459 - Non-Monogamy in the Workplace Part 2

Full transcript available

Workplace initiatives, cont.

We’re excited to share some excerpts from an interview with Dr. Lily Lamboy. Dr. Lamboy is a social impact executive, educator, and researcher who currently serves as the Director of the Open Workplaces Initiative at the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy and the Co-Founder of the Modern Family Institute. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford University, where she also served as a Lecturer in both the Rhetoric and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies programs. Dr. Lamboy previously led the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion functions at both Stripe and Blue Shield of California, scaling both internal-facing employee-focused strategies and external-facing health equity, social justice, and economic initiatives.

Some of the topics we go over with Dr. Lamboy are:

• How to open up at work.

• How to talk to HR.

• Sexual harassment concerns.

• Why employers should care.

• What companies can do without spending money.

• Celebrating successes.

Remember, creating a culture of acceptance for consensual non-monogamy and protections around it in the workplace is an ongoing process, and we are still at the beginning of it. If you don’t feel safe coming out at work or don’t want to take the risk, that is absolutely your choice and you should not feel bad about it. You may never need or want to come out at work to be happy, but if you do decide to, remember to get support, a good community, and take it slow.

For community support, consider joining our Discord channel! There’s a public channel anyone can join, or you can support us financially at multiamory.com/join to access all the channels. You can also join the OPEN Discord server, which can be found at open-love.org. They have a specific channel dedicated to changing workplace policies and culture.

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we are continuing on with part two of our two-part series about coming out as being non-monogamous in the workplace. In the past episode, just as a quick recap, we talked about some of the ways to evaluate the risks that you might have in coming out, some things to understand about that, as well as exploring why you might want to and, hopefully, some ways to evaluate if the pros of coming out would outweigh the cons and whether that's something that you feel like you're able to do.

My hope is that more people than we expect come away from that conversation thinking, "Yes, you know what? That is something that I could do. That is something that I actually feel safe enough to do and could start making a difference there. That actually is something that happened to me." This episode real quick is mostly going to be an interview that I did with Dr. Lily Lamboy, who is one of the founding members of the Open Workplace Initiatives that we talked about a little bit in the past episode.

We're going to talk about a lot in that interview in this episode. Specifically, I'd been part of that group watching their progress and they just released this at the end of last year back in October, I believe. I went to their kickoff event that they had and they had a little meeting where Dr. Lily Lamboy was there and Dr. Heath Schechinger, who you remember from our episode with Diana Adams a while back last year.

I just got real pumped about this idea of potentially being more out and realizing, yes, I am in a position where I do feel like my workplace is just safe enough and I'm just hard enough to replace that maybe this is something that I could do. Actually, in between recording the last episode and this one, I actually did reach out to my HR department to start having this conversation.

Dedeker: I was so proud of you.

Jase: Oh, geez.

Dedeker: You really got fired up. I think the kickoff event really did its purpose.

Emily: What do you think will come out of that discussion with your HR department?

Jase: The conversation was good, first of all. The person that I talked to was the VP of HR for the whole company, international company. Her reaction was overall very positive. Luckily, she actually happened to know a little bit about polyamory already, not from personal experience, but she told me that she had watched a film years ago that it had some polyamory in it. It was like a documentary film. That caused her at the time to look into it and her and her husband to learn more about it-

Dedeker: Oh wow.

Jase: -even if it's not something they ended up doing themselves. I actually was lucky that she already knew a little bit. I didn't have to do that explaining there.

Dedeker: Yes, that helps. Oh, gosh, that really helps.

Jase: Something that was interesting, and this matches my experience, is that in this interview with Dr. Lily Lamboy, she mentions a lot how people in HR have training specifically in this kind of stuff. Not specifically non-monogamy because there's not a lot of training for that yet, which we're hoping to fix. That's another thing that they're doing with open workplaces, but that they have training in how to talk to employees when they bring stuff up about themselves and being a place that is safe for them to talk about. I thought that was cool to realize, "Yes, you're right. That is their whole deal."

Emily: Yes, that's true.

Jase: The thing that they trained you for is to help us employees, which does match up with my experience, fortunately.

Emily: That's good. Excellent.

Jase: Let me give a quick introduction about Dr. Lily Lamboy. She is a social impact executive, educator, and researcher who currently serves as the director of the Open Workplaces Initiative at the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy or OPEN, and is the co-founder of the Modern Family Institute, along with Dr. Heath Schechinger. She holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University, where she also served as a lecturer in both the rhetoric and feminist gender and sexuality studies programs.

Dr. Lamboy previously led the diversity, equity, and inclusion functions at both Stripe and Blue Shield of California, which we do talk about in the interview, where she worked to scale both internal-facing employee-focused strategies and external-facing health equity, social justice, and economic initiatives. It was such a cool opportunity to get to talk with her and get some of her breadth and depth of expertise in this. Let's jump into it. This first half of the interview is talking about-- so you've decided to open up. How do you start going about that? What's the best way to do that? Lily, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Lamboy: I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Jase: People have evaluated that they think coming out at work is something that they could do. They feel safe enough to do it. From the conversations you've had with people and the research that you've been doing together with OPEN and the Open Workplaces Initiative, what have been some of the key tips or findings there that you found in terms of how do you approach this in the safest possible way?

Dr. Lamboy: Yes, great question. I would say the first thing is really thinking about who to open up to. Your comfort in the conversation matters so much and depends so much on who's on the other side of that table. I would really think about who do you trust at work, who do you feel comfortable talking to, and that could really vary. That could mean that you first open up to a peer.

That's just somebody at work that you already know really well who might have been to a house of yours or met one of your friends or a partner at a dinner and maybe not have the context. One route that we've seen work and that can feel good for people, I know I did this, is to say, "Hey, I know that person gets it on some level and they get me and they value me." I'm going to test this out by talking to somebody who I already know and trust, who also happens to be my colleague.

That can, I think, give you a lot of feedback and also make you feel like somebody's in your corner when and if you do decide to, for example, approach somebody in your human resources division, approach somebody on your diversity, equity, and inclusion team who you might know less well. If those people are the same person, lucky you. That's awesome, but I would say finding somebody that you feel comfortable talking to as a first step will really help you just shake those sillies out to some extent and remove some of the anxiety of stepping forward into lesser-known parts of the organization.

