Today Fujitsu celebrates Wear it Purple Day, an important day in the LGBTI+ community.
Early in my career, when I was working for the Victorian Health Department, I had an experience when I was working with the LGBTI+ community. In a time of immense prejudice, the community were also dealing with the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, a severe epidemic at the time. During this period, I was privileged to work beside phenomenal members of the LGBTI+ communities who advocated on behalf of their families and friends to ensure they could enjoy safe and fulfilled lives. This challenged my perspectives, and I learnt a tremendous amount, including about the importance of active and visible allyship with diverse communities.
While much has been done since then, LGBTI+ people still experience bullying and mental illness at much higher rates than other people in Australia and New Zealand. Days like Wear it Purple are important to remind us that creating an environment where people are safe, empowered and supported is a job for us all, including everyone at Fujitsu.
Starting the Purple Conversation
As part of Wear it Purple day this year, some of the voices from across the Fujitsu community have come together in a video to demonstrate their support towards LGBTI+ inclusion and share their thoughts on why this is so important.
I am also proud to share that Fujitsu will continue to match employee donations of up to $1,000 each to both Wear it Purple (AUS) and Rainbow Youth (NZ) this year, in support of the crucial work that they do in providing mental health and wellbeing services for LGBTI+ young people.
To wrap up, we will also be celebrating the day with a virtual dance party!
Keeping the Conversation going
Earlier this year, I was delighted that Fujitsu received a Bronze award at the Australian Workplace Equality Index awards, Australia’s premier LGBTI+ inclusion benchmark. You have my commitment that Fujitsu will work hard to achieve even better results in future years, and we have recently commenced working towards Rainbow Tick accreditation in New Zealand.
Other recent highlights include:
- Our Fujitsu Pride lead in ANZ and global co-lead, Ian Gearey, recently presented to President Tokita and the Fujitsu Group executive team about the need to accelerate LGBTI+ inclusion across the Group and the importance of Pride Month, which we celebrate globally every year.
- Through our membership with Pride in Diversity, the leading LGBTI+ employer advisory service in Australia, our Executive Leadership Team, and HR and Talent Acquisition teams have completed LGBTI+ awareness sessions to better understand issues faced by LGBTI+ people.
- Our Gender Affirmation Guidelines, which outline the way Fujitsu will support employees making a gender transition, continues to represent leading practice with our paid leave entitlements.
- We have set up the Office of Purpose and we are recruiting for a dedicated Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Lead to help Fujitsu ANZ accelerate our progress across our D&I agenda.
- We have promoted the different ways in which our employees can learn more and be good allies to their LGBTI+ colleagues, including LGBTI+ inclusion training on Empower, our e-learning platform. We have also given out rainbow lanyards to employees who have completed the training – I wear mine all the time!
These initiatives have been stewarded by our Oceania Pride advisory group who continue to push hard to help Fujitsu be an inclusive employer, and I am very grateful for their continued passion and dedication.
Since I joined Fujitsu it has been one of my priorities to accelerate our diversity and inclusion progress, so that our company reflects the community we operate in. Fujitsu’s purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building social trust through innovation – by building a diverse organisation that embraces people regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, we are contributing to building social trust and will unlock new pathways to sustainable innovation. It will take all of us working together, to deliver on our promise of being a place where everyone can be completely themselves.
