Express your Pride with Webex

A celebration of Pride

June 1st marks the start of Pride Month for the LGBTQ community. This is a celebration of its members and the impact they have had throughout history. Pride not only brings together the LGBTQ community and its supporters but also aims to change public attitudes and inspire acceptance of self, which is especially important for new generations as they embrace their identities.

Showing Pride in your workplace

As we move into a new era of hybrid work and organizations gain access to a more diverse pool of talent from various locations and time zones, and with different abilities and skills, it is imperative that the collaboration tools they use help create a welcoming and inclusive culture.

Building connections and relationships will only be effective if your employees are given the opportunity to express themselves without fear or prejudice. Over the past year, Webex has made numerous enhancements to ensure everyone has a collaboration solution that enables them to express their authentic self. Let’s take a look at a few things we’ve been working on.

Set your Pronouns *Coming Soon*

Coming soon, users can set their pronouns in their profile in the Webex App. Adding your pronouns helps to create an inclusive workplace while normalizing the fact that you cannot assume how someone identifies their gender based on appearance. Proper gender identification is important in our everyday interactions—it helps build better working relationships and takes the guessing out of how your colleagues wish to be addressed. Using a person’s pronouns is a quick and effortless way to show respect.

To add your pronouns, head to the edit profile section under the avatar menu and select an option from the dropdown list or set custom ones. Once added, the pronouns will populate in multiple places throughout the app, including the contact card, the avatar menu, next to a person’s name in a 1:1 space, and in the profile tab. Note: Your admin will need to enable this feature for your organization.

Update your custom Status

Your Webex App status is great for letting people know when you are at lunch, traveling, or heads down in a project. For June, you can also use your status to highlight your pride. Share daily notes on why you are proud, share your LGBTQ idols, or simply add your favorite pride emojis.

Brighten your meetings with virtual backgrounds

Virtual backgrounds are a great way to hide background distractions during our meetings. For the entire month of June, why not use virtual backgrounds to showcase your pride? Upload your favorite images as virtual backgrounds and share your pride at every meeting.

Pride reactions *Webex internal only*

Pride-themed emoji reactions will be released in the June build for our Cisco user base! Two pride-themed reactions will be replacing the existing Celebrate and Love reactions—a rainbow for Celebrate in pride flag colors and a heart for Love in trans/bi flag colors. This will be supported in both messaging and meeting reactions on the desktop apps and on devices.

As we celebrate Pride Month and the incredible progress our community has achieved, we must also ensure that each day we strive to create workplaces and tools that empower people to openly and securely express themselves.

Recognizing Pride Month at Cisco

Cisco’s mission is to power an inclusive future for all. Pride & Allies, the Inclusive Community for LGBTQ+ folks and allies at our company, recognizes June 2022 with events and give-back activities throughout the month. If you are a Cisco employee, you can find our events listed on our SharePoint page and the CEC. For everyone else, please follow our social channels on LinkedIn and Instagram to learn more!