Jase: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I love that. That is related to finding an ally at work, which is one of our first ones there.

Dr. Lamboy: Absolutely.

Jase: That was kind of my experience was there was one coworker who's about my same age. He's actually a couple of years younger than me and I just clocked, "I think this guy's going to get it." He was the first one I talked to, both about being bi but also about being non-monogamous. He was very much like, "Oh yes, people in my circle do that too. I get it." That was that easy first step.

Then was another coworker who I had a good rapport with but who was a little older than me and softly was like, "Well, here's this thing," because I do this podcast and I'd mentioned that. I'm like, "Well, let me tell you about the podcast." Gave him this like, "It's not a thing I talk about at work. I'm cautious about it. I don't want people to be uncomfortable because of it." He went and listened to the podcast.

Then a few days later, he was like, "Hey, I listened to your show." I was like, "Oh, God." He said, "I don't know what you're so worried about. I think this is totally fine. This is no big deal," which I think simultaneously is really nice of him and also means he doesn't get it. that caution that I feel about it. Then just recently, I had this conversation with HR now to branch it out further and start talking to them about the non-discrimination language in our employee handbook and things like that.

Dr. Lamboy: That's really great. That's a nice sequence if you think about it, which is somebody who you assume in advance will probably already have some context, someone who might not and is a little bit more testing the waters, and then somebody who you might not actually really know but who has both, usually, the training, experience, background, and authority to do something about this within the workplace setting. I think that's a great playbook. Not everyone will have all three of those folks in their organization.

I just want to acknowledge that. Not everyone feels chummy with folks at work or personally comfortable or you might work in an environment that's more conservative and you get that impression. In that case, I do think that approaching somebody who has the training and background to understand that what you're doing is disclosing something that is personally and potentially even legally relevant to you could actually be a first move. That's also a good idea.

I just want to say, there are different paths depending on your organizational context, and going to somebody in your human resources department or your diversity, equity, and inclusion department if you have one. If you don't have that friend at work where you're like, "Hey, I bet they get it," I think is also a really great first step. I want to emphasize that if you don't feel that way but you do want to start this process that human resources can be a really wonderful place to start.

I also want to acknowledge that there's a huge range of people who work in human resources in terms of their ideology, their knowledge, their background. That's something we're working on at OPEN is actually working with people who do training for people in human resources so that once you go to that person, they have the context and you're not in the position to have to educate them, but we're not there yet. I just want to acknowledge. That's why we have these great fact sheets.

We'll make sure it go along with this podcast so that you are equipped to do some of that educational work. Because at this point in our social movement, we can't rely on even people in human resources to have that knowledge. Feeling comfortable with some of those statistics, with some of the history around LGBTQ rights, how organizations have shown up to support employees who come out in other ways can feel really empowering before you go into a conversation with someone who probably will have the training, education, and background to understand what you're saying once you put it in that context.

Jase: I actually had a question about that. When looking at the open workplaces toolkit, there's a ton of information in there. It's great. When I was preparing to go into that call with our VP of HR, was trying to figure out where to start, I guess. What's the entry point to not feel like I'm giving a bunch of preamble or just giving her a homework assignment and expecting her to do it on her own and just, "Hey, read this. This is important"?

I think that it went well, but I don't even know how I structured it. It blacked out for a little while, I guess, while I was giving some information. I'm just curious. Where would you even start with that conversation, with someone in HR, someone who has more-- it's less of just about a personal connection and more like, "I actually want to talk about this officially at work"?

Dr. Lamboy: For context, I've worked in two different human resources departments. One at a large tech company and one at a large healthcare company. Very different environments. One very old company. One quite new company, younger. My experience working with HR is that people, by and large, are quite well-intentioned. They actually really want to do right by the people who take the time to schedule a meeting with them, and that they don't always have the context or information, so that's why we got stats, et cetera.

It's helpful, but in the end of the day, people care about the person in front of them. What is the experience you're having if you have decided that you're going to open up personally, not just to do some advocacy work on behalf of others? Something that I would do if I were in this position is say I was in a conversation this week where my manager was doing this coffee chat with all of us at the beginning of our team meeting and asked everyone to go around and share something that they did this past weekend.

This is a totally innocuous-seeming question. People shared about their kids' birthday parties and baby showers and all these things and I lied. I lied about what I did this past weekend because what I did this weekend was spend time with my husband and his partner. We all did something together and it was really meaningful, but I act like I hung out with some friends.

What it does, and this is something I've told people, it makes me feel the way I felt when I was still closeted as a pansexual. It makes me feel like I'm still worried, and this was true, that I'm going to get seen on a date and someone at work is going to think I'm doing something immoral or wrong. Those things, that fear, that shame, that anxiety affects how I show up at work. It affects the way I relate to my colleagues.

It affects my sense of being authentic. It's making it harder and harder for me to feel like my best self here at work. I really care about this organization. I really want myself and others like me to feel like they can answer the question, "What did you do this past weekend?" or "How are you spending your holidays?" in a way that feels authentic and it doesn't bring that up sometimes once, twice, three times a day.

Jase: That's awesome. That's great. I found that for myself being a remote employee, there's not that same sense of, "Oh, just what did we do last weekend?" Where I ended up going with a starting point was saying, "Hey, I actually just attended this workshop about OPEN's open workplace toolkit." That got me thinking about our employee manual. I segued from there into this, putting it outside of myself a little bit of saying, "Yes, I went to this talk from this organization. One of the reasons they're really pushing for this is because there aren't any legal protections in place for people who are polyamorous or non-monogamous."

I started with the other stuff before I said the word "polyamorous" and "non-monogamous" to set the stage of like, "This isn't just me. I'm not coming in not having done my research, but I've got some resources. I'm working with other people doing this." What I found is that, one, I think it helped with that soft start a little bit. Then also, she was surprised to realize that. Just to her, it just seems like, "Well, that should fall under sexuality and sexual preference and those protected classes we already have."

I thought that was, for me, a helpful way to bring it up where it wasn't saying, "Hey, I have a personal problem with this, but I'd like to be able to share more. I'd like to help other people in the company feel like they can be authentic," but we're not protected. I feel like even if I put out a call to put together a resource group at our company, they're going to feel like, 'Well, I don't know if I should come forward to that because that's not safe.'"

