Category Archives: Workplace

LGBT in the Workplace Part I: Transgender Discrimination Study

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A blog series about LGBT people at work. Part I gives information about a new report released about transgender discrimination.

On February 4th, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force jointly released a report on transgender discrimination called “Injustice at Every Turn” using data collected from over 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming participants.

Follow the image link to EndTransDiscrimination.org for the full report.

The comprehensive study is the first of its kind and uses responses from people from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. It shows a pervasive collective experience of discrimination in all levels public and private.

Some of the more alarming data include:

  • an extreme over-representation of discriminatory experiences amongst transgender and gender non-conforming people who are African-American
  • a rate of unemployment twice the national average (and nearly four times the national average for African-American respondents)
  • an attempted suicide rate of 41% (compared to 1.6% of the general population)

What is comparatively helpful about this study is it includes information about respondents’ resiliency. For example:

“The vast majority (78%) of those who transitioned from one gender to the other reported that they felt more comfortable at work and their job performance improved, despite high levels of mistreatment. “

“Despite high levels of harassment, bullying and violence in school, many respondents were able to obtain an education by returning to school.”

Of course, there is much to be done in the realms of education and passing anti-discrimination laws, but this study and its subsequent report gives validity to the day-to-day struggles of members of the transgender and gender non-conforming communities. Furthermore, statistics collected in this study may be used to bolster arguments for passing tougher anti-discrimination laws.

For example, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), currently stalling in Congress, would protect citizens from being fired or not hired from a job due to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Given that many lesbian, gay, bisexual AND heterosexual individuals express a gender which may not conform to the conventional ideals of “man” and “woman,” the language “gender identity” is supremely important in this bill. [According to the actual text of the bill (H.R. 3017), "The term 'gender identity' means the gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual's designated sex at birth."]

It is still legal in the majority of the U.S. to be fired or not hired because of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Pennsylvania currently protects only its State workers against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

[Click here to read part two of the LGBT in the Workplace series.]

Does this Bag Make my Trash Look Fat?

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GBA Emerging Professionals Group

Green Building Alliance

Conducting a waste stream audit is a great way of finding out how much waste a building generates and if items that could otherwise be recycled are being thrown out instead. Once you can quantify what you are throwing out, you can work more effectively to reduce your waste and recycle more. A waste stream audit is also an effective way to benchmark your waste use. In the future additional waste audits can be performed to evaluate the effectiveness of waste reduction plans you have implemented.

Last fall, my office performed a waste stream audit on our DMI Corporate Headquarters Building. Cindy, a fellow Emerging Professional, and I had the pleasure of performing this audit.

For an entire week we collected all of the waste from the trash and recycle bins in the building. We did not tell any of the building occupants that we were performing the audit, so they would not change their normal waste behavior. The following week, we opened the bags, separated everything and then weighed it all. All of the waste was separated into one of the following categories:

Plastics, metal, and glass from recycling bins
Cardboard to be recycled
Plastics from trash bins which could have been recycled
Metal from trash bins which could have been recycled
Cardboard from trash bins which could have been recycled

Paper from trash bins
Food waste from trash bins
Electronics (cell phone charger, battery, etc) from trash bins which could have been recycled
Non-recyclable material from trash bins (“true garbage”)

What did we find out from our “dumpster diving”? We found out that during the week of the audit, our office generates 139.3 pounds of trash to be sent to landfills and 17 pounds of recyclables. It was surprising to find out that of the139.3 pounds of trash, 13 pounds could have been recycled. At the time of the audit, we did not have paper recycling in place, but we are currently working on implementing a paper recycling program in our office. Paper waste made up 73 pounds of the 139.3 pounds of trash. This audit showed us that simply by recycling everything we could, we could easily cut the amount of waste we generate by more than 50%.

