June is LGBTQ+ Pride month in the US – a time of year many of us enjoy for all of its rainbow celebrations of love and joy! Are you curious about celebrating Pride at work? Great! Celebrating Pride month can be a wonderful way for workplaces to build community and foster inclusion. The key is to do this authentically and respectfully, as opposed to performatively.

Have you seen companies’ LGBTQ+ allyship or other DEI work shamed as “performative allyship?” We use this term to refer to examples of people or groups saying or doing things that appear to be supportive of a marginalized group they’re not part of, when in fact their actions behind the scenes cause harm to that group. 

#BlackoutTuesday was a classic example of this: white-led companies posting black squares on their social media because it was the trendy thing to do, without doing the research to figure out that this was actually harming the Black Lives Matter movement. In June, many classic performative allyship examples are on full display: companies putting ample budget toward big, flashy floats in their local pride parade while failing to put any budget toward providing their LGBTQ+ employees with the health care and other benefits they need.

This happens a lot – sometimes because the DEI work in question actually is performative allyship! – and unfortunately causes a lot of leaders to avoid pursuing DEI work altogether for fear of doing it “wrong” or causing harm. 

But there’s a better way! Taking a little bit of extra time to be thoughtful about your DEI strategy can help you avoid performative allyship and instead take effective action that makes your allyship substantive and productive. LBGTQ Pride month is no exception!

If you’re wondering how to celebrate Pride without accidentally engaging in performative allyship, here are three questions to ask yourself to help you get started:

1. How is your company supporting your current and future LBGTQ+ employees? 

What policies, benefits, and other systems does your organization have in place to support your LGBTQ+ staff?  If you can’t think of any, are you working on implementing some based on staff feedback? This is a great time to start! 

As you’re reflecting on this, consider things like: 

• Healthcare coverage for gender-affirming medical treatment, 
• Paid parental leave for all new parents regardless of gender or how the new child came into the family,
• A code of conduct that requires all staff and clients to use correct pronouns when referring to others, 
• Paid bereavement leave extended to staff mourning a member of their chosen family even if they are not a blood relative or legally married, etc.

Putting on an event to celebrate Pride, or even writing a note about it, will land as performative if you’re not also taking substantive steps like these to show that you value your LGBTQ+ staff and care about their safety and wellbeing. This is the first step of walking the walk.

These are things you do all year round to celebrate Pride. Then, when Pride month comes along, you can celebrate that you’re doing these things to make your allyship substantive. If you’re not yet doing these things, Pride month can be a great time to start. 

2. How are LGBTQ+ people involved in deciding how the company will celebrate Pride? 

Now that you’ve done some reflecting on how your company is supporting LGBTQ+ employees internally year-round, you can start to focus on your Pride month celebrations. 

One of the most fundamental ways to avoid performative allyship is to ensure we’re following the leadership of people from marginalized groups who are most directly impacted by our actions. (And that we compensate them for this work.) So if LGBTQ+ people aren’t yet involved in deciding how your company will celebrate Pride, it’s time to change that!  Here are a few ways that can happen:

• If you have an LGBTQ+ ERG and/or a DEI Council: ERGs or DEI Councils are great resources for orgs when you’re looking to celebrate an affinity month authentically. Work with your DEI Council to proactively develop a strategy to guide how your company celebrates affinity months overall so that you’re not scrambling and trying to reinvent the wheel every time. Ask your LGBTQ+ ERG if they have requests for what the company could do to celebrate Pride, if they’d like budget to support programming that would be meaningful to them, and/or if they have feedback for ways that the company can be more LGBTQ+ friendly year-round. You just want to make sure you’re not asking anyone to plan the event for the company without paying them.
• If you don’t have an LGBTQ+ ERG or a DEI Council: If you’re a small company without ERGs or a DEI Council and don’t have any LGBTQ+ folks on the HR team responsible for planning things like Pride, this can be a great opportunity to partner with and amplify the work of an outside organization that focuses on LGBTQ+ work – especially those that support LGBTQ+ people in your industry. For example, if you’re in tech, follow the lead of orgs like Lesbians Who Tech & Allies. You can share some of the resources you see on their social media, amplify requests for action that they’re making of partner organizations, and of course take those actions yourself, sharing with your staff any opportunities for them to join you.

3. What is your company’s relationship with LGBTQ+ rights and the LGBTQ+ community?

Finally, as you’re determining how you want to celebrate Pride, take some time to explore how Pride month’s origins as a riot demanding better human rights for LGBTQ+ people align with your organizational values or mission. 

If you’re thinking, “But my company doesn’t have a relationship with the LGBTQ+ community,” I encourage you to think about that again. Are you sure? For example: 

• Perhaps you have an organizational value about how to treat everyone with respect and dignity? If so, treating LGBTQ+ people with respect and dignity would be an important part of living this value. And because of systemic homophobia, we can’t do that without taking deliberate steps to counteract injustice. Depending on your company, aligned actions could include everything from making sure your health insurance plans cover gender affirming healthcare, to ensuring policies like parental leave benefits and dress codes are gender neutral and that gender neutral restrooms are available for staff, to developing a code of conduct that includes the expectation that all staff with use each other’s correct pronouns and names.
• Perhaps your product or service supports LGBTQ+ people in some way? (Unless your product or service is only for straight folks, it ideally does support LGBTQ+ people!) If so, Pride is a great time to lean into that and amp up the support based on user feedback. If not, Pride is a great time to partner with organizations whose work is more directly related to LGBTQ+ rights so you can support experts already doing the work rather than trying to reinvent the wheel without the necessary expertise.

If you’re a smaller company, your Pride celebration might look like writing a communication to your team that talks about this relationship – there’s often no need to do anything more elaborate. Regardless, Reflecting on this connection can pave the way to help you plan something authentic and meaningful for staff, helping you avoid performative allyship.

Reflecting on these three questions can pave the way to help you plan something authentic and meaningful for staff, helping you avoid performative allyship and instead take action that will strengthen your organization. Happy Pride!

This is a contributor-written article by DEI Consultant Natania Malin Gazek. Visit their website to learn about working together or sign up for their newsletter to get their DEI insights directly to your inbox.