I think her surprise at it not being a protected class actually helped motivate her a little bit to say, "Yes, I'm going to talk to the people in charge of that part of the employee handbook and see if we could get that in or something like that. That was, I think, a helpful approach for my company as well. I love that example of your personal story or putting it outside of yourself a little is another way.

Dr. Lamboy: I think that both of those approaches, depending on who you are and where you work, coming from one angle or the other will make a lot of sense. I worked at a place that is extremely people-first, human-centered, which I loved. I felt in the context of consistent leadership rhetoric saying it matters to us a lot that you feel you can be your authentic self and share important aspects of your life with your colleagues, that starting there was something I knew would resonate with the person who designs those policies, designs that approach.

All of the rhetoric is just figuring out what's the message you want to send, who are you sending it to, and what will resonate with that person. Then I think back to when I worked in tech and I didn't go through this process. I didn't feel comfortable, even though, in some ways, I'm more overtly progressive organization. I think the approach you're describing would have been a lot more impactful because it was less, for lack of a better word, heart-centered.

At Blue Shield where I worked, we had a CEO who started almost every conversation talking about leading with love and leading with the heart. That did not happen when I worked at Stripe. Stripe too has a lots of other great qualities. That's not a knock. It's just not the way the organization is wired. I think part of why I struggled actually with putting together the toolkit, and we're going to actually come up with another version of it that's more interactive, is that so much of how you approach this depends on your organizational context, both what's already in place and what the vibe is to some extent.

To some extent, my recommendation is to really think through. What do you hear other people talking about? What do you hear leaders talking about? What matters at this organization? It sounds like, Jase, at your organization, the idea of being safe, being protected, being cared for, not feeling at risk is something that's important to all HR professionals just to be clear.

That might be part of what motivates them and that they see themselves as being in more of that protective orientation. Actually, more organizations that have had a long time to develop organizational culture as a specific area of focus have this whole orientation towards the whole person, authenticity, belonging, and that's what you're seeing coming out of a talent organization or a people organization.

Ideally, you have both, I think, in a great organization, but I would just say you know your organization probably better than Jase or I do if you're listening to this. That's part of that first step is taking stock of what you think would resonate and then those two approaches starting with speaking to other people's experiences and the impact versus your own. Those are two of probably several options that are available.

Jase: I also think that coming to that conversation with this sense of, "I'm bringing this up because I want to be sure that I'm safe and I'm kind of acknowledging that I'm taking a risk by even talking to you about it," is like simultaneously a little scary because you're saying, "Hey, I'm aware that you legally could fire me for this and I have no recourse for it." I think that more often, the experience, especially with someone in HR, is they'll come to it from that place of, "Oh gosh, no, that's not how we want you to feel."

Dr. Lamboy: Absolutely. They'll know you're not disclosing it to them for any reason other than seeking protection and advocating for yourself and others versus, and I think you talked about this in the other episode and we can talk about this more, sometimes with peers or colleagues that are not in the HR realm. There is a worry that, and we know of cases where this has happened, that you could be perceived as creating a sexualized dynamic within the workplace.

I know that that's something that as a pansexual woman, that's a fear that I had even in coming out as pansexual because of the stereotypes around pansexual people and then you add on poly. I don't have to tell viewers and listeners here what the stereotypes are around pansexual polyamorous people always out recruiting. We all know. I hope there's no evidence to support that. There's no reason to believe that that's true, but it's also portrayed that way in media. Knowing that that could be a risk when you talk to a peer or somebody out of HR.

When you put yourself in that framing of, "I'm coming to you," and I know that this is a risk and I really want to do this specific action, which is add this to the handbook, which is why we recommend doing that first. The proof is in the pudding to some extent. You are evidencing why this needs to happen because you can speak to your own fear and your own lived experience and say, "Without this formal protection, people who might not have as much power in the organization, stability, they might not feel comfortable coming even to you much less to other people."

Jase: I actually want to go back to that point about people assuming that this is because you're talking about sex. My classic answer to that. Anytime someone says, "Well, why do you want to talk about sex at work?" or "Why do you want to talk about what happens in the bedroom?" my cheeky response is always, "If you see a person wearing a wedding ring, you don't immediately say, 'Why are you telling me that you're having sex with this person?'"

Dr. Lamboy: Right, exactly.

Jase: Even though, societally, that's what we assume and that's what that means, especially if someone talks about having a child or trying to have a child. That's like very explicitly telling you, "We are having sex," but we don't think of it that way because it's so normalized. I'm curious. From the people that you've been talking to and research you've been doing, what would you advise for how to approach these conversations in a way that makes it clear you're not trying to talk about sex but without falling into that trap of protesting too much or like jumping to that assumption when maybe that's not where their mind went, and now it is because you brought it up?

Dr. Lamboy: That's an incredibly good question. It's definitely what kept me and keeps many people, I think, from bringing this up. I would also just say that for myself being a woman who's experienced sexual harassment, there's another side of that coin, which is a fear that you'll be seen as more sexually available and that I loved. I will just say I loved that when I got married, people stopped hitting on me in the same way.

They treated me differently because I was suddenly owned by somebody else, which is its own history of marriage we can go into. Obviously, I don't think anyone consciously believes that who I'm interacting with, but they treat me as if I'm respected property to some extent. In opening up, you lose that status to some extent. I just want to acknowledge that that might be what some of the listeners here are considering and going through.

For me, I think there's going to be two ways that come to mind for approaching this. One is talking for yourself about why it became important to tell other people about this at work. The analogy I might use is when you go on one or two dates with somebody, you don't bring that up that often with people. You meet somebody from Bumble at a coffee and you never see them again. That's not news. That's true whether you're dating towards a monogamous aim or you're dating within the structure of polyamory.

Once somebody becomes a significant part of your life and community, whether that's a deep romantic connection or even a really close friend or somebody is your housemate or your family member moves to town, that's something that becomes a part of your day-to-day life in a way that's really relevant and about social and emotional connection, care, community, stability, consistency, adventure. Those people matter a lot to us.

Not being able to share with our colleagues about the people who matter to us is as sad as me not knowing about your kid or your parents who are aging. It matters to me to understand you. I really want in turn for you to understand me. This is the other alternative. That goes to the literature. We have tons of great literature coming out, showing that the top five reasons that people engage in polyamory have very little to do with sex. They have to do with growth. They have to do with learning.

