FEATURE
MS: No, I think there’s many more, and I think it’s about people feeling comfortable enough to come forward. This is a terrible analogy on my part, but I think it’s like the man on the moon – somebody needs to take that first step, and people need to think “OK, that’s all right”. Hopefully in five years time, we won’t even need to be having this conversation, because more and more people will accept that it is perfectly normal, but I think the FM industry has this historical stereotype of ‘manning up’ and being ‘hard’ and that kind of thing. Of course, we know that this is no longer true, but I think it’s about showing that people can be in the FM industry, be out and be gay, and be successful.
TCI: So do you think there is a change in attitudes and conceptions throughout the FM industry towards the LGBT community?
MS: Yes, I think it is changing. I look at my own company and some of the companies that we work with, and certainly the mix of hard and soft services, the kind of skills that people are bringing, the commercial skills, the people skills – our philosophy as an organisation, for instance, is ‘quality of life’ – people are thinking very differently about things.
And I think the people that work in the industry are changing as well. As more younger people come in, they will bring a different view, and the people who are there that are a bit older, they’re now at a different stage in their lives and they bring different things, so I think that kind of impression that was there is changing.
I see it in our competitors too; they say that the ‘people’ part of the business is very important. The FM industry is really all around people – and if you want to work with people, let’s face it, people have changed enormously and people’s expectations are radically different. So what they expect from a workplace or an employer and how they’re going to live their lives is completely different.
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Hopefully in five years time, we won’t even need to be having this conversation, because more and more people will accept that it is perfectly normal.
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