The Pride community at FreeAgent: support, allyship, and action

Meg Booth is one of FreeAgent’s Senior Content Editors and a member of our Pride group. To celebrate Pride month, she spoke to her fellow Pride members to share what the community means to them.

Before I came to FreeAgent, I lived and worked as a teacher in mainland China for five years. As a pansexual person with she/they pronouns, it was easier for me to simply hide parts of myself than try to explain them in a place where same-sex marriage and nonbinary genders aren’t legally recognised. I trusted my colleagues and friends, but was afraid of what might happen if any of the parents found out.

I knew moving to Scotland would be a positive change. But I wasn’t prepared for the liberation I found working at an accountancy app in windy Edinburgh, of all places. I’ve never felt as at home in a company as I do at FreeAgent.

I’ve only been here for two years, but in that time, I’ve become increasingly involved with the FreeAgent Pride community. I’m now a member of the organising group. I’ve never even been able to be out at work before, so being able to say loudly and proudly who I truly am has made a huge difference to the confidence I feel in the office and our remote digital spaces.

Comfort in community

The Pride group is a great source of comfort and inspiration. I’ve turned to them in times of political unrest that have seen the LGBTQIA+ community under attack around the world. We come together for a vent, or ideas about how to deal with the emotions that inevitably follow us into working hours.

It isn’t always easy to identify as queer, and I’ve been subject to misunderstanding and biases outside work, so it’s always a relief to come into the office, or log on, and immediately access a network of incredible people who understand and empathise. Almost a quarter of FreeAgent’s employees are members of the #Pride slack channel - comprising both people who identify as part of the community and allies.

Embracing identity

Simon Fish is a Senior Software Engineer at FreeAgent and a fellow member of the Pride organising group. They’ve worked here for over three years now. In that time, they’ve gone from working remotely in England to making the move up to Edinburgh. 

Simon is nonbinary, meaning they don’t identify as either male or female, i.e. outside the societal gender binary. “I don’t tend to signal that in my aesthetic choices, so I’m often assumed to identify as male until I mention otherwise. I’ve really appreciated that the culture here at FreeAgent has allowed me to embrace my identity and that others respect it too,” they say.

“There’s a real sense of sanctuary in knowing that I won’t be confronted with false assumptions about my gender identity each day, and that there is a network of people who I can lean on here.” 

Being able to identify as their true self at FreeAgent has had an impact on Simon’s life outside work as well: “It’s allowing me to build the confidence to come out about it to others outside of the workplace in my own time.”

A safe space

While many of our community members are out publicly, not all of us feel able or comfortable to be. Although there have been huge strides of progress for rights and awareness for people in our community, there is still a lot of work to be done worldwide to ensure that everyone can safely be themselves.

With that in mind, it’s wonderful to know there are people at FreeAgent who can be out at work, even if they can’t be in the wider world. 

Jean Smith [not their real name] isn’t out as nonbinary in the outside world, so they’ve asked us to use a pseudonym for this article. But they do feel safe to express their identity at FreeAgent. It’s partly thanks to a slew of allies. These people don’t necessarily identify with any of the letters represented in LGBTQIA+, but they feel connected to the community through their care and actions in support of friends and colleagues. Jean says they’re proud “this is a safe space where allies take action without being prompted, and ask how they can help”.

Welcoming to all

The Pride community, both within and outside FreeAgent, is made up of a wide range of people. We have mothers and caregivers, people from junior roles all the way up to some of the most senior, and a vast range of ages and backgrounds. We know that identifying as queer doesn’t always mean you look a certain way, we’re all just normal people trying to live our normal lives. “By normalising and diversifying the nature of queerness, more people feel they have the right to access this network,” says Jean.

It’s also healthy for people to feel their identity is more than just the portion of it that identifies as LGBTQIA+. It’s important for FreeAgent to be a place “where a wide variety of people have access to a queer support network, led by peers. Normally at work, you’d encounter quite a narrow definition of what queer looks like and who fits within the umbrella of that term, that means things tend to be tailored to those people rather than the true diverse community that identifies as queer,” says Jean. 

Fundraising for purpose

David Whitby - one of our Software Engineering Managers and a key member of the Pride organising group - has been at FreeAgent for five and a half years now. “FreeAgent is the first company I worked for where I didn’t feel the need to hide any of my personal life,” he says. “I was already in a committed relationship with my partner Phil, and conversations about what I was up to outside of work were just the same as everybody else - my partner just happened to be another man.”

David played a vital role in the Pride group’s recent renaissance, encouraging fundraising efforts, campaigning and events.

“When I joined FreeAgent, the Pride group had a pretty active channel for chat, but it didn’t really do much other than that,” he says. “A couple of years back, I put together a questionnaire about what we wanted to get from the Pride group, which led to us starting more regular meet ups and organising activities throughout the year”.

Since the group got a shake-up from David, we’ve raised awareness about the history of Pride through company-wide presentations and posters. This year the group is generating internal awareness on how people who don’t identify with the community can support their colleagues through actions and conversations - inside and outside work. 

We also fundraise internally for our chosen charity. This year, we’ve chosen Scottish Trans, a charity supporting a minority group in a time of great need. So far we have a bakesale and a dress-up day planned for the month of June in aid of the charity. We’re looking ahead to see what else we can do during the rest of the year.

David says: “It’s great to see the group more active and planning things like company-wide talks, fundraising, comms and more. We’re focused on Pride month at the moment, but have plans for other longer-lasting actions too - so stay tuned for those!” 

Although Pride month is an opportunity for celebration each year, it’s important to remember that Pride started as a riot. There is still work to be done. Ensuring our community feels safe and heard is an active and constant decision. We’re more committed than ever to making Pride a part of FreeAgent year-round, because queer people aren’t queer for just one month of the year. And we are here to stay.