I work in a fairly junior HR role in a very male dominated industry- think a local chain of mechanics.
Our HR team is small- less than 5 people. Boss is gay, but it’s the least interesting bit about her. It was our quarterly meeting and the Pride plans were on the agenda- L&D Lead whips out a presentation she’d been given by a third party and we started going through it, with the ultimate plan being that we, HR, would be delivering the training to groups across the business.
It all started well, with sound bites about LGBT people not being able to talk about their personal lives in the same way as straight people, etc etc, fair enough.
Then it moved on to actions for staff- being an “ally”, pronouns in emails, always making sure to ask people their pronouns. Not sure how this is going to go down with a lot of oil-stained mechanics in their 50s, but anyway.
Then it came to the branding- basically we’re told that there’s a big expectation from the parents company that everyone in HR uses the gaudy pride email footer, Teams backgrounds etc.
I realised I needed to say something. I said that I appreciated this was a cause close to a lot of people’s hearts, but I don’t feel comfortable making any political statements at work. I’m a feminist, but I declined to use the Women’s day branding when that was circulated. I have other strong political opinions but I don’t bring them into work, and this is no different. I won’t be using any of these materials or language in my own communications.
L&D Lead nods and looks oddly relieved? Boss says “Well Pride isn’t political.” - I said “I think we can all agree it’s been politicised over the last number of years.” They agreed and said that they don’t want to piss anyone off, and yes, it’s meaningless if people are forced to do these things.
I’m glad I spoke up, but I’m shitting myself I’ve put a target on my forehead for being intolerant.