Championing visible trans allyship within leadership roles

We caught up with Christian Horn, who talked about his role as a leader and being an active Trans ally in RS Group.

Please introduce yourself and the role within the organisation.

I'm Christian Horn. I've been with RS for over three and a half years and my current role is Chief of Product and Supply Chain. I have group-wide accountability for our capabilities in the areas around product and supply management, supply chain, our RS Pro product line and parts of pricing.

Are there visible trans role models within your organisation and how has that visibility changed in recent years?

We have a few trans colleagues in the business, and I am pleased to say that one of them reports directly to me. When I joined the organisation, she had just come out as trans and had already been visibly present in the trans community and was playing that role both within and outside RS. I think what I've seen happening since then, certainly within the organisation overall is our focus on understanding and communicating the importance of diversity and inclusion, an increased awareness of the unique lived experiences of trans individuals. I've seen a stronger appreciation for that within RS.

So how do you as a person support your trans employees?

For me as a leader, it's based in the understanding that you have to look at people as people and when you engage with them, I am trying to maximize their contributions and give them fulfilment in their roles, and it all starts with understanding who they are as an individual and what their unique circumstances are.

We all know that being trans, whether visibly or not, brings its unique challenges, because of the amount of misunderstanding, hate crimes and, the overall hate they're being exposed to in person and online. There is a huge lack of understanding and bigotry, frankly, that just increases the importance of understanding of being an ally whilst having appreciation of how that impacts them as an individual.

How does the organisation go about supporting trans employees?

I believe RS is an employer that wants to ensure people can bring their true selves to work in any respect and not be judged or disadvantaged as a result of that. We celebrate differences and diversity and try to explain where it's not sufficiently clear, that diversity, embracing diversity and inclusion is not just done for basic humanity, it's actually good for better business outcomes because diverse teams make better decisions and perform better.

We have our LGBTQIA+ employee resource group , SPECTRUM, and we encourage our people to get involved and speak and engage in the ERG. As a leadership team, we encourage our people to tell us what we need to do differently as a business, to ensure that people come to work as their true selves and that we foster this concept of diversity and inclusion.

We also have a number of employee benefits where we support colleagues in their personal and physical and mental well-being to ensure that they feel supported outside of work, this also includes certain medical support and health care support that is specific to the trans community.

What is your advice for senior leaders to make organisations to be more trans inclusive?

As leaders we need to appreciate that having teams that represent the full spectrum of society is good for business, it's good for better decision making. Take the time to understand the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Secondly, you need to realise that people perform at their best when they feel that their unique capabilities and lived experiences are not being ignored but taken into account and that they can come to work as their true selves because that creates fulfilment in what they do and is good for employee engagement.

Finally, I would say that you need to identify where you've got wrong beliefs, stigmas, deeply rooted misbeliefs, particularly around the trans community, because there is so much bigotry and hate out there. We just need to realise a how it impacts the trans community as they go through life how it might impact their well-being at work. As businesses leaders we have an obligation to combat these false narratives