Checkout.com’s Tom Pattison Highlights 2022’s LGBTQ+ Inclusion Plans

Tom Pattison, Senior Employer Brand Specialist and Pride Community Lead at Checkout.com reflects on the company’s LGBTQ+ inclusion and diversity and inclusion (D&I) achievements over the past year. He also highlights plans for continued growth and success in 2022, and shares tips on how to grow an LGBTQ+ network.

What have been your main achievements in 2021 in terms of D&I strategy, diverse recruitment, or LGBTQ+ network activities? 

Looking back, 2021 was the most jam-packed year the Pride Community at Checkout.com has ever had. Some highlights include opening a new virtual home for the community on Slack, running a series of virtual and in-person socials, and launching an extensive program of activities for Pride Month back in June. 

During Pride month, we hosted a Paint with Pride virtual creative session, ran an inclusion-focused LinkedIn Live panel discussion, and the month culminated in a Drag Extravaganza hosted by one of our very own colleagues.

We were also given the opportunity to host a segment during June’s All Company Meeting to share a little bit more about the significance of Pride month with the entire company, which resulted in a massive spike of new members for the community. 

What have you planned for this year? 

We’re really excited to be starting the year by welcoming two new team members into the Pride Community’s leadership team. We can’t wait to hear what ideas they have for 2022 and beyond. 

We’re currently busy planning for the year ahead, but what’s confirmed for sure is that we’ll be bringing our global network more brilliant events, and continue to facilitate cultural conversations and knowledge sharing in our community Slack channel. 

We're working with Checkout.com's senior leadership team to introduce dedicated community sponsors, which we're really excited about. Hopefully our sponsor will be a great asset in raising the profile of our initiatives and pushing our reach even further out into the business.  

What was your proudest moment of 2021?

I think it has to be the LinkedIn Live panel event we ran in partnership with Skyscanner and Hired.com during Pride Month. The topic was “How to improve inclusivity in the workplace” and the panel consisted of community leaders and our own VP of Global Strategic Solutions and D&I Lead. 

We were blown away by the size of the live audience, and the amount of people who have watched the recording on catch up. It was also just so useful to talk and share ideas on the topic with other companies. There’s always so much we can learn from one another.

What do you anticipate being your biggest challenge this year? 

I predict that similarly to 2020 and 2021, we’ll be hosting quite a few of our events virtually this year; both to account for the pandemic and to ensure that we are including as many members of our global community as possible. 

I think it’s safe to say quite a lot of us are experiencing “Zoom fatigue” after so many hours spent on video calls, so we’ll need to think of more innovative ways to keep our members engaged with these sessions. 

With every update, Zoom is getting better at helping facilitate engaging sessions with the help of things like their breakout rooms and whiteboard features, so we’ll keep making the most of what’s available whilst also pulling out other tech tools like Kahoot! and Miro. 

We’ll also try and create blended virtual and physical experiences to give us the opportunity to meet in person in London when possible, whilst making sure we stay connected to everyone globally. 

What is the one thing you would like your organization to do this year to improve LGBTQ+ inclusion?

I’d love for us to continue increasing the rate of hiring amazing members of the LGBTQ+ community! Hopefully our partnership with myGwork will help more job seekers find out more about what we do, our culture and the many opportunities we have available. But our partnership alone won’t remove all barriers. That’s why in parallel, we’ll keep on working on making our recruitment more inclusive through internal education and updating processes.

What are your top tips for an LGBTQ+ network wanting to grow this year?

We are on a constant learning journey, but here are a few things I’ve found important during my time helping lead the Pride Community: 

• Create a task force: Don’t try and do everything by yourself. Enlist the support of brilliant and passionate people to help you.
• Start small and grow: You don’t have to have a five-year plan from the beginning to launch a community.
• Don’t let the fear of doing things wrong stop you from trying: Colleagues will be happy that you’re creating spaces for them and can provide feedback. 
• Ask for help from other organizations: From my experience it’s a very generous community who are more than happy to share advice, tips and best practices.