How can employers incorporate events like Pride into staff support strategies? – Employee Benefits

When incorporating events like Pride into the workplace, it is important to do it in a way that is both authentic and inclusive.

This means going further than just changing your logo to a rainbow; employers can look for opportunities to involve the team in something proactive, incorporating Pride into the very heart of the organisation’s day-to-day activities.

This year, we knew we wanted to make a donation to one of the largest charities for LGBTQ+ rights, Stonewall, but we thought, ‘how can we make this an inclusive initiative that allows the whole team to contribute?’

We decided to use our organisation’s monthly Getting Ink competition, which involves the team competing against each other to see who can proactively generate the best coverage, to calculate the amount of the donation.

The idea emerged organically from the group, driven by LGBTQ+ team members as well as their non-LGBTQ+ colleagues, so it seemed right that the team should determine the extent of the donation.

We tallied up the number of media mentions for clients at the end of June, and donated triple the figure to Stonewall. By doing it this way, every team member effectively contributed to that donation. Interestingly, we achieved our highest team score for 2022, showing how much everyone pulled together to make a difference.

This was just a cool, fun thing to do to recognise the LGBTQ+ people who have been part of Stone Junction as it has grown, as well as those that continue to be a part of it today. We would be a much worse company without them.

Richard Stone is managing director at Stone Junction