Sustainavle2ndCentury

Image extracted from: Sustainavle2ndCentury

Following the waste stream audit, we announced the results to the office and even had a contest to see who could guess the correct amount of recyclables that ended up in the trash. Many co-workers flooded our e-mail accounts with suggestions for reducing waste in the office, such as printing double sided and using non-disposable plates at lunch meetings. We shared all of these suggestions with the entire office. After we implement a paper recycling program, we plan to do another waste stream audit to ensure that our program and other efforts have been successful.

Media Relations and Crisis Communication

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Developing Crisis Communication Strategies (Part 5)

Seed good feelings about your organization among your employees, customers, the communities you serve and the news media.

Typically people support unions in a strike against a supermarket chain but will back the transit company in a strike of bus or train drivers.

Why is that?

 

Image extracted from: www.marketingfornonprofits.org

 

It comes down to what’s in their selfish best interest, or whose ox is being gored. In the case of these strikes, most people have another option for their food shopping, whereas the bus may be the only way they get around. Their self interest is at stake in the transit strike, but in the supermarket strike it is not, so the public starts to focus on the actual issues.

Analyzing the selfish interest of a target audience is the best way to predict how that audience will react to your point of view in a crisis. But whatever the self interest analysis reveals, if the target audience likes and respects you and understands the value you provide it on a continuing basis, it is more likely to consider what you say as credible in the crisis. They may not like it, but they’ll respect it and understand it, and they’ll be more willing to hold your organization in high esteem after the crisis ends.

Talking to employees, customers, investors, funders and vendors is relatively easy because you can communicate directly to them with annual reports, newsletters, emails, web pages and meetings.

It’s a little harder to seed “good feelings” about the organization in the general public because you generally have to use media relations, which means attracting positive stories about the organization in the news media. You can’t just print a newsletter and send it off. You have to convince the news media to cover your organization, and in a positive way.

An ongoing media relations campaign not only influences the public to recognize an organization and its importance to the community. It also supports efforts to communicate to other key audiences, because they see that the news media has endorsed what the organization is communicating.

In addition, most print and Internet news media offer opportunities for organizations to submit their own articles, usually in opinion or expert advice columns.

There are many reasons for a company to implement a long-term public relations program focused on getting positive coverage in those media used by key target audiences. It can help to market products, seed the market for future moves and create enthusiasm among employees.

One of the most important reasons to keep your name in the news, however, is to raise awareness of the importance of the organization and establish a positive reputation for the organization. If people have heard about the organization and like it, it will make it easier in the future to tell its side of the story, whether the organization is confronting a negative crisis or pursuing the happy rollout of a new program or product.

To view the previous blog post in this series, click here.

The Spokesperson Role in Crisis Communication

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Developing Crisis Communication Strategies (Part 4)

Train your spokesperson and staff on how to react to a crisis.

Image extracted from: www.marxcommunications.com

Whenever anyone is serving a spokesperson role in a crisis situation, he or she must:

  • Address the negative comments.
  • Make positive messages that will build the organization’s credibility.
  • Say nothing that would create a greater problem or liability for the company.

Fortunately there are principles for managing communications which, once mastered and practiced, can make most professionals more adept at turning external contacts into opportunities for delivering positive messages.

The goal of spokesperson training is to help a spokesperson to master techniques for controlling the message, especially with the news media. Most spokesperson training consists of three parts:

  • Discussion of messages to make to the news media and other audiences
  • Training  and practice in specific techniques for controlling the interview
  • Role practice using the messages you have learned.

Typically, the crisis communications consultant will train the spokesperson, one or two backups and the key communications staff that will be interacting with the news media.  Training can last a half day, full day or even two days.

Besides spokesperson training, the organization should train key staff members on what to do when a reporter calls. Generally we like the calls to go to one person who is not the spokesperson but who has been trained to react immediately and get all the information that the crisis communications team or some designated part of it will need to develop a response. We call it the wall and gate model. There is a wall around the spokesperson with only one gate. The gate is always open, but first you have to get through the gatekeeper. Sometimes the gatekeeper is an internal communications staff member and sometimes outside communications counsel. In that way, we ensure that the organization has time to formulate a response, is always talking with one voice and still makes the reporter’s deadline.