They have to do with connectedness, a sense of stability and belonging over time. Those are things all humans want. Whether you start with others and move to self or you start with self and maybe move to sharing some of those findings, I do think that for most of the folks who listen to this podcast who are engaging in multiamory or polyamory, that sense of connection and depth and care really is what motivates you to, in a lot of cases, want to share about this at work. I think that can feel like a way of conveying what you're describing without it feeling defensive.

Jase: I like the way that you talk about approaching it from the positive of when you say, "This is why I want to share this," and the reasons you give are all because these are important people in my life. These are my relationships and making that analogy to something anyone can understand like, "I want to know if you talk about your spouse being sick or your kids or your parents or whatever," and say, "I want to be able to do the same thing." I like that you're not saying, "I want to talk about this and it's not because of sex," but you're saying, "I want to talk about it because of this reason," so that they get that sense of why you'd even want to bring it up. I love that. That's great.

Dr. Lamboy: I think that goes back to the workplace just to put a pin on it like, "Why is this relevant?" Some people might be like, "Why are you sharing this?" Especially with a manager, I think one reason it's relevant is that if you are in a polyamorous relationship and your partner does get sick or something happens, it's actually often important to be able to take time off to care for them.

There are legitimate things that we currently respect about people's lives that don't currently extend to people's partners beyond their monogamous partner. If you think about equity in the context of management and being able to take the time you need or use the available resources that you have to care for the people in your life, that is highly relevant in the context in particular of a manager-managee relationship.

Jase: In the second half, we're going to go on to talk about why employers should care. If you are the employer or you just want to make a better case to them, some of the reasons why that really should matter to employers, both from an ethical and also a financial point of view. Then also what it is that you can ask your company to do or what you could be doing if you're in a position of power in that company to make changes. What are going to be the biggest impact and also the surprising number of effective things you can do for little or no money on the part of the company? It's not creating some extra financial burden.

We're going to get into all of that after we take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show. This show is made possible by our sponsors who allow us to make this show and afford to do this and put it out there into the world every week for free. We really appreciate them. Take a moment to check that out. Of course, if you want to contribute directly and join our exclusive communities, you can go to multiamory.com/join. We're back. Before we move on, let's quickly recap some things from how we should approach this process of coming out.

Dedeker: There's some steps that you can take. Maybe the most important one being to find an ally or find someone that you can talk to who is trained to be able to listen to you in a safe or at least a safe enough sort of way. Ideally, if you work for a company that's large enough to have an HR department or a DEI department, those can be good people to turn towards.

Jase: Also, keep track of the interactions. Keep an eye on how it's going on, especially if anything comes up around sexual harassment or people being uncomfortable. Be sure that you're keeping track of those, talking to HR about things as they come up so that things don't get away from you.

Emily: Just to take caution and be even more careful than you were before about discussing things like sexual acts or any sexual conversations, that's probably just a good best practice in general after you've come out just so that nobody can assume, "Oh, you're hitting on me," or you're doing something that is sexual and you feel more comfortable now because you're out. Anything along those lines that could get you in trouble for any reason, just take caution. Just be prepared and know, "Okay, I'm not even going to go there in this scenario with this person just because I'm taking care of myself and I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea."

Dedeker: It's okay to take it slow. This isn't something that has to happen overnight. Hopefully, you're in a position where you have enough control over information that you're able to take it slow like someone hasn't accidentally outed you or things like that. It doesn't have to be a big company-wide announcement. You don't have to do your whole coming-out process in one day. Take your time.

Jase: Then also, people are going to pick up on how you're expressing this, how you're feeling about it. If you're able to come in with this sense of, "This isn't a big thing that everyone needs to freak out about and this isn't a big ask for the company," this is actually a fairly little thing that just has to do with people at this company being able to live their actual identity without fear of repercussions, things like that.

As we talked about in that first half, the first focus pretty much for any workplace is on getting some kind of discrimination or anti-discrimination protections in the employee handbook, specifically about family and relationship structure. Just starting from that, that's a very small thing to ask of a company. I don't think that should set off any alarm bells with HR departments. Maybe there's some red tape they're going to have to go through to make it happen.

If they understand that this is coming from a place of their employees and a lot of them since the numbers show, it's at least as many people as they have that are LGBT, which is a significant number. Even if they don't think they have the employees, they do, and that those people will feel safer and more invested in their company. It takes very little effort on their part to just add that little section to the non-discrimination part of the handbook, and then also to include that on job postings and things like that to let the world know that this is a safe place without needing to come out and be like, "We're a proudly polyamorous company."

It's nothing like that. It's just saying, "Hey, we're not going to discriminate against you because of the way you do relationships or your family structure." That seems like a pretty simple ask. Starting from there, now in the second half of the interview with Dr. Lily Lamboy, we're going to get into more of the details about why companies should really care about this, and then what are those next steps to do after just getting some protections in place in the employee handbook is how do you start to change the company culture and maybe even changing things like benefits. How can you start making changes in that direction?

Let's switch to the side of employers now. These things are all in the toolkit. It's a fantastic resource. I've been enjoying going back through it over and over again, the different sections, looking through things as it's being updated. Could you give us maybe some highlights of either if our listener is someone in a position to make these changes at their workplace or if they want to incorporate that into their pitch to HR or to upper management? Maybe you're at a small company where you don't even have a dedicated HR team. What are some things that you think are top key points to bring up in terms of why they should care?

Dr. Lamboy: Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become almost so commonplace that we sometimes don't think about their distinct meanings. If we break them down, one thing that we know from research over the last almost 40 years now is that diverse teams broadly construed. People from different backgrounds, identities, educational understandings make better decisions.

That's because they don't have as many blind spots and they tend to notice things. I always think about it as a multi-sided cube that actually gets turned around and considered by everybody. Instead of just being like, "Yes, that thing is a shape, whatever," people are like, "Oh, I actually noticed that if you turn it this way, you can see this other aspect of the problem."

The other thing we know from research on this is that that does not happen. None of those benefits happen if people don't feel included and they don't feel a deep sense of belonging. That's why belonging has become a big part of this conversation. While there are benefits theoretically to diversity, they're only realized when people feel a sense of authenticity, belonging, and connectedness at work.

