Calvin Campbell is the Regional Lead for the Prairies, and a Director on the Board of Pride at Work Canada - and he’s spreading warm fuzzies.

“The world’s changing around us, and, in most ways I believe, for the positive. A lot of that is due to the fact that a lot of people are coming together to build and change the world around us in a more inclusive, more diverse direction. The world is so bright when you get to live and learn and see these changes happening: [whether it’s] Premiere Redford at Pride last year, or Mayor Nenshi coming out to participate in Pride the year before... It’s not always 100% perfect, but through Pride at Work we’re creating the opportunity for dialogue.”

Optimistic words, one might say, but let’s look at his own example. Having dealt with narrow-minded, uninformed opinions when he began his current career, Calvin was delighted with the support and celebration that his work colleagues provided at his recent betrothal. And this professional acceptance of the lifestyles of ALL employees is the stated purpose of Pride at Work Canada and their annual ProPRIDE events:

“Calgary ProPRIDE is now in its fifth year, and will take place on Thursday, August 29th at the fabulous Hotel Arts. This year’s event is a not-to-be-missed professional networking opportunity sprinkled with tasty canapés, feel-good music, a cash bar, and hundreds of movers and shakers in Calgary’s LGBT and ally communities.”

Calvin expands: “We try to program a couple of events in each of the 4 cities we’re based in every year. It’s to give our partners a chance to get together and learn a bit more about how to create inclusive work environments for their LGBT employees: Where [the companies] have found success, where they’ve found obstacles, and what kinds of paths around those obstacles [they use].

“One of the results of these conversations is the first ever Canadian LGBT Employer Index. That gives our partners a chance to review their processes, what they do internally...to give them a bit of a measure so they can see where they might go next.

“We’ve been re-routing our resources, and we’re talking with some partners about having more programming events, but this event next week is purely a celebratory networking event.”

That would be Thursday, August 29th, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at Hotel Arts. There are details about ProPRIDE and other events on the Pride at Work website, occurring in any of their four centres (Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal or Toronto).

“Our focus has been primarily on the employer, because they’re the ones paying the partnership fees, so we need to make sure that they’re happy, and that we’re able to provide them with great service.”

Spoken like a business professional. Don’t be dismayed by the corporate focus, though. Started by LGBT professionals in executive positions, the simple fact is that business is happy to hear about ways to improve profits and quality of employee output. And guess what? Happy workers make for a better bottom line. That speaks loudly to businesses trying to keep up with social change.

Consider Alberta’s notoriously conservative industries: “LGBT Inclusion in the Energy Industry” was a seminar topic their sponsors took in this year, as well as the less obvious but still very important concerns of “Transgender Health Benefits”. With sponsors like (and participation from) IBM, Shell, CIBC and Deloitte, a fair bit of organizational energies are being applied to de-stigmatize LGBT topics in the workspace. Their willingness to respond to the survey that built the LGBT Business Index supports this.

“The three main goals are meant to provide additional value to our current [corporate] partners by establishing the leading benchmark tool for LGBT workplace inclusion.  It allows us to not only celebrate the achievements of leading Canadian employers and the work that they’re doing in workplace inclusion and diversity for LGBT employees, but also to raise the bar on workplace inclusion.  It also allows us to give them specific advice and expertise on the areas of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in their own environment.

“So things like ‘Do they have protectionism in place for their LGBT employees?’ ‘Do they provide transgender benefits?’... Our partners have a chance to fill out the survey (we provide), and we have a review panel that is familiar with this kind of index that will give them a grade.”

Pride At Work’s Proudly Me campaign addresses these realities on a more individual level: to “see themselves in it, and see that they can go to work, and be happy and fulfilled as an LGBT person. It’s not something that they have to leave at the door.”

Come and meet a bunch of optimists at ProPRIDE: I’m sure it will improve your day.