Before I went to Berlin, I conducted a workshop in Seattle, along with Robyn Ochs, for the Northwest Diversity Learning Series of Diversitycentral.com, on "Including and Engaging People who are Transgender and Bisexual in the Workplace." There were about 100 attendees from Human Resources departments of companies in the Northwest, including Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Nordstrom's, and Weyerhauser, among others.
As part of the workshop, we conducted a survey of participants regarding their beliefs about transgender and bisexual employees prior to the start of the session. The survey showed that, as expected, while most participants understood a lot about transgender and bisexual identity, a significant number had a lot of misconceptions. We also recorded the questions asked by participants during the session and developed a list of answers for those questions.
These are all available on the diversitycentral.com website. Also available there are a session summary, information on transgender statistics, terminology, bibliography and take-away points.
I would highly recommend that people in HR who are serious about diversity consider attending the Northwest Diversity Learning Series.