We typically measure someone's sense of inclusion through survey responses around how people feel in terms of authenticity, comfort, and belonging, participating in their workplace. A big part of why this matters is that you can't get any of those benefits in terms of those-- I'm happy to share studies and link them here, just showing the financial benefits, the decision-making benefits, the ways that boards perform, teams perform.

None of those accrue without that felt sense of inclusion and belonging. The other key part here is that a sense of inclusion is the thing that's most strongly linked with employee engagement. Employee engagement is the thing that predicts retention and performance. Literally, if you care both about teams performing well, broadly construed, and an individual joining, staying with, and performing well in your organization's context, inclusion is the key.

Linking this back to the data that we know about non-monogamy, we know that, right now, it's about as likely that somebody is non-monogamous as they are LGBTQ and that there's a lot of overlap between those communities. Proud member have that overlap to the extent that people have already thought through this and why it matters to create an inclusive environment for other aspects of sexuality. This is opening the Overton window is one way to think about it.

It's like the aperture is just getting bigger. There's this thing about sexuality that we just haven't been talking about and we have missed, but that matters a lot for people's lives. I can't believe it every time I read it, but I just went back today and read the YouGov study. I read the raw data that came out February 2023. It shows that 41% of randomly sampled Americans between 30 and 44 described their current relationship as something other than completely monogamous.

Jase: Wow, 41%. Wow.

Dr. Lamboy: Just stay with that, right? That's a lot of people. That includes people across the political spectrum. It includes people in all age demographics, race, religion, different GOs. It's really interesting when you think about especially the future of talent if that's the 30 to 44 subset. We know that 50% of Gen Z respondents describe their ideal relationship as something other than monogamous.

A lot of what I know employers are thinking about right now is the future of work, the future of talent, and how will we create workplaces, especially with a lot of change going on about how people approach work, about how people conceive of work. Why would we work? They're not just working to live at this point, especially the younger generations. We care that our work is aligned with something that matters to us and we feel cared for, included, and a sense of belonging at work. It is my strong belief that in order to attract and retain talent going forward, workplaces will have to make space for people to talk about their partners and loved ones who fall outside the monogamous paradigm. The numbers are just too large for that to not be a burgeoning conversation, and employers have the opportunity to be a leader right now instead of one that's lagging behind the conversation and catching up probably 10, 15 years from now.

Jase: Yes. I found that in some of the conversations I've had, and something that I think would be effective-- I'm curious, your thoughts, is assuming that you work at a company that at least doesn't want to be actively homophobic, or racist, or transphobic, assuming that, which, if you're in that boat, get out of there, find somewhere else to be.

Dr. Lamboy: That's right.

Jase: That's a really bad situation. Assuming that they don't want to be those things, and maybe they're oblivious to it, maybe they're a little bit conservative still, but at least they don't want to be those things, bringing up the analogies between how companies put protections in place for trans people or LGBT people before they were legally required to, and that they didn't want to be left behind. Get them a little bit with the FOMO, of, "You don't want to be left behind here."

Dr. Lamboy: It's true. Those numbers are staggering, right?

Jase: Yes.

Dr. Lamboy: The percentage of Fortune 500 companies with policies protecting LGBTQ discrimination grew from 4% in 1996 to 91% in 2019.

Jase: Yes. Right.

Dr. Lamboy: That is well within my lifetime. Same with gender identity discrimination, 3%, 2002, 83% in 2019. That's huge. That even means that companies that don't personally care about this actually might be utterly indifferent, if not somewhat hostile, at some point, the curve shifted and it became almost legally risky for them not to have this in place versus a stretch goal, or something that they're doing to be a leader. We all, I think, have opportunities, depending on where you work, to engage those statistics and that rhetoric to say, "Hey, this is going to happen and we should be a part of it. What an exciting opportunity."

Jase: That's awesome. I also feel like, again, going along with that, appealing to a company not wanting to be the company everyone's making fun of, not wanting to be the one that we're going to look back at and go, "Oh my Gosh." I really like to bring up, if you're talking to someone in HR, that concept of, part of why I would like there to be some protections in our employee handbook for this is the fact that besides that there aren't any, that people will, because of the stigma, assume I'm trying to talk about sex and might get weird about that.

Then I bring up, "Just like they did when people first started coming out as being gay or bi, that everyone assumed that." If I want to really drive the nail in, I say, much in the same way that they used to do with interracial marriage saying, "Oh, this is just a sex thing and not actually a relationship." That I think, often gets people to go, yikes, I don't want to be the one we look back at like that because that just seems absurd by our modern standards, but not that long ago, that was the case.

Dr. Lamboy: It's still the case in some places. I don't know that somebody born in the 1980s would even know the term miscegenation at this point.

Jase: I don't know that term.

Dr. Lamboy: It refers to interracial marriage. At some point, everyone in my dad's generation knew what anti-miscegenation law was. Now you don't even know what that term means. That tells you there's been just tremendous-- It can feel like we're never making progress.

I've been working in civil rights my entire life and sometimes it feels like, "God, are we ever going to do anything? Is anything happening?" Then you look back to things like that and even to these statistics around transgender and gender identity protections that have occurred exclusively in my adult lifetime, and it makes you feel like, "Wow, we're really doing something here." We have the opportunity to be a part of this next wave of people being safe and people being able to love who they love and be who they are.

Jase: Awesome. As far as workplaces, putting some things in place, I think step number one is trying to get some non-discrimination language in place, and then adding that, hopefully, to job postings. What would you say would be the next steps in terms of, you don't feel like you're asking your company to do something really expensive or really extra just for you? What would you say would be the next steps after that?

Dr. Lamboy: Depending on how your organization works, but I think this is a common one, either partnering with your LGBTQ employee resource group, if you have one, or doing this on your own with a couple of friends and allies, hosting a panel discussion. I would suggest reaching out to folks like the Multiamory podcast, folks like us at OPEN or Modern Family Institute or Chosen Family Law Center. I know Irene Morning was just on the show.

There's so many experts in this space who can speak to both deep expertise and research and, in many cases, lived experience and can take the limelight off of you, unless that's something you like, and give people both the knowledge and education that they need and ground it in personal storytelling, which is what we know sticks for people.

