Homosexuality: The outstanding employees

When news of her being a lesbian leaked out in the office, Sonal Giani was confronted with a hard choice.

She could come out at the workplace and set all rumours to rest, or ignore it hoping the gossip would die down.

In the end, she went with what she thought was the safer option — ignoring all the talk that went on behind her back.

But life in the office grew steadily uncomfortable. While she could be herself around her close friends at work, she noticed that some women in the locker room would go behind closed doors when she walked in.

“Once on my way home in the office drop, the driver showed me a porn clip on his mobile phone, thinking perhaps that I was ‘loose’ just because I was lesbian,” recalls Sonal.

“I was strong enough to tell him to shut up and drop me home.”

What shocked Sonal more was the reaction she got when she complained to the management about the incident, “Why would anyone show you a porn clip?”

“Because I was not out, I couldn’t tell them that I was being targeted for being a lesbian. The management didn’t show any sensitivity towards a woman in such a situation. I felt I couldn’t tell them that I was a lesbian. I just had to bear it,” says Sonal, who eventually left the job and now works as an advocacy officer with the Humsafar Trust, an NGO working for the LGBT community. “But I have decided that whenever I switch to another job, I will be out right from the start.”

Sonal’s reasons for being in the closet at the workplace will be familiar to many gays and lesbians.

“Your family has to accept you at the end of the day. But your colleagues don’t have to sympathise with you. You could be part of office gossip.” But experience often shows that those who are out share a better relationship with their bosses and colleagues, and hence tend to be more productive at their jobs.

According to a recent study by Mission for Indian Gay and Lesbian Empowerment (MINGLE) covering 455 gays, lesbians and bisexuals working in multinational companies in India, “Openly gay employees — as compared to their closeted counterparts — have greater trust in their employers, are more likely to have entrepreneurial aims in the future, have greater satisfaction with their rate of promotion, feel more loyal to their organisation, and are more likely to continue with the same company for a greater period of time.”

It is also impossible to keep your personal life entirely out of your professional one. For instance, gays and lesbians who are in the closet either avoid what-you-did-on-the-weekend conversations or simply lie. As one gay person put it, “Closeted gays often laugh the loudest on a homophobic joke.”

But lying is difficult to pull off in the long run, says Jerry Johnson, a marketing manager at Aegis Ltd. “When I was in Chicago, I was confronted with this very masculine American office culture. When talk turned towards girlfriends, I would simply stay silent because I didn’t want to lie. My colleagues thought I was an introvert, a weirdo. Somewhere that reflected in what they thought of me as a worker. I couldn’t develop close friends. I could never collaborate with trust. And if you don’t have a rapport with your colleagues, you can’t be productive,” says Jerry.

Jerry knew that being open about his relationships at work was important if he wanted a fulfilling career. But the fear wasn’t easy to overcome. “There is this image people have that homosexual relationships are all about the sex... that it is dirty. Heterosexual relationships, on the other hand, are romantic. I too saw it the same way. That homosexuality was my dirty secret.”

Things changed when Jerry started believing that being a homosexual is normal. He no longer treats ‘coming out’ as an event. Instead he discusses his relationship as normally as his straight colleagues do. “Recently I was chatting with my boss about things to do for the fourth anniversary with my boyfriend, which is coming up,” says Jerry.

Jerry’s professional life has seen a turnaround. “When you are confident, you attract other confident people around you. Homophobia no longer intimidates me. My boss even said that he is proud of me.”

Jerry, however, admits that coming out at the workplace is not an easy decision, and says that each person has to judge whether their boss, colleagues or even company are gay friendly. To get the discussion going he has started the Gay India Network on corporate social networking site, LinkedIn.

An important factor that encourages people to come out at the workplace is an LGBT Employee Resource Group (ERG), which few Indian companies currently have. According to the MINGLE study, 84% of the respondents said that the ERG in their organisation has helped them.

Sonal feels that it is the companies who have to take the initiative to introduce measures that discourage discrimination against LGBT employees, and make sure that everyone knows about these policies during orientation.

Such policies could benefit companies too. After all, it would be a pity to lose a promising employee just because she is a lesbian and feels uncomfortable at the workplace.