What did your company do to celebrate National Coming Out Day? What is your company doing to mark National Spirit Day? And, what is your company doing to honor your fellow LGBT employees, customers, vendors, and the community at large?
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles are covering all of the bases at their Auburn Hills, Michigan corporate campus. It began by lighting the Pentastar on top of its headquarters tower in purple. It represents one of the colors of the rainbow flag, as well as the t-shirt color to be worn on Spirit Day.
Not only that, FCA will also fly their rainbow flag at their Auburn Hills headquarters campus. This may be one of the few instances an automotive industry entity has ever done that.
To go along with their visual symbolism to celebrate our community, FCA North America will host informational workshops for their employees on bullying, cyber-bullying, and suicide prevention in Auburn Hills.
There is a history of FCA’s involvement in celebrating its corporate diversity, including its LGBT employees. Since 2000, FCA offered domestic partners benefits to its employees. They also have supported community organizations and local LGBT events in Southeastern Michigan.
In turn, the Human Rights Campaign has given FCA a perfect 100-point score on its Corporate Equality Index in recent years. FCA has been consistently recognized as a company that continues to uphold the promise of ensuring their LGBT employees are treated equally in the workplace. It shows through their commitment to their employee resource group, GALA.
The call to honor equality for LGBT employees is something GayWheels.com has been watching since we first published our website. We wanted to make sure that consumers are purchasing or leasing vehicles from companies that “talk the talk and walk the walk” when it comes to corporate human resources policies and the execution of them at their facilities nationwide.
A lot of these automotive entities in the U.S.A. have employee resource groups that welcome LGBT employees to discuss community efforts, as well as improving life at work. They also present themselves at community events, such as a local Pride celebration, and help other community efforts near their headquarters. Some companies have gone further to be involved in other community events across this country.
This year, Toyota Motor North America came to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to engage with the community to see what they can do to help. As a result, Toyota provided a vehicle for Twin Cities Pride to transport people and goods to and from the festival ground at Loring Park in Minneapolis. Toyota also sponsored a kick-off event for Pride week hosted by the local chapter of the non-profit community service group Gay For Good.
We have also seen similar efforts put on by General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Hyundai Motor America, Nissan North America, American Honda, Mercedes-Benz of North America, BMW of North America – to name a few.
As for this month, we should be seeing more from the OEMs, suppliers, and other automotive entities across the country as we celebrate our community and to create awareness of the harm the bullying and harassment do towards harming our own people. This is beyond just noble efforts, as they continue the call to create awareness towards providing solutions for our people.