Coming out at work advice

[michelle82]

Hi All

I'm looking for a bit of advance on my coming out at work plan. My ultimately goal is to be really full time within the next year to year and a half from now.  This will allow me to hopefully be done with facial hair removal mostly, and have atleast a year on HRT. In terms of work I'm thinking about two different approaches.

Did you come out to your employer early on in your transition and provide them a rough timeline, so they had a heads up on your plans?. Or did you wait until were mostly passable/presentable as your preferred gender, before breaking the news and mostly flew under the radar until that time?

What were your lessons learned with either approach? What were the good things, and the bad things, or maybe why you would have done it differently?

thanks sooo much!

[Jerri]

hi Michelle,
My approach was very unique to me but has been very much working out. early on in my dysphoric state I called hr at the corp level and informed them about my situation and where I was in therapy and hrt, I truly expected to be terminated at that time, to my shock, they became very supportive, helped me to get medical coverage for my hrt and therapy which had been denied up to that point. I worked with the corp level hr group for about a year as I developed the courage and confidence to accept that I was who I am and could not go on living in a dual role. We scheduled a call to the local hr manager together and during that call we developed my coming out locally plan and scheduled meetings to inform the population at work. I am salaried and work directly with about 30 other supervisors and department managers who I felt I needed to do at a 1 to 1 basis, so after meeting with the plant managers all 6 at one meeting I moved to my direct contact list. once they had been informed the next day I met with my work force about 30 employees and let them know what was going on and what my plans were. I left the plant on a medical leave for a couple weeks which gave the local HR group a chance to schedule information meetings with the other 500 workers. they brought in a PFLAG rep who helped to define transgender and with them, hr layed out roles and expectations to avoid problems. once I returned it was a bit tense but has gotten much better as I re intergrate back into various areas of work. I am a technical planner and project manager so I interact with every department and during beginning phases of a project with the manager group then with contractors or internal mantenece groups when we move to implimentation.
kind of a vague description but if you want more detail pm me and I can go into more detail.
Every employer and work condition will impact what works best, and I truly believe allowing the company time to accept and plan made my experience much easier for me. I did feel that for me the local team was not ready so i went outside of our local team first. while the positive changes that began in my life effected the local team they seen I was moving in a positive direction which helped them to support the idea that this really was better for me

some things to think about at least

good luck and best wishes
Jerri

[Ms Grace]

A lot of it depends on the size of your organisation, whether they are LGBTIQ friendly, local laws around discrimination, etc.

I'd suggest you suss out their policies and take if from there. Generally I don't see a need to tell them until you feel ready. That might be once you start taking HRT (especially if you have drug tests) or it might not be until you are a few weeks out from transition.

I did tell my boss quite early but only because I had been deeply depressed due to a workplace incident which had triggered my dysphoria. At that point it was only to tell her I had a trans history and had been triggered but when I had decided to transition and start HRT I told her then too. She was great, kept it confidential and told me the whole process, timeline and how I chose to come out to my colleagues was my call. One year later I did just that. My workplace (now my former workplace) was very supportive and my colleagues and management were awesome. I didn't feel a need to tell all but a few of my closest colleagues until a few days before I was about to go full time.

[alexbb]

Tell everyone, push all them the through the shock-horror-nausea-maniacal laughter-normal laughter-hugs-beers phases in one simultenous move and let the chips fall where they may!! ok maybe dont do that. it sure is fun tho hehe

[Joanne Feliz]

Tell everyone, push all them the through the shock-horror-nausea-maniacal laughter-normal laughter-hugs-beers phases in one simultenous move and let the chips fall where they may!! ok maybe dont do that. it sure is fun tho hehe

LOL

  I did have an idea to go on holiday to Thailand and come back looking completely different LOL and still not say a word 

[michelle82]

A lot of it depends on the size of your organisation, whether they are LGBTIQ friendly, local laws around discrimination, etc.

I'd suggest you suss out their policies and take if from there. Generally I don't see a need to tell them until you feel ready. That might be once you start taking HRT (especially if you have drug tests) or it might not be until you are a few weeks out from transition.

I did tell my boss quite early but only because I had been deeply depressed due to a workplace incident which had triggered my dysphoria. At that point it was only to tell her I had a trans history and had been triggered but when I had decided to transition and start HRT I told her then too. She was great, kept it confidential and told me the whole process, timeline and how I chose to come out to my colleagues was my call. One year later I did just that. My workplace (now my former workplace) was very supportive and my colleagues and management were awesome. I didn't feel a need to tell all but a few of my closest colleagues until a few days before I was about to go full time.

Thanks Ms Grace.

My company is large and has all the appropriate policies in place.

so it really comes down to my own comfort level I guess. Because either way I think the company policies will protect me. So this is why I wanted to hear other people's stories about what worked well and what didnt. It seems like most people generally wait until they are closer to the final transition point to let their employer.

My big question is if you wait how did you deal with all the physical changes that were happening to your body. We're you questioned by coworkers about the changes  and did you have to lie? Or did the changes happen slow enough that they were subtle and didn't raise any questions?

hugs!!