Celebrating Pride Month at Mineral
For employers, Pride Month was a time to focus on building a culture rooted in authenticity and belonging. When LGTBQ+ employees know that they are free to be fully themselves in the workplace, and that they have the support of their employer and colleagues, they’re better able to do their best work, contribute to their team’s and organization’s success, and thrive in their careers.
Pride Month was also a time for learning and remembering that, for LGBTQ+ employees, discrimination and exclusion persist. There’s still a lot more work to do.
At Mineral, we understand that small businesses may not know where to start. Here’s what we did this year:
- Susan Anderson, our Vice President of Services, kicked of Pride Month by sharing a powerful piece in which she recounted starting her career by hiding her identity and described her own journey related to workplace inclusivity. Her story resonated with many of our employees and was met with appreciation and support from across the organization. It’s important to have buy-in for DE&I initiatives from senior leaders, and Susan was excited to share her story.
- We started a month-long experience-sharing campaign in our instant messaging platform by asking employees what Pride means to them. The responses were overwhelming! We saw incredibly profound demonstrations of vulnerability and allyship from employees across our organization. We were so proud to see so many employees follow Susan’s lead and share their own authentic selves, or their experiences raising LGBTQ+ children. We all made connections with and embraced each other’s differences and similarities.
- We promoted WorkPride 2021 by mygwork, a five-day series of events that’s free for professionals, graduates, inclusive employers, and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Each year, WorkPride welcomes thousands of virtual attendees from around the globe to network, share best practices, and learn strategies to help create workspaces that are inclusive of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.
- We curated a list of learning resources in our company intranet including the TED Love is Love video playlist, and we identified organizations our employees could make donations to in honor of Pride Month using our peer-to-peer bonus program.
- Finally, the pinnacle of our Pride Month celebrations was the Slack channel takeover for Pride Trivia, where employees competed for coveted Mineral-branded Pride swag through five rounds of LGBTQ+ history questions. Turnout for this virtual event was exceeded our expectations, and we raised our awareness about LGBTQ+ experiences and the historical fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States and the world.