Now that your organization has done some planning and training, it’s ready for the crisis. But are your key audiences ready?  You have to get them ready by seeding them with positive thoughts about the organization. More on seeding in the last part of our series.

Click here to read the next post in this series.

Click here to view the previous blog post in this series.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Spokesperson

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Developing Crisis Communication Strategies (Part 3)

The Importance of a Spokesperson

Most well educated, articulate persons believe they can readily convince others of their side of a story, particularly when discussing an area in which they have extensive knowledge.

Image extracted from: www.CartoonStock.com

But the audiences you must address–be it the news media, employees, customers, or local officials–are not interested in your message. They want to know what’s in it for them, especially when it’s negative. They want to know how the plans and actions of your organization will affect their lives or the lives of their constituencies. They want to get explanations about issues that concern them, and sometimes it’s not the explanation you want to give.

Moreover, a lot can get lost in the translation between the message you deliver and what your audience perceives. People tend to retain about 30 percent of what they hear in a speech or on TV or radio, and not much more in a quick reading. Because most people are bombarded with the 30-second messages of advertising and the seven-minute “chapters” of television drama, they almost instinctively truncate thought processes into very short and simple slogans. That’s why most news reporters consider it a sacred duty to simplify all concepts into language understandable to a 12-year-old.

When dealing with most audiences and with the news media in particular, there are many common pitfalls into which an articulate, knowledgeable person may fall. Sometimes too much detail is given, and the audience doesn’t recognize the important point. Talking in professional jargon can blunt the thrust of the statement or lead to misinterpretation. Or an inadvertent remark may be misunderstood or misconstrued. Off-the-record comments can be damaging, even in situations in which the ground rules ostensibly allow for such casualness. Simply saying “no comment” may make people think the organization has something to hide. Falling into one or more of these pitfalls can be particularly harmful to an organization during a crisis.

To learn more about the role of a spokesperson click here.

To view the previous blog post of this series, click here.

Planning for a Crisis

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Developing Crisis Communication Strategies (Part 2)

Image extracted from: www.mediaskills.com

Planning

Let’s start with planning for a crisis. Here is the crisis communications planning that organizations should do to be ready for any crisis:

  • Generate a list of potential crises that could happen to the organization or the industry. Outline what the organization would do to react to each of these crisis scenarios.
  • Create a chart that lists all the important target audiences or constituencies to which you would have to communicate in a crisis and the communications vehicle(s) you would use to reach them in a crisis. Target audiences include employees, vendors, customers, boards of directors, shareholders if public, strategic partners, regulatory agencies, elected officials and the general public as represented by the news media. Vehicles could include news releases, meetings, phone calls, emails, letters, web sites and advertising.
  • Develop a list of the messages that you would say no matter what the crisis, i.e., what the organization does and how it contributes to the well-being of the community and its target audiences.
  • Identify one spokesperson who will speak for the organization and a backup.
  • Establish a crisis communications team to include the spokesperson, organizational leader if different, communications professional, another member of the board of directors and outside legal and crisis communications counsel.
  • Select a crisis communications professional who can provide guidance and possibly writing, media relations and other services if and when a crisis hits.
  • Develop a protocol for getting information about a crisis or potential crisis from anywhere in the organization to the communications team.

Taking these steps creates the infrastructure needed to respond quickly to the crisis, whatever it is. But it’s not enough to have an infrastructure. Your organization also has to know how to use it.

That’s where training comes in. We’ll talk about the type of training and choosing the right spokesperson next time.

To view the previous blog post of this series, click here.

* Jampole Communications, Inc. provides a full range of marketing communications services, including public relations, internet and social marketing, branding campaigns, and crisis communications. Our client base includes large corporations, high-technology companies, professional service firms, business associations and nonprofit organizations. Marc Jampole is the principle of Jampole Communications, Inc., and Amie Lopus is a senior account executive.