Pride at Post Office

Post Office has been an active supporter for Pride events across the UK since 2018 and we plan to continue our support. Pride month is marked as part of the celebration of the increased visibility and equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world, as well as their allies. However, it is also still very much about standing up for those people in various parts of the world that do not have the same equal rights, dignity or respect that they should have - all for being who they were born to be. At Post Office, we want to make it known that no matter who you love or how you identify yourself, you are accepted and you can feel confident to come into our branches across the country and not be afraid of being discriminated.

Our support to the LGBTQ+ community is not exclusive to June, however. Throughout the other 11 months in the year, Post Office actively encourages diversity and adopts a culture of inclusion for all communities including LGBTQ+ people. We have several great policies to support our LGBTQ+ employees such as Transitioning Equality policy and Adoption policy which is purposely inclusive of lesbian and gay parents. We also have  policies which while they may not be exclusively for our LGBTQ+ colleagues, express an attitude of equity for all Post Office employees; these policies include Flexible Working, Dignity at Work and Equity, Diversity and inclusion policy.

Post Office has been attending Pride marches since 2018, and has been visible in London, Manchester, Bolton, Chesterfield and this year we are seeking to participate in Belfast Pride too. Additionally, throughout June we are offering all our branches the option to order and decorate their branch with Pride posters to support their local Pride events.

We celebrate important dates in the calendar such as LGBTQ+ history month, transgender awareness week and National Coming Out day with speakers, internal events and colleague-written articles. Post Office has a running series of events called ‘Let’s talk about...’, where colleagues tell their authentic stories about their lives. PRISM, our LGBTQ+ employee network, hosted a "Let’s talk about... LGBTQ+ awareness" session. At this session, over 100 colleagues across the business listened to colleagues speak about their coming out stories. Our LGBTQ+ rainbow lanyard have been recently updated to include the progress flag; these lanyards are popular amongst colleagues all around the business and available to any Post Office worker who wants to show their support of the LGBTQ+ community.

Of course, none of this would have been possible to achieve without the support of our PRISM network, the LGBTQ+ employee group, created in 2016 which is and has been sponsored by our Group General Counsel. PRISM support the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion team at Post Office to make it an inclusive place for anyone who is a part of the community. PRISM have also been externally recognised and shortlisted for ‘Outstanding LGBTQ+ Network’ for the British Diversity Awards.

Our goal towards Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is to create and maintain a workforce that represents the communities we serve - this includes race, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender, disability and culture - and for our customers to feel that they are respected whenever they walk into one our branches to use any of our many services. We strive to maintain this momentum with the Diversity & Inclusion efforts within our organisation and report all the great things we have been working on.