Help! Employee is Transitioning!

[SoManyQuestionsHere]

Reasonably new user name here, so: no NC - but please be understanding about me still having to keep this sort of vague. Also, full transparency, I'm asking around elsewhere, too, to hopefully get an opposite view point.

My employee is, apparently, non-binary and is looking to make some bold, public moves!

Hired in as "male, with a clearly male name and a physical appearance that, while clearly leaning towards androgyny, reads 'definitely male'".

Currently changing name (previously: "George" - obviously NOT the actual name) to something rather more neutral and unusual, along the lines of "Kimye" (equally obviously also not the real name - but: it's not obviously gendered and comes with, sorry - not meaning to sound prejudiced here, I'm genuinely trying to be as pragmatic as humanly possible - connotations that the general public would interpret as "most likely seen on Jeremy Kyle" as well as "they/them" pronouns).

I'm in professional services. A.k.a. "industry that has employees face clients directly". I'm also responsible for a client known for their pretty conservative social values (as a benchmark: earning their respect as a female executive has been an uphill battle for me!). And our employer is, basically, whatever Stonewall's board considers an "ideal case".

Genuinely out of my depth, here!

How would you approach? Given that a) I'm personally a GC but hardly radical (doesn't really matter, I'm a pro and my opinions come last!), that b) I do want to support my employees and don't, personally, see a major problem with "Kimye" doing their thing, internally, c) have a job, which boils down to "make money" and hence necessitates "do not alienate clients" (who WILL feel alienated!), and d) have woman employees whom I cherish, wish to retain and most definitely do not want to ask to share a hotel room with "Kimye" on the grounds that it's one of their more feminine leaning days unless they're 100% cool with it?

Yes, I've asked HR. Apparently, our best official guidance boils down to "play it by ear - we trust our executives!".

“Due to the sensitive nature of this issue and our commitments both to respecting our clients’ priorities and the company’s responsibilities as an employer, I will need you as HR to take the lead in resolving this”. Then CC in the couple of more senior people who will be pissed off if you lose the client and let HR and bosses battle out the best approach.. If you get asked or pressed to take charge, say “I’m afraid this is outside the scope of my expertise”

Hands-down one of the most useful pieces of practical advice I've ever received! THANK YOU!!!

(And, this is coming from someone who's currently incurring a minor fortune in cost for the 3rd party executive coach the firm pays for - as a general leadership development type of situation and unrelated, just FYI - and whose best advice was "play it by ear").

You should be asking for 500 per hour - "play it by ear" invoices me for 450 and is useless in practical matters!

whose best advice was "play it by ear")

I still think this is the best advice.

And is not the piece of advice given by the other poster a version of that? That is, when a client issue arises, escalate it to senior management and HR in the way described? So, wait and see or play it by ear.

@anaily

Man and woman are genders, sex is male or female. Real examples of discrimination can be seen in the Taylor v Jaguar land rover case. Or any other case such as the zara case, that settled for 30k after they blocked a customer from accessing changing rooms. A simple "jaguar land rover non binary" or "zara non binary case" will give you all the information you need.

Man: adult human male Women: adult human female.

@anaily

There is a definition, it can be easily searched for on any search engine. With you logic the Maya case didn't set any laws either then. Regardless of your personal opinion, non binary people are covered by the equality act.

Special treatment such as?

Maya’s case was heard in a court of law, she will be going back to the employment tribunal imminently. The Jaguar case was an employment tribunal, NOT a court of law.

We're not talking about discrimination based on gender identity though, we're talking about an employee being potentially unpalatable to clients, for whatever reason. The problem is that clients have money and demands, and sometimes the money makes the demands seem reasonable, even if they aren't.
OP is an employee as well as a manager, and is now in the position of suffering a potential detriment to her career because of the potential for clients to vote with their feet because of something she can do nothing about (the presentation of her direct report).
And again, so far all we know about this man is that he's picked a new name and identifies as non-binary. We don't know about his behaviour, beliefs, intelligence, experience, expectations, nothing.

