Microsoft France has committed to promoting diversity and inclusion by pledging to adhere to the L’Autre Cercle (Outer Circle) Charter – a promise to combat discrimination based on sex, lifestyles, sexual orientation, or gender identity, while ensuring full respect for different sexual orientations in the workplace.
Every member of Microsoft France’s Board of Directors has signed up to the charter, committing to advance issues relating to diversity and to LGBT+ inclusion. This is the first time in France that the entire management team of a company has signed the Other Circle Charter, both individually and collectively.
The signed pledge (right) includes:
- Creating an inclusive environment for LGBT+ employees within Microsoft
- Ensuring equal rights and treatment for all employees regardless of their sexual orientation and sexual or gender identity
- Supporting employees who are victims of discriminatory words or acts
- Sharing with its customers and partners the best practices and LGBT+ commitments to help progress the professional environment in France.
L’Autre Cercle
L’Autre Cercle is one of the leading French national homosexual voluntary associations. Its members are professional men and women working in the public and private sectors or in the liberal professions. All have not only a strong sense of social responsibility but are united in a will to create a mutually supportive and amicable network of men and women holding positions of responsibility in the private and public sectors.
Originally founded in 1998, l’Autre Cercle adopted its current structure in 2002 when it became a national Federation of decentralised regional associations. The reason for this decentralised structure was to strengthen l’Autre Cercle’s presence in the provinces and to facilitate the development of local action plans. L’Autre Cercle’s mission is to combat discrimination based on sex, lifestyles, sexual orientation, or gender identity and more specifically to gain full respect for different sexual orientations in the workplace.
The association’s members have the capacity to take action in favour of the establishment of a social and professional climate into which every person, man or woman alike, can fit and achieve personal fulfillment, Based on the output of its working groups, l’Autre Cercle has chosen an innovative form of activism consisting of awareness-raising initiatives focussed on business and other organizations and on partnerships, training programmes and consultancy work aimed at accompanying and encouraging positive evolution in the workplace
