Agnieszka Michalska wins the ABB 2024 LGBTQ+ Ally of the Year award

Agnieszka Michalska from ABB Business Services has been offered a special tribute in honor of her staunch allyship towards the LGBTQ+ community. ABB reports the details:

This year's Pride Month was bursting at the seams with initiatives, themes and formats. It showed how much can be accomplished through the commitment of many people and cooperation. A special tribute goes to Agnieszka Michalska from ABB Business Services, for her determination to make this topic a big deal in our organization. The Group also recognized this, and Aga can enjoy the title of LGBTQ+ Ally of the Year.

In June, we again focused our efforts on supporting the LGBTQ+ community. Last year we focused on learning the basics: definitions about LGBTQ+, unconscious biases, and building awareness around the need for allyship. Now we could move on to the details.

How to support?

We looked for topics that can help us be a good ally to the LGBTQ+ community, or really any community: team, family members, friends. We chose inclusive language, or more broadly, empathetic communication, which puts a good understanding with our interlocutor first: tuning in to them, seeking understanding and finally building rapport as a starting point for cooperation or friendship. We were guided through the topic by Polish philologist and linguist, Maciej Makselon: in a lecture and in a series of columns to which you can return (links below). The topic was complemented by the Diversity Hub organization with a lecture in English.

This year, our grassroots employee group Poland Encompass Pride came to the fore strongly, and was basically reconstituted with new leaders who made themselves known to us in personal meetings. Over the course of Pride Month, more than 20 new members joined the group, bringing its membership past the 100 mark.

What else was going on in June?

We had a webinar on LGBTQ+ rights in Poland and at ABB, a meeting on coming out, Pride Cinema - a Krakow movie night with repertoire selected by the Poland Encompass Pride group, and a series of interviews with people working at ABB “From Poland with Pride”. We also offered you a sticker promoting linguistic empathy (500 pieces are already sticking somewhere), and rainbow goodies in Krakow.

We also scored talks at the so-called high level. As ABB, we are a partner of Open for Business - a coalition of companies working for the LGBTQ+ community. That's why our voice was also heard at this year's Open for Business conference in Warsaw. Patryk Madaj, our national HR director, represented ABB on the panel “Inclusive Business Driving an Inclusive Society.” The theme of the conference was the economic cost of discrimination against the LGBT+ community in Poland.

Ally of the Year

It took a lot of heads and hands to make so much happen. For tirelessly promoting a culture of non-exclusion and allyship - not just during Pride Month, but every day - the ABB Group honored Agnieszka Michalska, an employee development manager from ABB Business Services in Krakow, Poland. Aga received the 2024 LGBTQ+ Ally of the Year award. The award committee recognized Agnieszka's role in the reactivation and operation of the Poland Encompass Pride group and her work in creating a welcoming space for the LGBTQ+ community at ABB over the past three years.

Congratulations to Agnieszka and to each of you who contributed to this year's June initiatives - both as an organizer and as a participant.