Josie Lynne Paul felt hopeful, and terrified, as she walked into an all-staff meeting to tell her co-workers what she’d known for years: that she was a transgender woman. And that she was ready to live as a woman full time.
A consultant gave a presentation on what it means to be transgender and in transition. Paul, a social worker, delivered a statement explaining that the pain of not being true to herself had grown too great to bear.
Most colleagues were kind, Paul recalled. But a handful voiced objections. They said they weren’t comfortable or needed more time.
In the weeks that followed, Paul noticed subtle changes in her workplace relationships. She was left off an invitation to a birthday party. She showed up at the cafeteria where she’d often joined colleagues for meals to find no one there.
“Probably what hurt the most was that I had been left kind of alone,” Paul said.
As transgender people come in from the social margins, they are increasingly coming out of the shadows at work. Employers are facing the challenge of guiding the transition not only of their transgender employees but also of co-workers and clients who must adapt.
Even in Illinois, which has laws that protect against discrimination on the basis of gender identity, the office transition can be fraught with stumbling blocks if a company doesn’t work ahead to anticipate employees’ needs, said Jillian Weiss, a lawyer and consultant who works with companies on transgender issues.
“By the time someone comes into your office and says, ‘I have to tell you something,’ you’re behind the eight ball,” Weiss said. “You should have a policy in a glass case that says, ‘Break here in case of transition.'”
Corporate America has recently made progress toward transgender-inclusive workplaces. Three-quarters of Fortune 500 companies have gender identity protections, according to the Human Rights Campaign’s latest Corporate Equality Index, released in November, compared with just 3 percent when it started the report in 2002. Forty percent of employers have at least one plan that covers hormone replacement therapy; in 2002, it was zero.
But it’s one thing to have policies. It’s another to have a plan to address the nuances of a delicate journey many people struggle to understand.
“Just because the laws have changed doesn’t mean everybody has changed,” said Barbra McCoy Getz, a licensed clinical social worker in Kane County who specializes in transgender clients. “You have to be prepared because you don’t know what you’re going to get.”
For Paul, 52, transitioning at work two years ago was a joyous and painful experience.
Paul, who at the time ran a substance abuse program at a social services agency in Elgin, said she felt encouraged and embraced by supportive management and the majority of her colleagues. She gratefully recalled one man who stood up during the staff meeting to declare that he loved and supported her.
But she also felt betrayed. She learned of letters sent to human resources complaining about her changing appearance —Paul had begun hormone treatments and electrolysis a year earlier. One person wrote that it was fine to work with transgender clients but not to have a transgender boss — the message being, Paul surmised, that you shouldn’t look up to transgender people.
Paul, now director of the TransLife Center at Chicago House, an LGBT-focused social services agency based in Lincoln Park, said that in hindsight, she should have alerted her employer earlier to start conversations with staff, so she didn’t become fodder for the rumor mill.
Others have had a much smoother time.
When Chloe, a copywriter at Leo Burnett, returned to work Monday after a long break, her co-workers greeted her with a surprise party. It was her first time at the office since they’d learned of her transition.
Wearing a sleeveless fit-and-flare dress with a bow belt, Chloe mingled with about 20 team members who chatted casually about the holidays over coffee, doughnuts and Frango mints. A bottle of Champagne waited on a table.
“It felt like completion, the last part of a long journey,” said Chloe, 32, who asked that her last name not be published to protect her family. She appreciated the party because she could see everyone at once and get on with her workday.
A native of Texas, which doesn’t have gender identity protections, Chloe said she had been “terrified my whole life” of coming out. Even though she knew Illinois and Leo Burnett have inclusive policies, she worried that transitioning could damage her career or distract from the reputation she’d built.
But it “couldn’t have gone better,” she said. After she told human resources in May of her intention, the team “really listened” to what she wanted and tailored a plan accordingly. For example, she couldn’t get a court date to legally change her name until Friday, but she explained that her “dead name” was causing her great distress. So Leo Burnett changed it on her email address, key cards and in the employee directory a few months before.
Just after Thanksgiving, the company held meetings to tell her colleagues about the transition and to answer questions. Chloe, who was working off-site and on vacation for the next several weeks, said she got many emails congratulating her and thanking her for sharing her story.
Some colleagues at the party said Chloe seemed more confident and her creative work had recently shined.
“She seems just happier,” said Sam Snyder, an art director who works closely with Chloe. Snyder had gotten her nails done with Chloe the day before and walked in with her that morning for moral support.
Though Chloe was the first employee at Leo Burnett to transition — another one has since — the company started to build gender identity into its diversity platform in 2012.
But “the policies are the easier part of it,” said Renetta McCann, chief talent officer. “It is actually managing it at the human level, being sensitive to the person who is transitioning and understanding what it means to be the people around them.”
In the months after Chloe approached human resources, the company sent an email to employees saying transgender inclusion is an important value. It published guidelines on its intranet site for transitioning employees, their managers and co-workers, with information like questions that are appropriate to ask a transgender colleague and what to do if you feel uncomfortable.
It consulted with its LGBT employee resource group and brought on a consultant, Chicago-based Lori Fox Diversity/Business Consulting, to help. Fox, a transgender woman, led meetings with Chloe’s team, and then another meeting with the people who sit in her area, to let them know what was happening and to let them ask questions in an open forum. People were also made available to answers questions one-on-one.
Annette Sally, executive vice president, global marketing director, said she appreciated that it was a two-way conversation. Even though the creative firm’s employees tend to be a progressive set, and people weren’t surprised, “it’s still something you need to process,” she said.
Fox said she never has the transitioning employee attend the information sessions so colleagues don’t hold questions back. Instead, she has them write a letter that a human resources representative reads aloud at the meetings.
“Part of the change process is allowing people to ask those uncomfortable questions,” Fox said.