We've historically had clients with preferences about the senior people they work with before (e.g. two I've dealt with include one slightly smarmy one that preferred senior women to men, one was outspokenly racist). We have given the slightly smarmy one female PMs but let them know the situation, I've worked with the client and they give females a much easier time than men (every male colleague of mine hates them, I quite liked them). The racist client we gave them a white team to protect our staff. That was a good few years ago, not sure how we'd deal with it now, we've subsequently refused to work with clients with offensive attitudes.

I'd take Kimye off the project but present it very much as for their own protection from these 'traditional' clients. You don't want to lose the clients money but Kimye has to accept that choosing an unconventional identity will have an impact on who they can work with.

@anaily

Taylor v jaguar land rover case covers your point and shows its wrong, jaguar argued non binary was not covered by the equality act, they lost. Actual legal case studies prove you are wrong. No where in the act does it say vegans are protected, but with case studies we can prove vegans are also protected even though they aren't mentioned.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Save the poor vegans!

It's a shame HR aren't giving you better advice since it's their job to do so. It's true that the law surrounding non-binary people is not clearly spelled out, but all cases brought to court thus far have come down on the side of non-binary people having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, so it's best to proceed as though this is the case. At the very least, I doubt your employer wants to become another test case.

I have two points of advice for you. Firstly, keep your personal beliefs out of it, they're not relevant. Being GC doesn't mean you have any less of a responsibility to be accepting and supportive of a colleague with a protected characteristic, and indeed you could land your employer in trouble if you don't. The Maya Forstater appeal made it very clear that you're entitled to hold GC beliefs but not entitled to discriminate against colleagues as a result of those beliefs.

My second piece of advice would be to not go creating problems where none exist. You're worried about hotel rooms but Kimye has already solved that one for you by voluntarily making it clear they'd prefer to share with a male colleague. So that's a not an issue, and there's no reason to worry about it being an issue unless Kimye suddenly starts expressing a different preference (and the buddy system seems a good way to bypass that problem anyway, and ensure no one's sharing with anyone they'd rather not, whether that's Kimye or somebody else)

With your other points of concern, it's honestly highly likely Kimye is entirely aware of the same issues of possible contention that you are, and already has their own preferred solutions. So have you tried just asking them about any other specific concerns you have? And if their preferred solution gels with yours, then as with the hotel rooms, you have no problem and can stop worrying about it. And if Kimye's preferred solution isn't the same as yours, then you at least have a specific problem you can take to HR and ask them to make the judgement call on.

[quote suggestionsplease1]@shedbuilder you might be fine with being chased out of toilets but plenty of other mis-sexed women aren't. Especially those who have urgent need because of inflammatory bowel disease or who need to deal with periods. These people should not face harassment.[/quote]
It's not harassment when a woman walks into the women's lavatory and is followed in by a person who looks like a man to her and says 'I think you're in the wrong loo. The Men's is down the corridor.' Women (same goes for men in male loos) have every right to question someone or something that doesn't seem right. Asking someone an appropriate and civil question isn't harassing them.

Quite where bowel disease or periods come into it I don't know. Is having IBS or a menopausal flood supposed to move you into some separate realm where none of the usual rules apply?

Haha. Glad it was helpful.

@BlueberryCheezecake

It's a shame HR aren't giving you better advice since it's their job to do so. It's true that the law surrounding non-binary people is not clearly spelled out, but all cases brought to court thus far have come down on the side of non-binary people having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, so it's best to proceed as though this is the case. At the very least, I doubt your employer wants to become another test case.

I have two points of advice for you. Firstly, keep your personal beliefs out of it, they're not relevant. Being GC doesn't mean you have any less of a responsibility to be accepting and supportive of a colleague with a protected characteristic, and indeed you could land your employer in trouble if you don't. The Maya Forstater appeal made it very clear that you're entitled to hold GC beliefs but not entitled to discriminate against colleagues as a result of those beliefs.