I'll just speak to some of my experiences with the trans community, which is an area that I've worked in for a long time. We had a lot of panels, performances events that brought people from that community who also knew a lot about how to be a good ally, to say, "How to be a good ally, what can you do if you care about this? What are some things you might get wrong and how can people respond with grace, and care, and compassion?"

Doing a small educational event that feels approachable and engaging, I've seen work wonders. I've had so many people come up to me and be like, " I don't know that I've met a trans person before today and now I just did. Now I know that actually I've probably met a lot of trans people and I didn't even know it, and now I feel more comfortable with the pronouns thing." I think there's a version of that for polyamory that could be really impactful and pretty low effort to produce in terms of budgeting, time, et cetera.

Jase: Awesome. What about the next steps after that, when we talk about benefits or things like that?

Dr. Lamboy: I'll maybe name a couple more low-hanging fruit ones first-

Jase: Sure.

Dr. Lamboy: -because I think there are a few. There's asking your existing DEI training vendor. Many companies have DEI training, and we're actually working with Paradigm, which is one of the major training vendors that works with so many companies across the country to simply just integrate an example about non-monogamy when they do their DEI training. There's not a whole module on it.

It doesn't take a disproportionate amount of time. It's just that one of the three or four examples happens to mention somebody who comes out at work or happens to mention somebody bringing two partners to an event. That gives people this sense of like, "Oh, this is already happening. I guess I'm supposed to know about this." They can ask questions from the DEI vendor or they can go look it up, understand it better. That's one thing we recommend.

The other thing, bringing two partners to your holiday event, being inclusive in your language, using words like partners instead of spouse, because spouse is only applied to married partner and we know we don't have multiple partner marriage, and making clear that there are opportunities for non-monogamous employees to bring more than one partner to an event like a holiday party or a company picnic.

I know that my husband and I just attended our first wedding with another partner and that was one of the most-- I've never felt such a sense of being seen and cared for. We met a lot of people from all around the country who were from really different religious and political backgrounds. Just seeing their response was really validating and really moving.

Companies I think, have an opportunity to do those things as kind of lower-hanging fruit. Then I'm happy to speak to bigger boulders that I think once there's a company conversation going on around this and you have enough people who feel more equipped and educated, there are really big things on the horizon in terms of expanding benefits to multi-partner households. We know that this has happened in only one place that we know of, which is Somerville, Massachusetts, which has recognized Plural Domestic Partnership. There is also Cambridge, Massachusetts, Arlington, Massachusetts. I'm actually from there, so a point of pride for me.

Jase: Nice.

Dr. Lamboy: Even then, there's a really big question about what companies do to implement that and integrate it. What does it actually mean for a company to pay extra money for somebody to be on the company insurance plan, and why should they do that? We're putting together some resources that OPEN and modern family around that, doing some research on the implementation in Somerville.

It costs almost nothing, is what we're learning so far. I think part of what we're going to do is produce more data around the actual fiscal impact of that so that people can do more to advocate for benefits extension because the most major easy reaction people have is, "That's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."

So far our hypotheses and our small amount of data is that that's simply not true, very similar to gender-affirming healthcare. There was very similar arguments made when that first came out as something people were asking for from their employers. We find that it's less than 1 cent per person I think around there.

I can look up and send you that after this, but knowing what people might have as questions in mind, but I think benefits is the next frontier here. That's why we're also working on the healthcare side and working with insurance companies to create easier ways for people to actually be accepted as members.

It's somewhat like having a new kid. No one says when you have a new child, like, "Oh, my God, it's going to cost the company hundreds of dollars. You have a baby." Having that in place, and then also having something in place that-- I know a lot of companies have really great requirements that mirror domestic partnership requirements where you show that you've lived together or you show that you're deeply interconnected in a certain way. Maybe you have entangled bank accounts, you make major purchasing decisions together. There's a lot that you can do at the company level to create your own internal criteria for what counts as a valid, complex, long-term committed partnership outside the boundaries of marriage or monogamy.

Jase: Yes, I was actually surprised to find out, when I was first going through the benefit stuff when I got hired a couple of years ago and I asked, "What does someone have to be to count as this partner for my benefits?" Their answer was, "Nothing." I was like, "Do they have to live with me or share a bank account?" They're like, "No, they don't even need that, but you can be married to someone else though."

It was that like, "Oh, you won points and then you also lost some points because of that, just being naive and not even realizing that actually might be a situation someone was in." It wasn't for me, but it was like, "Oof." I did bring that up with HR when I talked to them as well, just being like, "Hey, this is this little example. I know no one means anything harmful by it, but that sucks that that language is there." I also don't even know if it's true.

Dr. Lamboy: I don't know that it's true either.

Jase: Well, just assume you're not married to someone else. I'm like, "Is that actually how this policy works or did you just say that as a joke, because that's an absurd concept to you?" I don't know. There's some question marks there, but I love that it's being able to put together resources to say, "Hey, this isn't actually going to cost you as much or maybe any compared to what you thought, and here's a way that you can better be providing for your employees."

Dr. Lamboy: That's right. Not to get too wonky about this, but if you think about it overall, you think of who's engaging in non-monogamy right now, it's younger people, and it's people who tend to also be in contingent or more risky positions with regard to accessing healthcare. Putting folks on good healthcare who also don't bring a lot of risk to the risk pool is good for everyone in our society.

Not only that it doesn't cost as much as actually part of the whole healthcare mandate. That's the spirit of it, is that we want people to be getting preventive healthcare, to be getting access to the kind of quality healthcare that usually only companies provide in this country.

Jase: Yes, awesome.

Dr. Lamboy: I would make sure that you look up your handbook's definition of sexual harassment and make sure you are fluent with that. It doesn't differ that much, but it does somewhat state to state and company to company, so making sure that you understand what would count as evidence that you were sexually harassing somebody and what to look out for in terms of if this is going to come to you, I really would make sure you understand that.

Then if you don't, you talk to somebody in HR preemptively and you say, "Hey, I actually don't really quite get this. Can you answer some questions that I have?" I don't know that actually everyone even always understands that. There are things that constitute harassment, like repeatedly commenting on somebody's appearance, asking them if they want to go to coffee multiple times, even though they say no every time. These are subtler things that might not be obvious to everybody, but within a broader context and pattern do actually constitute sexual harassment in certain contexts.

