Mossier

?? We were never going to lunch & learn our way to liberation. What we want is training opportunities that prioritize inclusive leadership COMPETENCIES as opposed to merely getting leaders to COMPLY with an arbitrary standard of allyship. Competencies that can be used in day-to-day life right away like trust and relationship building across difference, conflict transformation and managing emotions/uncertainty during vulnerable situations. ?? Pronouns in e-mail signatures were never going to create a culture of inclusion for all genders. What we want is healthy organizations where nobody has to feel boxed in by outdated leadership expectations and definitions of how men or women are supposed to show up at work. Organizations where we can name and interrogate gender norms that are harmful to everyone. ?? Contracting out the work of embedding LGBTQ inclusion to unpaid, volunteer LGBTQ staff was never going to do anything other than burn out our best and brightest talent. What we want is systems, such as hiring processes, that are engineered for fairness, from position description to hiring decision. Otherwise, why are we asking the LGBTQ ERG to refer their peers if we are setting those referrals up to fail in a biased process that doesn't prioritize merit? ?? Making straight white men feel like their only role is to "be quiet and listen" was never going to cultivate the allyship and advocacy we need from the top. At a DEI event for one of my clients, the straight-white-male-chief-marketing-officer confided in me that he wasn't sure that he was supposed to be in the room. He didn't want to "take up space." As I probed deeper, it was clear that, in his mind, he needed to be a perfect ally BEFORE he got into that room or risk some kind of call out. This was an emotionally intelligent and empathetic leader so the fact that HE was unsure if he belonged in that room made me realize that there was something deeply wrong with how we were building bridges with other people in power. ?? The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index was never supposed to be a substitute for real measurement and accountability. What we really want is organizations that prove inclusion is a core value by measuring the LGBTQ communities trust in leadership, their engagement, retention and recruitment rates. We want to incentivize leaders to close gaps. We want to simultaneously looking at how individual behaviors need to evolve and how systems need to be reworked so that the right behaviors become default. ?? Making the LGBTQ community compete for attention and resources against other marginalized groups was only going to lead to infighting and oppression olympics. What we really want is coalition building across communities, identifying shared interests and barriers and joining our advocacy powers to get solutions for problems that we all experience.

I continue to be so proud to be a part of the pack! We have officially earned a 2025 Equality 100 Award from the Human Rights Campaign! ?? Thank you to every pack member that shapes the world of work here Arctic Wolf, and a special shout out to Mossier and Nick Alm for their partnership and support on our Pack Unity journey. We consider you to be a part of our pack too! #strongertogether #packunity #howl #proudwolves

Over the last few months, I've spent a lot of time analyzing the boycott DEI movement, the DEI rebrands and the endless barrage of hot takes on this issue. I have come to a regrettable conclusion: This has been a ~huge~ waste of my time and energy. Time and energy that should have been spent researching and upskilling myself in the areas of equitable hiring and promoting, tweaking my trainings to make them more effective and supporting my clients to move through their fear and take action to improve ACTUAL OUTCOMES for LGBTQ employees. Here are the "ah-ha" moments that got me here: 1) No one has boycotted Costco for standing firm. No one has boycotted Walmart for flaking. Shout out to our 24-hour news cycle. Hypothetically, both of these companies would be good boycott targets because of their name recognition and how easily customers could switch to a competitor. Target and Bud Light were more serious casualties. But my theory is that now the conversation has become so complicated (and boring) for the average reader that I doubt any attempted boycott could have even as remotely close of an impact. 2) Robby Starbuck has convinced so many people that he's the Wizard of Oz but he is really just the weak man hiding behind the curtain. Did you see Robby's video explaining to his followers about why he wasn't going to go after Costco? He spun this lame story about how the timing isn't right but he'll "eventually get to Costco" and drop "[his] files on them". His entire strategy relies on employers backing down before the fight even begins. If an employer decides they won't budge, then he is out of options. He clearly doesn't have "files" on companies. The "investigations" he does on a company's "woke policies" literally just involves pulling publicly available information from company websites. He claims "tens of thousands" of people have reached out him complaining about their woke workplaces but don't you think that if there was a massive cabal of anti-DEI workers those complaints would have already been showing up on GlassDoor, Indeed, our internal HRIS etc? He's a bigoted grifter who is intimidating companies into making poor business decisions for the purposes of lining his own pockets. The real question we need to ask our leaders is, "Would you allow someone to break into our lobby and steal millions of dollars? No? Then why the heck are we letting and online troll do just that?" 3) Distracting us from doing actual DEI work was the whole point to begin with. I suspect there will be many DEI teams who spend this entire year thinking/re-thinking how to navigate this new environment. That means they'll have another full year of failing to produce measurable outcomes for different employee groups. Then, when it comes time to advocate for 2026 budgets, they'll have a weaker case and perpetuate the legitimate concern that many C-Suite execs have that while DEI is great in theory, in practice it's just a bunch of fluff.

