Creating Cultural Change by Empowering our Allies

By:Cass Averill, Endpoint Protection Training Czar and C Moulee, Sr Knowledge Engineer Norton Partner Solutions

No movement makes significant progress without the voices of allies to help boost the message.   And at the end of the day, we are all allies to someone and these skills can be employed regardless of the group you are an ally to.

This week marks the end of LGBT PRIDE month in many countries across the world, where members of the LGBT community and those who support them come together to celebrate progress and bring awareness to the struggles and challenges we still face to create the cultural change for a truly equal society.

While these celebrations all have the same core mission, behind this lies a varied and complex landscape of LGBT diversity across the world. For example, 21 countries have passed marriage equality legislation. While in the US you can join Pride parades across the nation – in cities large and small – joining celebrities, professional athletes, politicians, business leaders, and academia showing their public support for LGBT diversity. At the same time advocacy, awareness and acceptance of LGBT equality is still not widespread in many other parts of the world such as India where it is often difficult to find an open dialogue on LGBT diversity, including in mainstream media. 

Ally workshops delivered by Symantec’s PRIDE employee resource group are educating and expanding LGBT advocates across the company. In India, ally workshops serve as a key resource for local employees to learn more about LGBT issues and advocacy.

As part of Symantec’s investment in corporate responsibility, we are advocates for human rights and equity across the technology industry, working to build awareness and champion causes that ensure an inclusive experience for our employees, customers and entire value chain. We have been a historical leader in LGBT diversity through our partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, advocating for marriage equality, the Equality Act and standing out against North Carolina’s “bathroom bill”. In 2016, we launched our first Transgender Inclusion Guidelines, providing support to employees looking to transition genders as well as guidelines and support for their teams, managers, and HR.

We have been one of the first companies to successfully launch Pride ERGs in India and are serving as a resource and example for others in the region. Across the world, our PRIDE employee resource group (ERG) is central to our leadership in engaging employees and building cultural awareness. They have influenced corporate policies, serve as ambassadors in the community, and most importantly educate and build awareness among our employee base. 

Educating our Allies

Most recently, select PRIDE chapters (Springfield, Pune, Chennai) began offering Ally Workshops as a way to engage, educate and inspire supporters of LGBT equality across the company. As leaders for LGBT diversity at Symantec, we realized that the largest cultural shifts were dependent on engaging and educating our allies.

So what have we covered and learned so far?

1. No movement makes significant progress without the voices of allies to help boost the message.  And at the end of the day, we are all allies to someone and these skills can be employed regardless of the group you are an ally to. For example, we are continually looking to engage allies from other ERGs across the company such as females and veterans. In Springfield, ally workshops were conducted in partnership with our Symantec Womens Action Network (SWAN) demonstrating the intersection of allyship between LGBT people and women. In India, we brought in a feminist writer who is also an LGBT ally. She drew parallels between women’s rights and LGBT rights in an Indian context.
    
2. Allyship education differs across regions. In India, we have launched one of the country’s first LGBT employee resource groups and we are now serving as a best practice resource for others. Our workshops therefore began with awareness building - LGBT 101 – looking at the role of LGBT diversity in India’s history and culture, the business case for LGBT inclusion, background on Indian history/culture and do’s and don’ts with regards to creating an inclusive workplace. In Springfield, through Ally Education workshops we looked at what an ally is, how to act like an ally (e.g. how to navigate difficult or uncomfortable situations), and investigated (through role-playing exercises) how these actions and common scenarios play out in the work place when allies stand up and speak out for LGBT diversity.
    
3. The power of learning from others. Hosting engaging speakers across all industries is key to our ally workshop program. For example, in Chennai, we hosted an in investment banker who shared his office culture and experience being an ally. Additionally, we hosted Malini Jeevarathinam, a queer filmmaker who directed a documentary Ladies and Gentlewomen about Lesbian women in Tamil Nadu. In Springfield we hosted Oblio Stroyman, Executive Director of Trans*Ponder and an experienced relational therapist and community educator on LGBTQ issues since 2006, to come in a speak about the nuances of LGBTQ diversity, inclusion and allyship. We also hosted Margaret Merisante, feminist comparative mythologist, teacher of Women's Mythology, host of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Mythological Roundtable of Eugene, writer, and blogger to come and speak about women’s equality and how to be an ally to women. The two of these community experts were able to work together in showing the intersection between gender and sexuality and how we can all step up to be better allies to each other.

Springfield’s Cass Averill discusses how to navigate uncomfortable and difficult situations in a recent Ally Education workshop offered by the employee resource groups PRIDE & SWAN.   

The response to our workshops has been overwhelmingly positive, with attendees requesting more - more time, more conversation, more practice.

What’s in store for ally workshops in the future? As we continue to engage PRIDE and other ERGs across Symantec, our hope is that we can continue to build, expand and strengthen our allies within and outside the company.

PRIDE is not just a term, it represents a continued cultural evolution and shift at Symantec to create a truly incluisve workplace for our employees, customers, entire value chain; to stay true to our corporate responsibility and mission to make the world a better, safer place.