Supporting employees in advance of tough times

by Stephanie Huckel, guest blogger

A lot of your employees are nervous right now.

Last week, kids started coming home from school with stories of boys telling girls, “Your body, my choice” and young LGBTQ+ people being told, “Now you’ll have to go back into the closet.” Sure, kids can be mean. There have always been and will always be mean kids. Parents will continue to coach their kids on how to handle kids being mean.

But the parents – and their child-free peers – are listening to these statements with full understanding of the context. We’ve been watching reproductive freedoms and LGBTQ+ protections disappear…not just slip away but fall off a cliff in many instances.

As a corporate leader, there are a few things you can do to support your colleagues and their families in this moment and in the months and years ahead. Workplace policies aren’t everything, but they do mean a great deal in tumultuous times when people are nervous that their government won’t protect or care for them.

Make quality employee assistance programs (EAP) available and well-advertised.

You might already have EAP for your colleagues. For many of us, these confidential services include free access for employees and everyone in their households. Often, though, this isn’t a widely known fact. Make sure that employees understand how to access these services and how they can support their households confidentially.

Go one step further and ensure your EAP provider is well-equipped to support folks with a range of identities and needs. Can employees request mental health support from a person of color? Do providers have an LGBTQ+ affirming approach? Can EAP provide recommendations for immigration-related legal concerns? These are a few questions to start with, but your employee resource groups can provide you with other great questions that feel especially relevant for your employees.

Ensure your nondiscrimination/harassment/anti-bullying policies are inclusive.

Many companies rely on standard legal language when listing protected groups in their nondiscrimination policies. While the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s protections currently include protection based on gender identity and sexual orientation, many suspect these protections will go away in 2025. The good news is that the EEOC provides a minimum standard, not a ceiling, for protections (though this is not legal advice; I’m not a lawyer).

To give your LGBTQ+ employees a bit of piece of mind at work, ensure that your policies include protections against discrimination for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (explicitly inclusive of transgender and nonbinary employees), and relationship status/configuration. These protections should be sure to extend to interactions with vendors and customers and built into those contracts as a standard.

Provide inclusive healthcare offerings for reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare.

Hopefully, you’re already doing this, but your policies are worth another look to be sure. The Human Rights Campaign provides a number of helpful resources to support your conversation with your health insurance company about what to provide regarding gender affirming care.

If you’re not already, be sure to include a way for employees to access healthcare that’s not available locally. For many employers, this comes in the form of reimbursement for travel and accommodation outside of a reasonable radius where care isn’t available. For example, if a person’s home state doesn’t permit access to gender-affirming care, the person (employee or dependent) can travel to a state where it is permitted and then receive reimbursement for travel and accommodation, on top of standard coverage for the services received.

This approach, though, still makes access to healthcare unavailable with approximately 78% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck. Get creative! Work with your benefits team to find a way to provide this funding up front rather than require reimbursement.

Move your employees if their home state is unsafe.

Many global companies have used this approach for years. For example, if a gay employee lives in one of the 64 countries where it’s illegal to be gay (and especially for the 12 where it’s punishable by death), they’ve found the opportunity to relocate that employee and their partner/family. While being a member of the LGBTQ+ community is not punishable by death in the United States, there are states that have or are close to making it virtually illegal to be a transgender person in public (here’s looking at you, Florida and Texas).

This reality isn’t just true for LGBTQ+ people and their families but is also true for pregnant people. States with more restrictive access to abortion-related care have higher maternal mortality rates. Pregnancy is now more dangerous than ever in a number of states. Families who are pregnant, especially with high-risk pregnancies, or planning to become pregnant, may not be safe in their home state.

Create, implement, and communicate a process to support employees who need to move safely. This may require you to reassess your company’s approach to remote work.

Commit to providing your employees with a living wage.

Governmental standards relative to employee pay are likely to drop or become less enforceable. Create a process whereby employee pay is benchmarked against a local living wage standard. Correct any that fall below this standard and make a formal commitment to ensuring this remains true as the economy fluctuates.

You can do it!

Employers who commit to treating their employees (and their families) well through pay, benefits, protections, and an inclusive environment are rewarded with longer tenure and increased discretionary effort. But hopefully, you’re committed to creating or strengthening these changes for your employees because you believe that as human beings, they’re worthy of this level of humanity, regardless of whether or not the government thinks so.

Stephanie Huckel is a corporate DEI leader with over fifteen years of experience spanning for-profit, non-profit, local, and global environments. She is a passionate leader committed to strategically developing inclusive and equitable organizations with an accountable and authentic style while developing productive, innovative, and effective workplaces. She can be found on LinkedIn and Bluesky.