engage.
In our one-to-one Coaching sessions, we focus on:
Language skills
Basic concepts
The ability to ask questions and get answers
A grounding in the internal/external business case
Resources and accountability
We can do this work in person, by web-conference or by phone conference. It can be a single session or as many as your executive(s) determine they want or need. |
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