Pride at work.

Gay pride celebrations spill off the streets and into corporate offices around the country

This month, posters bearing a rainbow-colored triangle and promoting June as gay and lesbian pride month will dot the walls of elevators, hallways, and cafeterias at IBM corporate offices around the country. At the Newark, N.J., headquarters of Prudential, a leading insurance company, a monthlong series of events celebrating pride month will be launched with a speech by Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Andrew Tobias, the openly gay treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, will initiate the insurance company's New York festivities. Likewise, employees at more than 20 sites of Verizon, the telecommunications firm formed by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, will be greeted by an educational display titled "What Part of Equal Don't You Understand?" And in Seattle gay and lesbian employees of the Starbucks coffee chain will don T-shirts specially designed for them--and paid for by the company--as they march together in the city's pride parade.

Increasingly across the country, gay-friendly companies are giving a special nod to their gay and lesbian employees by recognizing and participating in gay pride observances at the office.

"This is definitely a trend--and one worth noticing," says Sarah Siegel, who coheads the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut branch of IBM's Employee Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Empowerment. "This is a train that isn't stopping. At IBM celebrating June as Gay Pride Month has become entrenched, just like celebrating February as Black History Month."

The once-unimaginable prospect of bringing gay pride into corporate culture has become sound business logic, say representatives of companies that sponsor such activities.

"It's more than just another part of diversity," says Harold Banks, a spokesman for Prudential, which will shell out at least $25,000 this year organizing gay pride programs around the official theme "Reaching Diverse Markets Through Diverse Employees."

"We know our employees mirror society, including women, African-Americans, and gays and lesbians. We want our company policies to reflect our employees," he says. Furthermore, he adds, "Our client base is made up of all these different kinds of people too. We want our employees to be exposed to all other groups of people, so when they encounter them as clients on the job, they are prepared." Besides hosting a series of VIP guest speakers, Prudential will sponsor a 2 1/2-hour workshop titled "Fostering an Environment of Inclusion: Sexual Orientation in the Workplace" and a play depicting scenarios that gay and lesbian employees commonly face on the job. Both the workshop and the play are intended to jump-start discussions about gay and lesbian issues in the workplace.

Mike Fuller, IBM's openly gay vice president of global services and a member of the executive task force that advises the company on policy issues, adds that gay-affirmative gestures often go a long way toward recruiting and keeping strong talent. "I've met some past IBM employees, who worked for the company in the 1980s, who told me they left IBM because they weren't comfortable coming out at work," Fuller says. "We can't afford to let that happen again."

For their part, gay and lesbian employees have no doubt about the power that the programs wield in transforming the workplace.

"I couldn't imagine a long-term career at a company that doesn't support me as an individual," says Jim Edwards, a software engineer at Microsoft and a member of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Employees at Microsoft. This year, Microsoft will sponsor a slew of gay pride-inspired affairs, including a gay and lesbian employee mixer on the Microsoft campus and appearances by various guest speakers, and foot the registration fee for employees to march as a group in Seattle's pride parade. Microsoft will even issue company-funded T-shirts for the occasion and set up a booth at the fair after the march. In addition, Microsoft's companywide internal publication, MicroNews, will run a feature about gay and lesbian employees.

"This stuff really empowers us on our own terms," says Brian Justice, a corporate director of communications at Prudential. "In the evolution of the workplace, gays and lesbians still generally lag behind other minority groups when it comes to getting our issues heard, and we're still less visible. These kinds of things allow us to get out in front of coworkers and be seen as other equally productive employees at our company."

Adds Barbara Peterson, a facilities manager at Starbucks: "Just having [gay pride-related events] is a comfort because it tells me I'm on the same footing as any other employee. And," she emphasizes, "it lets them know that too."

IBM's Siegel says it helps make her more loyal to her company: "I can sell any of my company's products because I feel my identity is celebrated, not just my productivity."

But for all the fuzzy feel-good philosophy surrounding the new wave of corporate do-gooding, one simple impetus underpins the move, notes Kevin Powers, the openly gay vice president of brand marketing at the Cambridge, Mass.-based Lotus Development Corp., which like IBM also sponsors marchers in pride parades, hosts in-house speakers, and plasters gay pride posters across its walls during June. Says Powers: "It's just good business."

Find more information on gay employee groups and their pride celebrations at www.advocate.com

Dahir also writes for The Industry Standard.