My second piece of advice would be to not go creating problems where none exist. You're worried about hotel rooms but Kimye has already solved that one for you by voluntarily making it clear they'd prefer to share with a male colleague. So that's a not an issue, and there's no reason to worry about it being an issue unless Kimye suddenly starts expressing a different preference (and the buddy system seems a good way to bypass that problem anyway, and ensure no one's sharing with anyone they'd rather not, whether that's Kimye or somebody else)

With your other points of concern, it's honestly highly likely Kimye is entirely aware of the same issues of possible contention that you are, and already has their own preferred solutions. So have you tried just asking them about any other specific concerns you have? And if their preferred solution gels with yours, then as with the hotel rooms, you have no problem and can stop worrying about it. And if Kimye's preferred solution isn't the same as yours, then you at least have a specific problem you can take to HR and ask them to make the judgement call on.

but all cases brought to court thus far have come down on the side of non-binary people having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment

You appear to know a lot about this issue. Can you point us to the other cases apart from the Jaguar one? I'd be interested to know which cases you refer to. Thanks.

Also OP - do you not have any mentors or senior people in the org who may have had experience?

I think you should be honest with Kimye that you don’t have experience of staff transitioning but you’re there to support her and are prepared to escalate any issues that may arise that you don’t feel 100% confident in managing. She needs to feel supported for her sake and for your sake.

@Shedbuilder you said you had been "asked to leave the women's loos on occasion and it hasn't been an issue for me". You are implying this is an acceptable thing to happen.

It is not acceptable. In such a scenario you are saying that it is fine for a woman to be asked to leave the women's toilets for looking like a man, and your logic also holds that they should be asked by men to leave the men's toilets because they are not a man.

Your application of logic has left you with an individual who now has no facilities to use (and no, they shouldn't have to use accessible toilets, nor do all venues have such provision.) Well done.

I would really advise against seeking advice for anything yet.
Imagine if you were hired at a job and your boss immediately sought advice from HR or senior staff or went to a mentor about you.
If this man does claim for discrimination in the future, and sees that as soon as he mentioned he wanted to call himself non-binary, his manager identified him as a potential problem, it would be easy to argue she had prejudged him.
And he would only have to do a data access request for his name to find out.
This isn't "How do we solve a problem like Maria". It might be really obvious what is going to happen with conservative clients, but to suggest he is problem at this stage is going to make it look like OP is trying to get rid of him.

@Summerfun54321

I think you should be honest with Kimye that you don’t have experience of staff transitioning but you’re there to support her and are prepared to escalate any issues that may arise that you don’t feel 100% confident in managing. She needs to feel supported for her sake and for your sake.

Kimje is a natal male who has declared themselves non binary. Why are you referring to them as she?

Shedbuilder, the relevant cases have already been mentioned in this thread. Legal cases set precedent - anyone confidently stating non-binary people don't have a protected characteristic when it's been established in court that they do is not someone OP wants to be taking advice from unless she enjoys being sued.

For the record, by the way: I'm not "Kimye's" direct line manager.

Technically, I'm the boss of Kimye's boss' direct superior.

So much for "how well big corporations support their employees in translating their well-intentioned policies into hands-on advice". This never even should have landed on my desk because the buck should have stopped two levels of seniority below me. IF we got actually useful guidance, that is!

This never even should have landed on my desk by the sound of it no, you are right.

But you haven't really explained how it has landed on your desk either. Have you had a load of emails asking about it? Have there been meetings? Why do you even know about this person who is so junior to you? Are you the go-to equalities person? Are you just the most senior woman? There's a lot of relevant detail missing.

[quote suggestionsplease1]@Shedbuilder you said you had been "asked to leave the women's loos on occasion and it hasn't been an issue for me". You are implying this is an acceptable thing to happen.

It is not acceptable. In such a scenario you are saying that it is fine for a woman to be asked to leave the women's toilets for looking like a man, and your logic also holds that they should be asked by men to leave the men's toilets because they are not a man.

Your application of logic has left you with an individual who now has no facilities to use (and no, they shouldn't have to use accessible toilets, nor do all venues have such provision.) Well done.[/quote]
No, I have sometimes been mistaken for a man by a woman walking into the loo and have been asked to use the mens. And when I turn round and smile and say 'Actually, I'm female' we end up laughing because as soon as they take a second look and hear my voice, they realise I'm a woman. This situation is something that more butch lesbians have always faced. It's not something to get upset about if you respect women's rights to protect themselves.

