Supporting Pride in our communities

Every year, we celebrate Pride through various local and regional initiatives that reinforce our global commitment to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace and in our communities.

Celebrating Pride week as Helsinki Pride’s partner

This year, for the first time, we partnered with Helsinki Pride, Finland’s largest human rights celebration held June 28 to July 4. As an official partner, we are sponsoring the organization’s work for LGBTQ+* rights throughout the year and participating in “Working with Pride,” a network of ally organizations that collaborate, share and learn from each other to support the LGBTQ+ community.

“As a major employer and supplier in the IT and business consulting services sector, we have a significant responsibility not only to guarantee a non-discriminatory working environment for our professionals, but also to ensure that the services we develop do not exclude anybody,” shares Leena-Mari Lähteenmaa, President of CGI’s Finland, Poland and Baltics operations.

As part of our collaboration with Helsinki Pride, our professionals in Finland also received DE&I training.

CGI on Air with Pride

Launched in April 2020, CGI on Air is an interactive internet radio show created to engage our professionals in Finland as they transitioned to remote work. As part of Helsinki Pride week, we organized a special four-hour show, CGI on Air with Pride. Open to everyone, the show focused on diversity in the IT industry and included conversations with CGI executives and professionals, government officials, journalists and DE&I experts. Some of the topics discussed included:
 

• Importance of Pride Week, milestones and fostering a diverse and inclusive culture in the workplace
• Role of service design and diverse teams in creating accessible digital services
• Minority stress, its causes and how everyone can contribute to a safe and comfortable workplace

The radio show included live music performances.

For the LGBTQ+ community, Pride Month is an opportunity to celebrate being who you are and loving who you love. As a company, we also see this as an opportunity to foster an open dialogue on the continuous improvements we can make to support our LGBTQ+ workforce every day of the year.

*Refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning and other identities that form the LGBTQ+ community. "+" refers to all of the gender identities and sexual orientations that are not specifically covered by the acronym. An example is Two-Spirited, which is a pan-Indigenous identity.