Out on Bay Street | Follow-up with Daniel Oliveira
A follow-up conversation with Daniel Oliveira
By: Christine Wach
CW: What does being ‘out’ at work mean to you?
DO: Being ‘out’ at work is about bringing your whole self to work. It is about focusing your energy on your job and not draining energy while you are coming up with excuses about your personal life. It means interacting with strait people the way they interact with each other. It is about being yourself, and being able to act and be like anybody else without having to make up stories about what you did on the weekend or pretending that your partner or husband or wife is just your friend. When you have to lie about your personal life it has a domino effect where the stories get difficult to trace and keep strait. It also means not having to constantly be aware of gender neutral language such as ‘friend’ instead of spouse for example. This type of self censorship is a waste of time and energy. This is particularly true in a high pressure environment where many workers would be better using their time for creativity and complex problem solving.
CW: How comfortable can people who work in the financial sector feel being ‘out’ at work?
DO: It really depends on what part of the financial sector that you are talking about. Right now a lot of major banks seem to be leading the way in terms of creating positive spaces for the LGBT communities. It also seems that once you get into Senior Management and you are respected for your accomplishments and position you are likely in a more comfortable position to be ‘out’. An example of this is Amy Hanen with TD Bank Financial Group who spoke on our panel at Out on Bay Street. As a junior level employee however it depends. Younger workers are still unsure: unsure what their rights are, and unsure about what they can talk about in an interview for example. When they do get the job they may wonder how their opportunities for advancement will be affected if they are ‘out’.
It can also be a double edged sword in the financial sector. There may be certain assumptions taken. Maybe people always think that you should always be the employee who is sent on assignments out of town or overseas. People may wrongly assume you don’t have a partner or a family or other commitments. So many LGBT couples do have families now, Paul Skippen from Accenture who was also on our panel and his partner have a 1 year old son for example.
This is why we have Out on Bay Street, by looking at the companies who participated in the Career Fair we can have a good idea which companies are actively and openly recruiting LGBT workers.
CW: Do you feel there are enough corporate training programs educating people on how to create LGBT positive work spaces?
DO: There are a lot of them—are there enough? It isn’t clear; there are a lot of consultants as well as internal training teams and HR groups. It is still a bit early to say, even for the companies at Out on Bay Street who are trying to encourage positive spaces it is yet to be seen just how effective it will be. We will have to wait and see how effective these training programs are.
Some companies think that enough has been done and don’t incorporate formal training programs. The thinking is that the Human Rights code is already written, Same Sex marriage is legal and now all we need to do is maintain the status quo. This is, (of course) not true. There is a lot of diversity training in Toronto but the challenge for multi-national companies is to take this training across the country or the globe. If these companies expand their training programs in smaller Canadian cities for example this has a powerful effect on how people see the LGBT people everywhere.
CW: Do you think Bay St is leading the way for other industries in terms of diversity training?
DO: A lot of big companies are leading the way Accenture is a good example and other multinationals such as TD Bank and KPNG. They lead because they understand the importance of having the whole person come to work. A very talented employee who doesn’t feel comfortable is simply not as valuable. Consultants are very complex problem solvers and if they are in the closet it becomes very difficult to give all of their needed focus to the job at hand. Consultants need to focus on the client, not on hiding their personal life from clients. TD Bank is a good example of a company who is leading the way in terms of diversity and becoming a presence around the world.
There are still organizations on Bay Street that ‘talk the talk’ but don’t ‘walk the walk’ for example. There are certain companies that you would have expected to see at Out on Bay Street that chose not to be there. The attitude is that we don’t need to be at this conference as we don’t have any problems with this type of discrimination here.
With companies cost cutting they are also putting more focus on where they are putting their financial resources for a better ROI in the short term. This is at the expense of things like Diversity training. Share holders want to know where the ROI is now, not on some possible intangible long term benefits from this training in the distant future.
CW: Where do companies need to go next?
I think next the question is what the effectiveness of these training programs is. It is one thing to have a program in place but another thing to know what the outcome of the training is.
Proctor and Gamble started their internal program as a couple of hours of Diversity training and now it is a three day long workshop. They saw that this brief look at creating positive spaces was merely lip service and a bigger investment was needed. We need to ask if these principals are being implemented in the workplace culture. We need to see that we are not just ‘talking the talk’. We need to know what the impact of this ‘flag waving’ has been. Or course at the end of the day these companies are here to make a profit. They need to see the return on investment of this training. The idea behind this is that when we feel we can bring our whole selves to work we are more productive and creative. So in the end we will need to assess whether or not this is actually happening.
Daniel Oliveira | About:
Daniel Oliveira was one of the five volunteers that organized the first Out on Bay Street conference and Career Fair in 2007 while he was at the Rotman School of Management. Daniel worked in management roles on two continents before going back to school to pursue a MBA, specializing in Marketing and Strategy. Daniel was recognized for his contributions to student life by being awarded the Gordon Cressy Student leadership Award in 2008.
Out on Bay Street | About:
The name Out on Bay Street highlights Toronto’s Bay Street as the symbolic focal point of business in Canada and how the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is working towards reshaping the way businesses operate in the marketplace by promoting change and openness.
It is organized by the students from various business schools in Toronto area. The Organizing Committee are supported by the founding members of the conference and several volunteer advisers from various backgrounds.
For more information, please visit: http://www.outonbayst.org
More conversations to come… next week Christine talks with David Grisim.
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Nelson Says:
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:21 amVisit Nelson
Very interesting, Insightful on Accenture’s part in identifying the having a ‘whole’ person focusing their talents on the job and not exhausting their energy in keeping secrets.