Fox said she has had people in training sessions raise their hands and say that their religion does not permit them to work with the transgender employee. The response, she said, is that at work they must adhere to workplace policies and culture. The same goes for concerns about bathroom use, though she said it’s important to pause on that to dispel fears that their colleague is “a man in a dress.”
Fox insists that the most senior people of the division or department kick off the meeting to send a message that senior management embraces it.
One thing that is often misunderstood is just what it means to formally transition. There is no legal definition or medical procedure that must be completed. The emotional, legal and physical transitions can happen at different times over a long period.
“I basically leave it up to the transitioning colleague to say when are they comfortable,” said Jennelle Dietz, U.S. human resources consultant at Aon, which has had several employees transition over the last several years.
The reaction from colleagues, most often, is “a sense of relief that it now makes sense,” Dietz said.
Aon says its inclusive culture is part of its efforts to attract the best talent and get the most out of its employees. Their code of conduct tells employees to appreciate difference in everyone, and “we police that expectation,” Dietz said.
Deena Fidas, director of the Workplace Equality Program at the Human Rights Campaign, said that over the last two to three years the group has seen a jump in calls from companies seeking help guiding employees through transition. The No. 1 priority, she said, is giving the employee the freedom to determine how they wish to shape the process.
“One of the biggest but well-intentioned mistakes is to be overly reliant on the one employee for education and guidance,” Fidas said. Some may want to take an active role in educating their colleagues, while others may prefer to transition out of the spotlight.
Fidas also advises human resources teams that employees can change their names at work before changing them officially on tax and insurance forms; that conversations about medical procedures are violations of federal health privacy laws; and that it is important to have an antenna up for unconscious biases, such as moving a transitioning worker to a post that does not involve direct client interaction.
Last summer, weeks after Caitlyn Jenner made her Vanity Fair splash, Equality Illinois and law firm Seyfarth Shaw conducted a workshop to help companies create trans-inclusive workplaces. One topic was harassment, covered by anti-discrimination protections, which can arise in forms and places you might not expect.
Seyfarth attorney Laura Maechtlen described a client, an LGBT health clinic, with an employee who refused to call a transgender colleague by her preferred pronouns. While it is common for people to make mistakes when they are used to Jane being John, when it is intentional it can qualify as harassment, she said.
“It is telling a transgender person you are not who you say you are,” said Kylie Byron, another Seyfarth attorney.
The employee was disciplined and told she would have to leave the organization if she didn’t start respecting the preferred pronouns, Maechtlen said. The agency changed her schedule and work area to keep her away from the transgender worker.
Transgender people, who for years felt left behind as the gay rights movement marched ahead, have begun to glimpse an inclusive society.
Last year alone, the Pentagon announced it would repeal a ban on transgender troops serving in the military. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed a policy to forbid insurers from denying transgender patients transition-related health care. A law went into effect banning the federal government and its contractors from discriminating against transgender employees. And the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued guidelines recommending employers allow workers to use restrooms that align with their gender identity and not ask them to provide legal or medical documentation.
There have been setbacks. Houston voters in November defeated a proposed anti-discrimination measure after opponents fought against a provision that would let transgender people use bathrooms of their choosing. Thirty-two states don’t include gender identity in their anti-discrimination protections and a federal nondiscrimination law with LGBT protections remains elusive.
Illinois’ Human Rights Act has protected against discrimination on the basis of gender identity since 2006. But conflicts still arise.
Meggan Sommerville, a transgender woman who manages the frame shop at Hobby Lobby in Aurora, has for five years been fighting to use the women’s restroom at work. Raised in a conservative Christian family, Sommerville, 46, was happy to join a company that shared her Christian values.
When she told her managers in July 2010 that she would be formally transitioning, they were accepting, she said. Her name was changed in personnel records and benefits. But the day after Sommerville got her new driver’s license, she said she was told she couldn’t use the women’s restroom.
“It was like getting my legs cut out from under me,” she said.
Sommerville said she would limit how much she ate and drank so she could wait until her lunch break to run across the street to use the women’s restroom at a restaurant. When she couldn’t wait, she would carefully slip in and out of the men’s room so customers wouldn’t see.
“It was sad,” said Bev Gamache, who ran the fabrics department at the time and would sometimes accompany Sommerville during lunch breaks. “You have the stalls — what difference does it make?”
The few times Sommerville went into the women’s room, she was written up. Shortly after, she filed complaints with the Illinois Human Rights Commission alleging discrimination in employment and public accommodations.
An administrative law judge in May made an initial finding that discrimination occurred on both counts and is now determining damages as part of a final order. Either party could file a challenge to the order with the commission.
In his analysis, Administrative Law Judge William Borah wrote that a female employee who expressed discomfort about having Sommerville in the bathroom “cannot justify discriminatory terms and conditions of employment,” and “the prejudices of co-workers and clients are part of what the Act was meant to prevent.”
Hobby Lobby declined to comment on pending litigation but has since added a unisex bathroom to the store. But Sommerville said she still isn’t being treated like the other women and is not permitted to use the women’s restroom.
The judge wrote in a footnote that the unisex bathroom could resolve her co-workers’ discomfort by giving co-workers “the option of using it.”
Sommerville was hurt to read documents that turned up during the legal process revealing co-workers she thought were supportive had reported her for using the women’s room or cited discomfort about it.
“It opened my eyes, and it has changed me,” Sommerville said. “I’m not as trusting with people.”
She considered quitting. But she likes what she does, she loves her customers and she doesn’t think she should have to.
“If I quit, I give permission to any other company to discriminate against somebody, to harass somebody, just to get them to quit,” Sommerville said. “When I leave Hobby Lobby, it will be on my conditions.”
Twitter @alexiaer