The 2025 Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index dropped today and there are many takeaways that have me feeling very hopeful about the future of LGBTQ DEI: 1) Despite the whopping 7 employers (sarcasm) that pulled out of the 2025 index, HRC added 72 brand new employers to the index marking another RECORD year of participation at 1449 employers. The growth rate of new companies, albeit did slow a tad. The 2023/2024 survey had a ~10% growth rate vs. 2025 which grew at ~5%. 2) Employers are clearly disagreeing that there is something controversial about supporting transgender employees and their families. Employers with gender transition guidelines are up 77.5% since 2022. 87% of businesses eliminated ALL exclusions for gender-affirming care in their health plans. 3) Employers believe that DEI competencies for leaders are essential for success. 84% of employers have managers/supervisors undergo training that covers LGBTQ inclusion. In this vein, I was super excited to see that 50% of employers have some kind of performance metric related to LGBTQ inclusion that they score their senior management/executive leaders on. From my experience with clients, this is one of the harder items to implement, especially given the ways performance evaluations and hiring targets have been misconstrued as quotas. Driving LGBTQ inclusion not only requires executive support but many executives are actually welcoming the opportunity to be evaluated on their support. So, what now? 1) If you're a DEI leader and your company took the index this year, make sure you thank any executives or stakeholders who helped fill it out. Remind them of this amazing data and assure them there is no reason to back down now. 2) Multiple employers have told me that while they are going to remain in the CEI, they are not going to post publicly about it from their official channels. While this is frustrating, that just means that it's on us to tell the story on our socials of how the CEI continues to be a critical (and popular) benchmarking and evaluation tool. 3) Despite the HRC CEI being a well-known name, your average LGBTQ worker is not familiar with the index specifics. We need to develop intentional communications year-round to educate LGBTQ employees about our benefits plans, inclusive policies, etc. Take 5 minutes at the start of each ERG meeting to highlight your dress code or host a Pride panel featuring LGBTQ employees who have formed families utilizing your benefits. Employee onboarding should always include a shoutout of your LGBTQ inclusion programs and reminder to self-ID. 4) Make sure that allies get in on the fun. Having transgender inclusion guidelines doesn't mean much if your people leaders don't know they exist. Where are there existing leadership development programs or training modules for people leaders and how can we weave in these inclusion tools? That's all for now. Congrats to all of the employers receiving top marks this year!

We spend too much time at work for it to be miserable at times. If you currently want a change of pace check out the Mossier job board. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/gBQJyh9T

WRITING INCLUSIVE LGBTQ POLICIES Thursday, September 26th @ 12PM CT Are your workplace policies gender inclusive? Find out during this Mossier meet-up exploring writing inclusive LGBTQ policies. We’ll discuss how to create gender neutral and expansive workplace policies. Let’s ensure that our LGBTQ colleagues can work free from harassment, discrimination, deadnaming and misgendering. Register for this event: https://lnkd.in/dkUPx38A

Listen. Does your dress code allow for a big bird? All jokes aside, your workplace policies might be forcing people to conform to gendered expectations. Join us for an event “Writing Inclusive LGBTQ Policies” on 9/26 to learn how to improve your policies (and dress code)! Register for this event: https://lnkd.in/dkUPx38A

EVENT POSTPONED LinkedIn is one of the best places to learn about new opportunities, network and get hired. In this meet up we will take a look at how using LinkedIn in a strategic and creative way can put you in front of recruiters eyes or even begin to build a relationship with people at your dream company.

??Welcome Joshua Cruz (he/him), our new job seeker facilitator! Joshua is a writer, motivational speaker and recruiter seeking to help other individuals build their happiness. As a recruiter Joshua uses his career expertise paired with his personal experiences to create opportunities for individuals who are often looked over based on race, gender and identity.?