Creation of an LGBT Employee Resource

SaskPower has delivered electricity throughout the province of Saskatchewan since 1929. Considering SaskPower is the primary source of electricity in our province, they’ve developed a wide customer base of more than 467,000 customers. SaskPower has more than 2,600 dedicated employees in 71 communities. SaskPower manages $4. 9 billion in generation, transmission and distribution assets. The company operates two wind facilities, five natural gas stations, three coal-fired power stations and seven hydroelectric stations.

Since 2009, SaskPower has revised their mission, vision, values and strategic priorities. The mission for SaskPower is to provide safe, reliable and sustainable power for their customers. SaskPower’s vision includes people, innovation and partnerships… powering Saskatchewan to a bright future. Employees at SaskPower value responsive, respectful, progressive and accountable actions in everything they say, do and offer. SaskPower’s strategic priorities are as follows:

1. Proud and productive employees.
2. Loyal and satisfied customers,
3. Informed and engaged stakeholders,
4. Dependable and secure infrastructure,
5. Efficient and effective operations
6. Strong environmental stewardship and performance and
7. Prudent financial management and growth. 1 SaskPower currently has four resource groups. They include Aboriginals, Women, Visible Minorities and Disabilities. Now, SaskPower feels the need to recognize and support an LGBT resource group within the organization, with the desire to build a safe environment for those employees.

The following report will provide SaskPower with an effective strategy and approach on how to design and implement a successful LGBT resource group within their company. By the end of this report, SaskPower will be able to recognize and successfully include a fifth resource group within their organization: an LGBT Resource Group.

 Problem statement/description

Problem The issue that SaskPower is facing is how to devise and implement an LGBT resource network within their organization.

Additionally, this resource group must be effective in its purpose to deal with the issues that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees face, both at the workplace and in their daily lives. The three main challenges that SaskPower will face with this program will be raising awareness, gaining employee acceptance and support, and making the network available to all employees throughout the province. Raising awareness will be a challenge for SaskPower for several reasons.

Firstly, there is an estimated 2,700 SaskPower employees in 23 different locations throughout the province, including those at the head office in Regina. With a large number of employees, it can be problematic for the company to inform all of its employees of new practices effectively. Secondly, within the organization there are several different fields of work, that will require different and numerous methods of communication for information to be conveyed effectively to individual employees and groups of employees, including unions.

Thirdly, SaskPower may have difficulty in informing employees of the network’s purpose, and the information and resources that the resource group will provide. The acceptance and support of SaskPower employees may be difficult to gain because of current personal religious beliefs of employees, the resistance to change, the lack of knowledge/understanding of individuals’ sexual preference and orientation, as well as some frustrated employees who may not be represented by an existing resource group.

The resource network will be a challenge for SaskPower in effectively providing access to all of its employees because of the segmented work locations over a large geographical area, the technical resources that are (or are not) available to all employees, and coordinating methods of communication that has the ability to reach all employees with the same message.

 Implementation strategy and structure

Initial Implementation Implementation of an LGBT Employee Resource group can take on two general methods; informal and formal.

SaskPower has requested that an ERG be designed and implemented and therefore the best course of action on behalf of SaskPower would be to formally introduce this resource group to their employees in order to allow all members of the company to be part of its construction and vision. Initially there may be only a few active members of this group and therefore in order to keep the group moral high, this group will have to build camaraderie by adding additional goals and rules to the ‘basic’ structure that is outline in the “Rules and Regulations” section.

Implementation – Forming

The Forming stage is crucial to the initial implementation stage and therefore the initial meetings should allow prospective members to acquaint themselves with each other and the director of the group, Pauline. Upon arriving at the meeting there will be a greeter at the door handing out a pamphlet/agenda on the purpose and goals of the group as well as a schedule that illustrates upcoming meetings and events that are planned. The greeter will also hand out “Hello, My Name is Jon Doe” name tags that members can pin on, and/or placements cards for members to put their names on and place on the table in front of their chairs.

Upon entering the room music should be playing and a table with refreshments and snacks should be visible to allow people to relax. The main method of creating group cohesiveness will be through allowing participants to add rules, regulations, and goals to the outline provided. This process will help members feel productive and useful to the group which will help in member retention and increase activity buy allowing members to actively make a difference in the creation process of the ERG.

Suggestions regarding the ‘basic’ rules to start with can be found under the “Rules and Regulations” section. Our recommendation in the early stages of forming this group is to have group meetings no fewer then once a month and no more then three times a month. The focus of these meeting should be to discuss current events in the media, the possibility of movie nights and lunches, meetings with other LGBT groups or community leaders to talk about gender and sexuality, the scheduling of sports and cultural activities, and fundraising/volunteering for local LGBT support organizations.

Human resource managers should be given a brief outline of the initial activities/agenda that are planned for the meetings and HRM managers should be approached to see if they will voluntarily go to the meetings, however if they are no such volunteers then mandatory training sessions should be implemented to “broaden” HR managers job descriptions to include LGBT sensitivity training. H. R.

managers main focus at the meetings should be to listen and actively participate in discussions in order to familiarize themselves with the ‘issues’ that are present in the workforce, the media, and to have an understanding of the needs of LGBT members and what they expect to accomplish with the group. Furthermore the HR manager’s main task within the group is to aid in communicating the groups’ goals and direction to upper-management as well as aiding/advising on the execution of any events or changes that the LGBT group sees fit to schedule on behalf of SaskPower.