Just knowing that you can and should document those things if they happen to you and know that there's some possibility that somebody's going to make that accusation against you, and either have somebody else around when you're talking to them can be a really important piece of having somebody else who observes the dynamic, ideally somebody that you trust if you do start getting somebody who's coming onto you or being a little weird or creepy in your presence, both to protect yourself in the moment and to protect yourself in terms of making a case that that's happening and that it didn't start happening until you told them about your identity.

Not that it really matters, but I think tracing it and being able to explain, "I suddenly was perceived as available or interested in a way that I am not, and I did not say anything other than I have another partner, or this is a part of my life," it's important to document these things. I know that that sounds tedious and/or stressful. I just want to acknowledge that, but that is also how, from an HR perspective, they are only empowered to do something when there is detailed information about what's going on.

That's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is this will be an ongoing process, especially if you decide to share this with more than just the person in HR or more than just your one trusted colleague. Having your allies at work, really identifying the people who do a deeper dive, maybe they read. We've had friends who are monogamous, who we are in a poly-secure book club with, right?

Jase: Wow, nice.

Dr. Lamboy: Because it's a great book. They've said, "Wow, we've learned so much about how to navigate our own new marriage from this book." There are ways to invite people into learning more about polyamory that also really can say, "Hey, there's actually just a lot of great insights about how to develop trust, how to develop communication, how to develop skills around boundary setting that have come as innovations from polyamory and psychologists working in that space.

There are ways to invite your allies in, and then those folks become part of a little squad or a team who can both look out for you and also can do some of that combating myths and stereotypes work for you. That's one of the best things you can do as an ally. I do this work a lot. As a white person, I talk a lot about my own race. I demonstrate comfort with whiteness. I make sure people see me discussing race in a way that reframes it and makes it more comfortable while still actually challenging myths and stereotypes and bringing in relevant information.

I think one step you can take is finding those folks, whether they're at work or they're just in your life that go along that journey with you and can do some of that work with you so it doesn't feel like it's all on you.

Jase: Awesome, yes.

Dr. Lamboy: I think the final thing I'll say, just on the sexual harassment perception piece, I hate to say this, but just being a lot more careful about what you do share about your private life once this is part of your known universe. Like me as a married person, when I'm assumed in lots of contexts to be monogamously married, I can get away with all kinds of risqué jokes because I'm bordering on middle-aged-

Jase: Unavailable seeming.

Dr. Lamboy: -white seeming, moderate-seeming person who's just making a little click. That's a very different context suddenly than when people fill in gaps as you well know about what it means to be polyamorous with all their own projections, fears, fantasies, et cetera. Know that that's happening to you, potentially, and be thoughtful about the kinds of jokes you make or what you share about what you did over the weekend because a little piece of information can cause an inference for that person that's not substantiated by what you said, but the logical leap is in their head, and that's how they see you now. I'm sad that that's where we are and I just want to help all of us be safe as we navigate this big transition.

Jase: Yes, I'm glad you brought that up because that's something I've found when talking to people about this topic. I find that the first concern that comes to mind does tend to match up a lot with gender.

Dr. Lamboy: Yes.

Jase: I think for you, as a woman, it's very much that coming in with this worrying about receiving sexual harassment because of this identity. For me as a man, my mind right away goes to, "I'm scared that someone's going to think that I'm-

Dr. Lamboy: Absolutely.

Jase: -saying something to them." Whether they're a man or a woman, doesn't matter, but they're going to accuse me of that. I think that's also worth being aware of in going into that. Emily has talked about that on the show before with customers at her workplace, if they know that about her identity, them being weird to her too, so it's not just coworkers, but being aware of all those other factors that have to do with you.

I think also just your physical presence, race, all sorts of pieces that go with it, right? If you are a larger human versus a smaller human, people perceive different amounts of threat from you, regardless of your actual behavior. There's a lot of things to consider in terms of which ones of these might come up more for you. I'd want to encourage listeners to just really be aware of that.

Dr. Lamboy: Yes. We actually have some information in the toolkit around intersectional identities and how different impacts fall on different intersections of identities. If you are from a poor background, if you are not white, and especially if you're black or brown in this country, making these kinds of brave statements can have a very different impact and implication.

I just want to recognize that there's different decisions that are right for everybody, and just being aware, I know you talked about this on the last episode, of not just what those risks are abstractly, but how those risks might intersect with your own identity, and how people perceive you as a result of those identities, that those risks might change. I'm really glad you brought that up because it's definitely, these things are very real, maybe not in all the ways we care about expressing ourselves, but definitely about the way that people perceive us.

Jase: Yes. One of the important steps, I think that's worth keeping in mind when coming out at work, or even in any area of your life is also to celebrate when it goes well.

Dr. Lamboy: That's right. I just saw that you put this up too.

Jase: Yes. Because it's so easy to get caught up in all the worry and the fear and like, "Oh, but they still have these misconceptions about me, whatever." It's like any part of it that goes well, like I mentioned with my coworker saying, "I don't know why you feel like you need to keep this secret or whatever." I'm like, "Okay, I don't totally agree with that, but that's a success," at least for him. This is not a big deal, and that's cool because in that case, I wasn't sure what his reaction would be. Celebrating those.

The one that I wanted to share, and I'm curious if you have any stories like this, but I actually just recently had a conversation with a co-worker, who I was actually one of the people who interviewed him when he was getting hired. He wears nail polish. It's just a normal, everyday thing. He was telling me-- after maybe working at the company for a year, he told me, "When I had my interview," he's like, "I was so terrified of the fact that I was wearing nail polish that I almost took it off. I was almost too scared to do this. I was talking to my friends about it, and I decided not to."

He's like, "Then I had the interview, and then when I looked you up," you meaning me, he's like, "and I saw that on your LinkedIn you talk about your podcast, and on your podcast, you're out as polyamorous." He's like, "I thought, you know what? Okay. I feel safer about this totally unrelated part of my identity because you were open about yours." In that case, I'm not even super out at work, but on the internet, I am. Even just that for him was like, "Wow, this is a place where I can feel safe," which is really cool.

Dr. Lamboy: Yes. I will share that while I wasn't on the stage out in public around polyamory at Blue Shield of California, I was very vocal about both experiencing mental health issues, and I actually told the entire company that I was going on a mental health leave when I experienced COVID-induced anxiety and depression. It kicked my really, really bad preexisting chemical imbalances back into gear, and I took six weeks off supported by the company, and I told everyone that.

