How to Retain Queer Employees and Save Money

Spend five minutes Googling “How to Retain Employees” and you’ll see it’s about benefits and culture. And yet, few dive into specific ways to create a shift in the company that is sustainable and enacts real change. Over and over, companies hire me to speak on “How to help their employees understand the Transgender experience” or “How to create a Queer friendly workplace.” And over and over, I explain to them this isn’t about the Trans experience or just Queer employees. 

This is about empathy. 

Long term focus on empathy and understanding.

If you aren’t building your leadership, policies, and benefits around empathy, more so the humanity of your employees, then you are wasting your companies time, money, and resources. Imagine working for a company that justifies burning you out because they give you 3 extra days of vacation a year. Three days that you can’t even enjoy because your company has trained you to think about your job 24/, leading to even worse burn out.

As we’ve seen, companies often want to take the short cut with retention, and end up paying for it in the long run with turnover and quality employees leaving. The cost of it can quickly add up with studies showing turnover can cost anywhere from $3,500 to $20,000 per person mattering on their salary and job. This also doesn’t touch on the employees' culture of constantly having to rebuild relationships with new employees or the unseen costs, like employees who don’t feel dedicated to a job that treats them poorly.

If you are losing multiple or hundreds of employees a year, and start investing in speakers, educators, and workshops that are heavily built off storytelling, creating brain pathways in your leaders which means they see your employees as deep complex individuals, you could end up saving 10x in the long run.

Not only will you save from a financial standpoint, you will also be compounding the growth of your company's culture. The more people stay and invest in the role they have, the more relationships are built and the safer they will feel. The more deep and safe relationships are built, the more loyal your employees are. People before profit means profit will grow. Profit before people means profit will burn out just like the employees.

The math continues to math if you let it.

And yet, if you treat your employees like they are robots who should be invested in the company simply because that's “their job” and you don’t see them with respect or dignity, making space for their humanity, they will in turn treat you as just a “just a job”, seeing you with no loyalty or investment. Keeping this mindshift in mind empowers you to understand the ways some companies thrive and some fall apart.

When you shift your focus away from getting the most out of an employee and priorities the needs they have, such as your employees mental health, celebrating their Queerness (all year, not just in June), and educating their peers, you make space for them to be a whole person. In and out of work. This is true with all employees in marginalized communities. While this strategy is a slower model, it is the difference between a meal you microwave vs a slow and intentionally cooked 5 course meal. Long term, which one is more enjoyable?

If you want to retain employees, you have to listen to not only the needs they have but also create systems in place to continue to learn more about the different aspects of their humanity. This could be from hiring a variety of motivational and educational speakers who use storytelling to build off their identity, having monthly or quarterly check-ins to evaluate what is and isn’t working from their perspective, and having a Leadership Book Club that encourages your leadership to read about those who may be different from them. 

As companies continue to make space for the humanity of their employees with Empathy-driven leadership development, Employee well-being programs, and Mental health workshops, the impact will ripple into making space for their clients and customers. Which will only grow your marketing and following, which leads to a more solid foundation of business. 

No matter how you look at it, investing in the human aspects of your employees leads to growth, and I can’t think of a single company who wants less instead of more.