My work non discrimination policy skipped gender identity, as it hadn't been updated in decades. Me and my old boss both separately submitted best practice policies for consideration.
The director gave us the policy update for comment. It just adds "Gender identity, gender orientation, and transgender". I was going to at least change that to "Gender identity, gender presentation", but now I am worried that that bit of phone-it-in minimalism is going to miss something else critical? Anything I need to make sure to add to cover others?
It sounds like it needs work, but it really depends on what you're going for and what you already have. Can I have more context?
Here's my tips as a consultant:
- Define the new terms more clearly, to avoid confusion: what qualifies as being a member of the new protected class?
- Figure out how far you're willing to go, to protect whom exactly, from what. Are you willing to fire someone on the spot for repeatedly misgendering? Or are you going to tell trans employees "you will not be fired, but you're on your own"?
- Establish a procedure for determining if an instance involves discrimination.
- Establish procedure for determining how such discrimination should be dealt with.
- Discuss new procedures with legal advising and established employees.
I think it would be a relatively easy task to check out a few Fortune 500 company sites for their Non-Discimination policy to get some High $$$$ lawyer wiggle wording.
The big "Gotcha" I ran into with HR that in spite of all the grandeous platitudes in the Non-Discrimination policy, the companies health insurance has the infamous Trans-Exculsion. According to HR, they say according to the broker "Nothing can be done about that" WTF ??? We're talking Horizon BCBS which covers the state employees w/o an exclusion. Of Course it can be dropped for a $$$.
Our Re-Up period is comming around soon. I'll get to ask the six-four thousand dollar question after the meeting with zero expectations