Engage a trusted colleague

It can help to first talk to someone you already know and trust to identify an ally who you feel comfortable talking to. If you have a relationship with someone at work who you feel this sense of connection and trust with, consider telling them a bit more about your aspirations and ask if they’d be open to supporting you as an ally and friend. 

Work with your LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group

At many organizations, forming a new Employee Resource Group can take a lot of time and comes with a level of executive involvement and oversight. This rigor is important and helpful, but can also bog down a small group in its early days as its structures are just forming. This is why we recommend, where possible, that you form initial allies with members of your LGBTQ+ ERG. LGBTQ+ and CNM groups have considerable overlap in lived experience, particularly around feeling closeted and anxious about being outed. Many organizations including AirBnb, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, and Dell have incubated Consensual Non-Monogamy Employee Resource Sub-Groups within their LGBTQ+ ERGs, and these alliances have been very helpful in providing community, infrastructure, and leadership for advocacy. 

With LGBTQ+ ERG leaders, it may be helpful to highlight the considerable intersectionality between LGBTQ+ and non-monogamous identities, and the considerably greater risk that LGBTQ+ non-monogamous individuals face when it comes to discrimination. While not every non-monogamous person identifies as LGBTQ+, the umbrella for this movement is large and constantly-evolving, and queer rights has long been a fight to ensure people can love in whatever ways make sense to them. This article by psychologist Dr. Amy Moors and colleagues may be a helpful starting point for a discussion. You may also want to share this slide deck with them, which was presented by social scientists from the Modern Family Institute recently in the UCLA Queer Studies department. 

As a first step, we recommend that you reach out to their leadership to schedule a private meeting. For an initial meeting, we recommend that you discuss very little via email and keep details in the calendar invite sparse (unless you feel comfortable having those details seen), and ask for at least 30 minutes. During the meeting, you may want to share a bit about your own experience, or you can stay focused on the data and experiences of others that we provide in this toolkit and in the materials above. 

As a first ask, it can be helpful to see if leaders would be open to helping reach out to advocate for the addition of ‘family and relationship structure’ to the employee handbook and applicant nondiscrimination page. ERG leaders likely already have relationships with folks who work in Human Resources and will have some helpful advice about how to navigate the organization.

Reach out to your organization’s Human Resources / People Team

If you are in a position where you feel safe to do so (see next section for assessing your risk), we encourage you to reach out to a member of your organization’s Human Resources Team. This might also be called the People Team, Talent Team, or Human Capital Team. 

We suggest you start by advocating to include “family and relationship structure” as a protected identity in the employee handbook and hiring nondiscrimination statement. To date, every case we are aware of where someone has approached their HR team has been smooth and met with gratitude and enthusiasm. We have not yet heard of someone who has reached out to Human Resources to suggest an update to the employee handbook where there has been blowback or even skepticism. In fact, across the board, people have reacted with “wow, I never thought of this! Thank you!” This small data set does not indicate that it won’t happen, but we wanted to share that to alleviate potential fears around how the conversation might go. 

Small Organizations (1-50 employees)

At a small organization, you may not have a designated leader whose exclusive function is Human Resources. If you don’t, the appropriate person may be someone whose job title is Chief Operating Officer or Head of Business Operations. If you already know this person, we encourage you to reach out directly to schedule some time on their calendar. You do not need to mention what you’d like to talk about in the email or the calendar invite.

Medium-Sized Organizations (20-500 employees)

At an organization of this time, you likely have someone who is in charge of Human Resources full-time. We recommend you reach out to them to schedule a private meeting. You do not need to mention what you’d like to talk about in the email or the calendar invite.

Large Organizations (500+ employees)

At an organization of this size, it’s likely that you have a significant team that performs Human Resources duties, and one of those people may be in a position specific to diversity, equity and inclusion. If it’s possible to meet with someone in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – as well as someone from the broader Human Resources team at the Director or above level – we encourage you to do so. This will make it easier for you to identify the right person to sign off on policy updates. This is where partnering with an existing organization like the LGBTQ+ ERG can be particularly helpful, as they’ll have contacts who understand how to navigate the organization.  We recommend you reach out to them to schedule a private meeting. You do not need to mention what you’d like to talk about in the email or the calendar invite.