❤🌈 Supporting an LGBT Friendly Workplace 🌈❤

Can you imagine how dull and dreary life would be without colors? I cannot even start to. This is the same way I feel when I start to imagine not having the fabulous people in my team who are proud members of the LGBT community.

Without colors it would be confusing, disorienting and depressing. Just like in watching a black and white film, life would be silent. Colors bring us euphoria. It's the beauty of God's mind. We see it in the browns of the earth, the fresh white and blues of the ocean, the grays of the slope of the mountains, the greens of the rice fields. We see it in every sunrise, sunset, flowers in spring bloom of reds, oranges and purples are all music to the eyes. The list goes on and on.

In my team, we value diversity. We are a band of colors formed from a beam of light that breaks silence, the band encompasses acceptance and respect. Our spectrum signifies understanding that each individual is unique. These can be along the dimensions of race, gender, ethnicity, economic status, sexual orientation, age, religious beliefs, political denominations, physical abilities or other ideologies.

"It is about embracing each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to elevating and celebrating the rich elements of diversity contained within each individual." - Definition of diversity from Queensborough Community College

Senior management needs to be always at the forefront of developing and maintaining an environment where diversity can thrive, and individuals regardless of preference can grow and develop. There are plenty of ways to do this, the easiest and most popular way is writing a memo prohibiting derogatory and discriminatory comments. The extent of its effectiveness however is often left at how many people in the organization will read the memo, out of the ones who did read - how many did understand, and how many variations of interpretation of the memo can there be. These restrictive kind of memos often tell people what not to do, and what not to say. We know that restrictions result to little or no good, either people ignore them outright, or they do exactly the opposite when nobody's watching. So once in a while I go all out, and sponsor events that let my staff see that I accept and embrace our individual differences in a way that not a lot of my peers are willing to do. Yours truly is in the photo on top wearing @dandalion's floral shirt (left), the guy on the (right) wearing a red dress is a respected team manager, the lady in the middle is our make up artist.

In the photo below, I play (Pia Horseback Ridding in Tandem) wearing the blue long gown, my daughter's name written in alibata can be seen in my left arm. In the photo I am with Operation Managers, and Team Managers from my extended team. The photos to each side of that photo are amazingly talented and beautiful associates who are flaunting their gayness.

I already demand for great performance, I have absolutely no right to ask for my staff to be someone else they are not. I posed in this photo from a Sta. Cruzan event where members of the LGBT community from my team were featured.

Please know that I am not advocating homosexuality in this post. In fact I firmly believe that we need to exert all effort to keep enough heterosexual relationships for our specie to survive. What I am promoting is acceptance of the humans behind the lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders who've already made the difficult decision to be themselves.

I want to thank my unbelievable team in supporting me on this subject, in community service, in charitable work, and in business excellence. You might come across some of them here in the coming days.

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Cover Photo Background