Canadian Occupational Safety

18 www.thesafetymag.com/ca P E O P L E I N D U S T R Y P R O F I L E WORKING TOWARD A BETTER CANADA Pride at Work Canada's executive director Colin Druhan on how COVID-19 has impacted the organization's mission and the LGBTQ2+ community and the importance of having the right conversations in the workplace order for you to be an employer who is taking advantage of every talent pool, you have to be inclusive, because you have to attract people from every pool that's out there." Druhan says he sees a lot of companies getting involved with Pride at Work Canada because they've received feedback from employees saying that they don't feel comfortable going to work or coming out at work. "It's very arresting," he says. "I think that the narrative around diversity and inclusion has changed drastically over the last five or six years." Druhan also mentions the Black Lives Matter protests that took place last summer. "It was a really important development. It's really great to see a lot of people start to tune in to conversations that have been going on in some communities for quite some time," he says. "Any kind of metric that you see in terms of challenges around employment or inclusion in the workplace, those are always most exacerbated for BIPOC in the community or people with disabilities. Those intersecting identities PRIDE at Work Canada/Fierté au Travail Canada was initially founded in 2008 by a group of passionate volunteers. The group mainly operates out of Toronto and Montreal, but it also has volunteer working groups in cities such as Calgary, Halifax, Ottawa and Vancouver. COS recently spoke with Colin Druhan, executive director of Pride at Work Canada. Druhan joined the organization in 2014. "When we were founded, our primary focus was getting inclusion for the LGBTQ2+ community and getting inclusion for that community on the agenda of Canadian businesses… We've been operating for a number of years and our vision has always remained the certainly impact somebody," says Druhan. "As an organization that's always really tried to speak up on behalf of the needs of the most marginalized people in the LGBTQ2+ community," says Druhan, "it was really great for us to be able to focus on how our broader mission around sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression intersects with issues around racism and ableism, as well as challenges around sexism and misogyny." Facing new challenges COVID-19 has raised a number of issues, some of which employers may not think about. "One of the things that has come up a lot with people working through Zoom or video calls and things like that is that some people might hesitate to be on camera because they're not out to the people who they work with," says Druhan. "While some people find it really fun and interesting to see inside their colleagues' homes, I've talked to people who say 'I never go on video because I'm worried that my kid will show up in the background, and none of my colleagues know that I'm married, and none of them know that I have kids. Because that would involve being out at work, and I don't want to be out and I don't feel safe,'" he says. "So, that's something that's come up a lot where [employers] said that [they] never really considered that that might be a source of anxiety for some people," says Druhan. "We can start to have these conversations about how we're all facing the same challenges, but then there are some things that are really specific to our identity, that people aren't going to know unless we talk about them." Indeed, something that came up during our conversation was the importance of dialogue. PRIDE AT WORK CANADA "Part of the key to trying to introduce more diversity and inclusion measures is actually talking to people from marginalized communities who are working in those environments and asking them what they'd like to see." Colin Druhan, Pride at Work Canada same, which is a Canada where everybody can achieve their full potential at work," says Druhan. Druhan says the organization has grown a lot over the last 12 or so years. Pride at Work Canada has around 150 members now from 12 members in 2008. "We've gotten better and better and better at what we do," he says. "When I started, we didn't have any full-time staff and I was an independent contractor. We've formalized a lot of the services that we offer through our membership program, which has made it a lot easier for organizations to see the value that [they're] getting," says Druhan. "What we do now is operate more as a full-member services agency for employers. And we provide education, training, consulting and advice to our employer members around their inclusion strategy — mostly around the grounds that are most relevant to LGBTQ2+ communities in Canada," he says. This includes sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. "Those are the grounds as they appear in human rights legislation," says Druhan. A changing narrative The social and political climate has rapidly evolved over the last few years. "I think that it's been quite striking… There's been a real shift in the way a lot of companies look at diversity and inclusion," says Druhan. He says that the conversation has shifted to focus less on the business case for diversity and inclusion; now, it is more focused on the social responsibility aspects of it. There is so much evidence out there that shows that diverse teams perform better and are more productive. "The world we live in is diverse," says Druhan, "so the workforce is diverse. In Pride at Work Canada/ Fierté au Travail Canada was founded in 2008 Colin Druhan (he/him) has been executive director of Pride at Work Canada since 2014 Based in Toronto, it is also active in other cities such as Montreal, Vancouver and Halifax Corporate members include Air Canada, IKEA Canada, Maple Leaf Foods, Unilever and Scotiabank In 2020, the organization hosted 11 English webinars and four French webinars, with a total of 2,686 registrants Source: Pride at Work Canada/Fierté au Travail Canada (2020)

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