It’s Pride Month. It’s a celebratory time characterised by rainbow flags, bright parades and fantastically joyous events.
We celebrate so many communities within Pride Month that it would take up most of this blog to name them. And I don’t want to on this occasion.
I want to look at Pride Month through one of AVC Immedia’s core values: Humanity. Our values state, “colleagues are valuable and unique human beings”.
That’s as true for everyone celebrating Pride Month as it is for our company.
Every person who is celebrating Pride Month has their own experiences, individual to them. Through the good and the bad, those experiences shape who we are in all aspects of our lives.
It would be really easy to sit here and write ‘what you do in your life away from work isn’t relevant to us’, but that would be wrong. Just as my life is richer from the inclusion of all of us that celebrate Pride, so is my workplace.
The laws tell us, as a business, that we should treat LGBTQ+ people the same way as we treat anyone else. That is fine as a law, but our values include treating everyone as a unique person. We all are in a one-off situation and have a unique set of needs. Who you are, and how you identify yourself, is part of that.
It mystifies me why some people have a bigoted reaction to others who are “different” to them. To me, differences should be embraced. Our differences make the world a colourful place and give us the chance to keep learning new things.
If you see a Pride event happening, you will see a group of people celebrating how much things have changed, or protesting because there is still much to do.
I’d like us to see beyond that as well. See the individuals. Some will be happy and confident, blazing a trail for others to follow. Some will be worried and scared, anxious about how their lives will turn out. Most people will fall somewhere between those extremes. Every single person will be different.
Our core values as a business mean we never say lines like “all salespeople are interested in is money”, or “all accounts people are boring”.
I feel the same way about Pride. There will be millions of people celebrating in unison this month, but also millions of different stories behind why they are celebrating.
Each of those individual stories is as important as the rest. By treating those stories with humanity, we can enrich our own lives as well as that of others.
Written by Euan McMorrow, Content Director at AVC Immedia.