We have women's toilets for females only and I support women's rights to privacy and dignity. I also support men's rights to privacy and dignity in the male loos too. Women have every right to question a situation where they should reasonably be able to expect a women-only space and instead encounter someone who, at a quick glance, looks like a man. I would rather be challenged a hundred times than have women silently and fearfully accepting a man in their midst.

I reckon that if any women have ever actively chased a person out of a public lavatory then they'll have very good reason for doing so. I don't think it's my logic that's the problem.

@BlueberryCheezecake

Shedbuilder, the relevant cases have already been mentioned in this thread. Legal cases set precedent - anyone confidently stating non-binary people don't have a protected characteristic when it's been established in court that they do is not someone OP wants to be taking advice from unless she enjoys being sued.

Which cases are those? I've had a quick look through but can't see what you're referring to. The Jaguar one didn't set a legal precedent because it was only an employment tribunal, so doesn't change any laws. And anyway the individual concerned was deemed to have started transitioning from MtF, so wasn't non-binary but undergoing gender reassignment, which was why they were covered by the Equality Act. As far as I'm aware, non-binary has consistently failed to make it to the statute books because, as demonstrated here, even people who are enthusiastic supporters of the concept of non-binary are unable to say exactly what 'non-binary' means.

A quick cop and paste would help me understand what you're talking about. Two minutes. That's all I'm asking.

@SoManyQuestionsHere

For the record, by the way: I'm not "Kimye's" direct line manager.

Technically, I'm the boss of Kimye's boss' direct superior.

So much for "how well big corporations support their employees in translating their well-intentioned policies into hands-on advice". This never even should have landed on my desk because the buck should have stopped two levels of seniority below me. IF we got actually useful guidance, that is!

So what have Kimye's direct boss and their boss been doing meanwhile? Are they actually having any problems on the ground with Kimye's identity, presentation, behaviour, or is this all entirely still in the realm of the hypothetical?

As someone who has experience of being a visible minority in a customer facing role, I'm also wondering if the conservative clients have met Kimye yet? Is your example of needing to tone down the eyeliner an actual complaint you've received or is it just one you think you might receive? The reason I ask is my experience is it's often hard to predict who is or isn't going to have a problem with you. Have you considered the possibility your conservative clients might be more savvy with the modern world than you think and have no problem with Kimye? Or at least not be so bothered they withdraw their business?

FlyingOink makes a good point above that if Kimye's very existence is being made into a problem/crisis behind the scenes that could be seen as discrimatory. And honestly from the tone of your posts it does sound like you're having a general flap rather than actually having specific real problems arising. I understand wanting to know what to do in "what if" scenarios but if you're making an employee into a problem when they're not being one, that's not fair on them, and it's a waste of time for you.

So what have Kimye's direct boss and their boss been doing meanwhile? Are they actually having any problems on the ground with Kimye's identity, presentation, behaviour, or is this all entirely still in the realm of the hypothetical?

Exactly.

OP you keep emphasising how senior you are. Honestly, I'd hate to be reporting to you based on what you have put here. The drama, caps and !!! You haven't explained if there's actually an issue, and if so, what.

And anyway the individual concerned was deemed to have started transitioning from MtF, so wasn't non-binary but undergoing gender reassignment, which was why they were covered by the Equality Act

No, this is completely incorrect, the individual was explicitly recognised as being non-binary/genderfluid by the court and it was concluded that the protected characteristic extended to them nonetheless. You're also completely wrong to state employment tribunals don't set legal precedents.

@Summerfun54321

I think you should be honest with Kimye that you don’t have experience of staff transitioning but you’re there to support her and are prepared to escalate any issues that may arise that you don’t feel 100% confident in managing. She needs to feel supported for her sake and for your sake.

This employee has declared themself to be non-binary (whatever that means), so why are you referring to them as she?

As an aside I think I'm non binary too as I don't wear dresses, heels or paint my nails.