Lean on me when you’re not out: interactive effects of coworker support and concealment on transgender employees’ commitment and effort

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2021-0268
• Published date: 04 August 2022
• Date: 04 August 2022
• Pages: 1-17
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion
• Author: Caren Goldberg,Val Willham

Lean on me when you’re not out:

interactive effects of coworker

support and concealment on

transgender employees’

commitment and effort

Caren Goldberg

Caren Goldberg, Ph.D., LLC, Vienna, Virginia, USA and

Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain, and

Val Willham

Caren Goldberg, Ph.D., LLC, Vienna, Virginia, USA

Abstract

Purpose –Based on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti et al., 2001), the authors posited that

concealment of one’s transgender identity (a demand) would be negatively associated with work effort and

commitment and that coworker support (a resource) would be positively related with those outcomes. In

addition, the authors tested whether coworker support buffered the demand of maintaining secrecy as

predicted by the JD-R model.

Design/methodology/approach–Relying on survey data from 89 transgender employees, the authors used

Hayes’Process Model 1 to test the model.

Findings –Concealment was significantly related to both organizational commitment and work effort, but

coworker support had no direct effect on either outcome. However, coworker support interacted with

concealment, suchthat there were significant coworker support effects among trans employees who were out to

none or some of their coworkers, but no significant effect among those who were out to all of their coworkers.

Originality/value –While prior studies have examined the importance of coworker support and outness, the

authors add to the literature by examining the joint effect of these variables on transgender employees’work

experiences. In addition, as prior research has been slow to examine behavioral work outcomes, the authors

expand the criterion space by examining the simple and joint effects of outness and support on a previously

ignored variable, work effort.

Keywords Transgender employees, Diversity, Coworker support, Concealment, Stigma

Paper type Research paper

While organizational researchers have been studying the experiences of LGBT employees for

more than two decades (see Chrobot-Mason et al., 2001;Day and Schoenrade, 1997;Ragins

and Cornwell, 2001 for early examples of empirical studies of LGBT employees), until fairly

recently, this research has been limited to examinations of gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers.

Although transgender employees fall under this umbrella, recent authors have noted that

organizations rarely address issues that are specific to transgender employees (Fletcher and

Marvell, 2022;K€

ollen, 2016). In addition, for employees themselves, the concept of identity

management is quite different for transgender individuals than it is for sexual minorities.

Rosopa et al. (2020) note that we often refer to, “LGBT-related workplace issues,”as a

monolithic concern because of the overlap in barriers faced by sexual orientation minorities

and transgender minorities; h owever, there are important dist inctions in the work

experiences of gay and lesbian employees versus transgender employees (K€

ollen, 2016).

First, general attitudes toward transgender individuals are often much more hostile than

Transgender

concealment

and support

1

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 12 October 2021

Revised 24 February 2022

28 May 2022

Accepted 9 June 2022

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 1, 2023

pp. 1-17

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-10-2021-0268

those toward gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals (Beauregard et al., 2018). Second, unlike

sexual orientation, trans identities are not necessarily concealable, socially invisible identities

(Sawyer et al., 2016). While a transgender person’s physical characteristics may prompt them

to feel a need to disclose before and/or during their transition (Budge et al., 2010), employees

who possess physical features that would signal the gender they identify as (as opposed to

the gender they were assigned at birth), would have little reason to disclose. Thus, while

research on any stigmatized and/or hidden identity (including LGB employees) may inform

research on transgender individuals, secrecy carries a somewhat unique meaning to

transgender employees than it does to LGB employees. Our study adds to the small, but

growing, body of work on the relationship between transgender employees’concealment and

their workplace experiences.

In recognition of the fact that one’s interest in disclosure of their transgender status (and

its antecedents) is to some degree, tied to anticipation of a change in the gender others

perceive them to be, in the current study, we limit our focus to transgender employees who

have not completed a physiological transition, as post-transition individuals have no need to

change how they are perceived and thus have different factors influencing disclosure. For the

purposes of our study, a physiological transition is considered “complete”when an individual

feels that they consistently “pass”(i.e. are perceived as a cisgender member of the gender they

identify as), though many individuals continue to undergo physiological transitions (e.g.

hormone replacement therapy) after this point or for their entire lives. Consistent with the

broader research on stigmatized identities and secrecy (Ragins, 2008;Slepian, 2021) and with

prior research on transgender employees (Law et al., 2011), there are important differences in

outcomes for employees choose to disclose to all, some, or none of their coworkers that they

are transgender.

In one of the first studies of transgender employees’workplace experiences, Dietert and

Dentice (2009) reported that the two most prevalent themes reported by interviewees were

coming out in the workplace and lack of support from others in the organization. Since then, a

number of empirical studies have examined the link between outness and support. These

studies have included both trans-specific (c.f., Cancela et al., 2022;Law et al., 2011;

Thoroughgood et al., 2020) and general (c.f., Huffman et al., 2021;Wessell, 2017) measures of

support. Further, research on transgender employees has also examined the role of support

from different sources –i.e. supervisors, coworkers, and the organization, as a whole. While

each of these sources has been associated with employees’work experiences, Ruggs et al.

(2015) found that coworker support was the strongest predictor of trans employees’

perceptions of discrimination. Consistent with this finding, Webster et al.’s (2018) meta-

analysis of LBGT studies reported that supportive workplace relationships (i.e. coworker

support) was the strongest predictor of work attitudes. In keeping with this work, our paper

centers on coworker support.

The focus on concealment and support is consistent with the job demands-resource (JD-R)

model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007;Demerouti et al., 2001), which holds that job-related

mental, emotional, and physical demands on employees result in job strain and that job-

related resources such as support, serve both to decrease strain and to buffer the negative

effects of job demands. Meta-analyses have provided an abundance of evidence for the

negative effects of job demands and the positive effects of job resources on employee well-

being (Lesener et al., 2019;Mazzetti et al., 2021).

Although concealment and support have both been linked to work attitude variables such

as job satisfaction and commitment (Cancela et al., 2022;Law et al., 2011;Martinez et al., 2017),

we are not aware of any study that has examined the interactive effect of these variables on

work attitudes. Given the sizeable body of research on the JD-R model, which suggests that

job resources buffer the negative effects of job demands (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007;

EDI

42,1

2