I sent a note, and I wanted them to know. "This is a policy we have, here's how I did it. Here's who supported me." Literally, everyone was excited for me. Not excited. That's the wrong word. Supportive, kind, caring, reached out, made sure I was doing well, happy when I came back, covered me while I was gone. I had a lot of people reach out to me to say, "I didn't even know we could do this." I've helped multiple people engage with that process since.

The other one I'll share is that I was really out, for the first time in my life, out and proud as pansexual, and I was really vocal about that. I think I was the only person at the director-plus level who identified as bi or pansexual maybe in the history of the company. I don't know. That I know of, that anyone I talk to know of.

I was once sitting in the lobby, and when we were just returning to work, didn't go into the office once. This woman probably around 60 came up to me, and she said, "Are you, Lily Lamboy?" I said, "Yes." She was in tears and she said, "I had never met someone else. I'd never in my whole life had somebody at work or in my life just say, 'I'm a proud bisexual and this is who I am.' It's a really important part of my identity. It made me be able to come out to my family and consider dating and thank you." I'd never met this person before.

Jase: Wow.

Dr. Lamboy: I share that because it's so worth celebrating. I like to hope and think that for every person who takes this brave step, it opens up space. I think of that as creating some shade and the shade gets wider and wider, and we're not all just out baking in the sun together, not able to do anything about it. We're able to relax, be ourselves, move in, and out of the sun in the shade, and be comfortable. Thank you for bringing that up because it really does matter. That's Harvey Milk's whole thing, right? The social movements, and it all changes when people have a personal connection.

Jase: Awesome. Where can people find more about you, about OPEN and the Modern Family Institute, and to get all of these resources and links to these studies you've been talking about?

Dr. Lamboy: I am the director of the Open Workplaces Initiative at the Organisation for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, which is a fantastic advocacy organization operating out of the Bay Area but working globally. We have a website. Hopefully, you will link it here on the website. It's open-love.org/openworkplaces. Pretty easy to find. Pretty sure that if you just type in open love open workplaces, you'll probably find it on Google.

That has the toolkit, which we've been talking about on this episode, which goes through everything from some of the legal considerations to the data that we've been talking about, to some of the scripts for how you approach this, what to ask for. We'll be continuing to evolve that. If you have feedback on how it could be even better, we also appreciate hearing from you, and there's an easy way to do that on the website because the only reason we have this is to make this easier for you to open up at work. To the extent that it's helping people, that's great, and to the extent that it could be even better, we would love to know.

We're also starting to collect stories of people who have opened up at work. I think, to your point Jase, we don't know that much right now about how it goes, and I think we have more fear around it, and may potentially be warranted. There's a lot of anticipated stigma. There's a great sociologist at Harvard currently doing research on this, that I'll make sure that I send to you, showing that people really anticipate how scary this is going to be for good reason. This is what we want to test, and we have a hypothesis that actually once people do go through this process that, on balance, we hope and expect that people will have positive experiences and be able to move this work forward, but we don't know right now.

Part of what we'll be publicizing on the OPEN website, and this was a collaboration with the organization that I co-lead along with Heath Schechinger who's been on this podcast before, we have founded an organization called The Modern Family Institute, which really focuses on research and public education. Whereas OPEN focuses on legislation action advocacy, Modern Family really focuses on that research, that public education, and clinical training and practice that allows us to then figure out what we should do on the advocacy side.

We're doing a joint project surveying people about their experiences opening up in the workplace, so that maybe next time we talk, Jase, I'm here and I'm able to say, "Hey, actually, 100 people have done this since we last talked, and here's what they experienced, and here's what we learned about how to do this even better," instead of me just basing it off of what I've observed and heard, but we really truly don't know other than a few anecdotes right now.

That's one of the ways you can stay engaged, and potentially help is that, if you do or have opened up at work, we'd love to hear from you. We've created hopefully an easy way for you to tell us about your experience and be involved in the early groundwork of this social movement and this advocacy.

Jase: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, and thank you to you and everyone on the team for the OPEN Workplaces Initiative. It's such a cool resource that's been a long time coming and it's so cool that it's actually out there in the world and available for everybody.

Dr. Lamboy: Thank you. Thank you for using it, thank you for sharing your story, thank you for being brave and opening up, and I just want to end by celebrating you and your bravery. I'm really excited to hear how it continues to go and that shade you create for others in your path.

Jase: Awesome. Thank you.

Dr. Lamboy: Thank you.

Jase: We're so lucky to have had the opportunity to have Lily Lamboy on the show. Just to get to talk about this amazing subject in general, protections for consensual non-monogamy, and creating a culture of acceptance at workplaces. It is

this ongoing process, and we are still at the beginning of that process in so many ways. All of you out there, if you decide that it's really not safe for you to come out or you just truly don't want to take that risk, maybe you live in a really highly conservative area or work for a company that is more conservative, that's totally fine. Don't feel bad about that. You take care of yourself. That is your top priority and that's what you should be focused on. Maybe you'll never come out at work and you still will be very happy to work there and that's great as well.

For all of you out there that do start to open up, remember, get support, get a good community, take it slow. Coming out isn't something that you do all at once. For all of you out there who are maybe a head of a company or listening to this episode or thinking, "Hey, there's something to be said here about creating more inclusive language in our workbooks, in our workplaces," that's huge because I know there's so many incredible talents out there in the workforce and there will just continue to be more and more people who maybe are marginalized in some way or another or have an identity that is not normative.

I just know for myself, I recently interviewed someone who I found to be just so, so impressive and good for the job that I was hiring for. I was worried actually about my employer being bigoted when it came to their identities and that really worried me because I didn't want that to be their experience in the workplace that I was in. That's just something to put out there, that a lot of people leave their place of work because they don't feel included or they don't feel like they are safe there. You may be missing out on some really great opportunities for really great workers if you don't make your workplace more inclusive.

Emily: We also really recommend that you get community support. There's a couple of resources that we can direct you to for that. Open has a Discord server. Again, open-love.org is where you can find more information about that. They're a nonprofit that is working to advance the non-monogamy movement. Their Discord has a specific channel for people working on changing workplace policies and culture. Jase is in that Discord channel, so go to their site, click the Discord link at the top, or you can send them a message.