myGwork Stories #11 - South Africa: 'Diversity and Positivity at Work'

Written by Rudolf Ludick

Edited By Marru Oanes

I am proudly from South Africa, the little tail of Africa. In my country, the general attitude towards LGBT is positive. I myself had little negative response from all my life’s experience. I would say negative responses and unwanted incidents are most likely to occur in areas where mind-sets are narrow, where there is lack of exposure to the “non-norm”.

I never had to come out and I have been fortunate enough to skip that rite of passage. I have known from a very young age that I was different and I had no barriers to hide behind. I was lucky enough to grow up in an age where the World Wide Web was freely accessible and so I had a lot of information about myself and how to identify and where to find similar people like me when I was most insecure, scared or unsure.

I work in administration and have been doing it for about 3 to 4 years now. I am generally a reserved person and I always try to separate my personal life from work. I never had to come out but if asked, I would lay it out on the table. I never had to hide my sexuality in the work place but I also never painted the walls with it. I guess I have been thus far spared the anxiety attacks of having to deal with coming out at work.

Diversity at Work

The company that I work for is still only a small group although there is already a lot of diversity in effect. Diversity and Inclusion policies are important to businesses as it brings out positivity in all areas. It tells you a lot about the people you will be working for and how your comfort level will be working for a company.

More importantly, businesses will lose out on valuable opportunities if they decide to disregard such policies. Not only that they will be subjected to a narrow focused vision but to be able to grow, innovation will be something that businesses would be looking for and one way to get it is by having a diverse set-up in the offices to bring out the best different aspect of their employees.

Rudolf Ludick, South African professional, has been working in administration for almost 4 years.

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This article is part of myGwork Stories: a series of articles about being LGBT in the workplace in different countries, cultures and industries.