“I was in such shock at the time that I didn’t actually respond,” Lou Beardsmore, who champions workplace inclusivity, recalls losing her job after taking her partner to a staff party.
Lou, who identifies as queer, told PinkNews that the “devastating” moment occurred during her time working for an Edinburgh-based investment company, where she’d been for close to two years. She was out only to a few people on the team.
The problems started when she decided to take her partner to a Christmas work party. “I thought I’d had a lovely time and everyone was welcoming and supportive,” she said. But the following morning she was greeted by a woman from human resources at reception who told her “senior management” felt she didn’t “share their same family values”.
She lost her job on the spot and was placed on gardening leave for three months.
Forty per cent of LGBTQ+ people in the UK are not out at work
Leaving the building, she burst into tears, and to make matters worse not a single person from her workplace reached out to her again.
“I worked very hard in that job and I was very good at my job. I won an award but that didn’t protect me against discrimination or homophobia.”
Lou’s experience reflects the reality that many people never come out in their workplaces. Almost 40 per cent of LGBTQ+ men and women in the UK are still in the closet at work for “fear of discrimination,” a report released by Stonewall in January revealed.
Following the incident, Lou moved into the charity sector. Three years ago, she and her partner, Ellis, founded the social enterprise Proud Futures, which delivers LGBTQ+ leadership training and wellbeing programmes to help organisations build inclusive cultures where queer people can thrive.
Together they organised Scotland’s first LGBTQ+ leadership conference, Leading with Pride. The inaugural event, set to take place in Glasgow next month, will tackle topics such as workplace bullying, hate crime and the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights. Lou said the aim was to show organisations what actions were needed to build inclusive workplaces where LGBTQ+ people are not just safe, but can thrive and be successful.
In May, the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map & Index revealed that the UK had fallen to 22nd place in European LGBTQ+ safety rankings, after being in top spot just 10 years ago. It highlighted that more than half of LGBTQ+ people don’t feel safe being out at work as well as a rise in the number of hate crimes.
EHRC guidance branded ‘inhumane’
Another blow befell the UK’s LGBTQ+ community in April when the Supreme Court ruled that the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of “sex” referred to “biological sex,” and that of “woman” related to a “biological woman.” This was followed by proposed changes to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s code of practice.
The changes are likely to “exclude and segregate trans people from public life for a generation [and] impose upon UK society a radical new approach, which would make sex assigned at birth a fundamental organising principle in all our lives,” transgender journalist and TransActual director jane fae has predicted.
Lou described the possible guidance as “devastating,” adding that it was “inhumane” for people not to have their basic needs met. “It’s up to organisations to take action to counter the things that are happening,” she said.
Feeling safe at work meant not having to be hyper-vigilant all the time or mindful of pronouns, and feeling comfortable talking openly about who you are, including sharing comments about families, she went on to say.
Turning to Leading with Pride, she said: “It’s driven from my own lived experience because I never want anyone to experience what I experienced. I want [that] to be a story in the past.”
There will be more than 20 speakers at the event, including Scotland’s first openly gay professional footballer Zander Murray, I Kissed a Boy stars Jack and Jas, and non-binary barrister Oscar Davies.
Tickets for Leading with Pride are available from Eventbrite.
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