Navigating diversity and inclusion in the South African telecommunications industry: an LGBT+ employee perspective

Abstract

Despite improvements in global actions and campaigns supporting the LGBT+ community1, individuals who belong to the community continue to face immense backlash and challenges in their lives for their sexual orientation, gender identity, life choices, and beliefs. In Africa, there are over 30 countries that criminalise acts of homosexuality. People who identify as LGBT+ often face discrimination, harassment, and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in social and workplace settings. This study aimed to understand the experiences of employees who align with the LGBT+ community, and how they navigate diversity and inclusion in the workplace while examining whether organisational culture may enable seamless reasonable accommodation and inclusion of LGBT+ employees in the workplace. The study focused on the South African telecommunications industry to understand if it embraces diversity, equity, and the inclusion of employees who identify as LGBT+. The queer theory and institutional theory were the two theories which guided the study. These theories assisted in providing a greater understanding of the concepts and phenomena studied. Providing a lens, enabled understanding how an individual’s unique experiences in the workplace may be perceived as a deterrence to inclusion. Following a mixed qualitative methodology, data were gathered using a two-phase approach. The first phase entailed purposively selecting five participants who engaged in a reflective diary. The second phase involved interviewing eleven participants. Data gathered from both phases were coded and thematically analysed enabling triangulation of the findings, which revealed that diversity and inclusion measures are unmet in South African telecommunications organisations. Employees who identify as belonging to the LGBT+ community are challenged each day with many resigning in an attempt to escape discrimination, harassment, violence and abuse. The first limitation was participants’ commitment to continue with the diary study for fear of being identified or victimised. The second limitation was the industry's reluctance to share their insights. Trust had to be built to continue with the research process. The recommendations are 1 To maintain consistency and clarity throughout this study and its discussions, the acronym LGBT+ is used as a unifying term encompassing various related acronyms such as LGBT, LGBTI, LGBTIQ+, LGBTIQA+, and others. This approach prevents the interchangeability of multiple acronyms and ensures that LGBT+ inclusively represents the diversity within the community under study. Navigating diversity and inclusion in the South African telecommunications industry: an LGBT+ employee perspective iii for further research in this area and studies to include other sectors with larger samples, building trust and relationships before data collection. The findings of this study will build on existing knowledge and contribute to the literature in the fields of Management, Organisational Studies, Business Ethics, Sociology, Homosexuality, and other related fields. The study was anticipated to make an empirical contribution from the life stories and experiences shared through the reflective diaries. There are a limited number of studies on the South African LGBT+ community, particularly related to their voice in diversity and inclusion studies. By using concepts from the queer and institutional theories, this study would make a theoretical contribution to the body of knowledge by presenting a conceptual framework that can be used by future researchers when studying similar concepts of the workplace experiences of individuals who identify as LGBT+. For the research participants, the researcher aimed to contribute as a voice of reasoning and allyship to the ongoing quest for equal treatment for all, an end to harassment, any form of discrimination and violence, and the reasonable accommodation and inclusion of LGBT+ individuals in the workplace. The value of this study was finding out how the South African telecommunications industry navigates diversity and inclusion of LGBT+ employees, and whether South Africa is making strides in implementing policies that promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Furthermore, it made recommendations on what could be done in the workplace to create an environment that allows LGBT+ employees to be themselves without fear of being subjected to any form of discrimination, harassment or exclusion.