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Goodbye, Work Friends
I want to devote as much space as possible to this week’s question and answer, so I’ll make this short and sweet: This Sunday’s column is my last contribution to Work Friend. (I’m starting a new gig writing about culture and other things for The Atlantic.)
Writing Work Friend, I’ve learned a lot about the readership of The New York Times (eagle-eyed, opinionated, generous with advice), contemporary workplace culture (it’s complicated, especially around issues of age and identity) and myself. One takeaway from the past year: Human resources departments are much more about protecting companies than employees, and are rarely enough to solve a problem. Another: Sometimes the only “solution” to a difficult situation at work is to do nothing. And yet another: Many of the challenges that people encounter at work fall into one of two categories: Challenges with colleagues and challenges with bosses. In short, the professional often feels personal.
As we navigate — collectively! — more fragmented, complex and technology-driven work, I’ll hope that we’ll continue to come together to share stories, kvetch and offer insights to one another.
Which is another way of saying: Continue to write into Work Friend with your questions and comments! You can do so here: [email protected]. Our next columnist, for a short stint, will be Rachel Dry, a Styles section editor and a real-life work friend advice-giver to many at The Times.
How to Speak Up
I work for a social media company. Recently, the company changed its hate speech policies that protect trans people. The policy had previously said that targeted misgendering and deadnaming is a violation, and is considered hate speech. They completely removed that part of the policy. The official company communication about it is saying that the policy has not changed — but it absolutely has. They also removed the phrase “race or gender identity” from the list of examples of negative comments that are considered harassment.
Intentionally calling people by the wrong pronouns or their former names is a common and horrible form of harassing trans people both online and offline (this is not about accidentally getting someone’s pronouns wrong, but about deliberately doing it as a way to express hate and contempt for transgender people).
As a trans person myself, I not only feel like I am now not safe on my company’s platform, but that I also now work for an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. company.
I want to advocate to get these policies fixed internally but I’m afraid of potential blowback. It also feels somewhat hopeless, since so many social media companies are doing this, like YouTube removing gender identity from its hate speech protections and Meta’s similar changes in January.
If I don’t stand up and say something, it would feel terrible. I can’t stand the idea of working for a company that doesn’t live up to having basic values around L.G.B.T.Q. rights and equality.
What should I do?
— D.B., Oakland, Calif.
This is one of the more complicated — and heartbreaking — questions I’ve received during my year-plus tenure as Work Friend. Your company is not alone. Many corporations have been rolling back their diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the face of the Trump administration’s executive orders targeting those policies.
So, what to do? I reached out to a number of experts who work on tech, workplace and L.G.B.T.Q. issues, and they offered sane, sound advice, though not necessarily the sort of advice that suggests you take a specific course of action.
What you do is up to you, and that is affected by any number of factors, including how you feel. Which, right now, sounds a bit hopeless. So let me (and others) try to help frame the situation in a way that might allow you to feel like you have a little more agency.
First of all, do “what you need to survive,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Cyber Law Clinic. For her, survival means not only considering speaking out but taking care of yourself professionally if you choose that route, because the potential for backlash — or, God forbid, being let go — could be pretty dire. She says that right now is a “scary” time for people in tech: Challenges to management are not welcome these days.
One thing you can do to communicate your concern is not to finger-point but to contextualize. Ms. Caraballo, who works with Harvard Law students on projects and cases at the intersection of law and technology, says that the examples companies set when they change policies around appropriate speech and diversity, equity and inclusion have effects in the “real world.”
“We’ve seen what happens when uninhibited hate speech runs wild on these platforms,” she said, referencing the incitement of violence on Facebook and WhatsApp against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. “These kinds of things have real-world repercussions.”
Stephanie Battaglino, a consultant for L.G.B.T.Q. workplace inclusion who focuses specifically on trans and nonbinary issues, suggests you start by looking for support from an employee resource group for queer or L.G.B.T.Q. workers within your company. (If, of course, there is one.) You’ll probably discover that you’re not the only employee who is deeply troubled by the new policies, and finding like-minded colleagues will help you feel less alone. Many E.R.G.s have executive sponsors, Ms. Battaglino says, and reaching out to them will, at the very least, give you a “fighting chance” to have your collective voices heard.
Another important thing to look into is clarifying whether your company has made changes internally to its L.G.B.T.Q. policies in addition to those that are outward-facing. This, Ms. Battaglino says, is where the rubber really meets the road.
“I’m not discounting the fact that you feel potentially that you are now in a toxic, threatening work environment but at least checking that will confirm or deny potentially what’s really happening,” she says.
If it’s any consolation, despite your company narrowing hate speech definitions, the fact is that employment law has not changed, says Sheryl Daija, the head of Bridge, a consulting agency working on D.E.I. issues. And one way to approach higher-ups is to frame your advocacy in terms of legal and compliance risk around misgendering and deadnaming. This focus on the potential creation of a hostile work environment, she says, can keep the conversation grounded and keep it from going to an ideological place.
Ms. Daija, like Ms. Battaglino, recommends going to E.R.G.s to try to create a coalition of allies, because there’s not only power in numbers — a collective statement from a group carries more weight than that of an individual — but also your personal exposure is reduced. This statement might also take into account how (or if) there is a misalignment between external messaging and internal practices. There’s reputational risk in this, she says, and it’s reasonable to point this out.
In other words, emphasize the business case, Ms. Daija says. “When you weaken protections against a certain community, you undermine retention for that community.”
This “lack of courage,” Ms. Daija says, can be harmful to companies. “We’ve seen what’s happened with other companies where their internal values and external communications have not aligned. It has hurt them financially.”
Anna Holmes is the Work Friend columnist for The Times. She is a writer and editor and the founder of the website Jezebel.
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