March 12, 2025, by Leah Sharpe

Authenticity in the workplace

By Hayley Williams, Students’ Union Employability Development Manager

Being your authentic self at work is important to feel comfortable and enhance your individual wellbeing, maximise your impact in your work and help others feel comfortable being their authentic selves. 

This year, we introduced our equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) focused ‘Authenticity at Work’ offer, designed to provide you with a platform to listen to professionals across various sectors. Our interviewees kindly agreed to talk openly about their lived experiences and share their personal career journeys. The questions we posed to our interviewees were submitted by UoN students in the weeks leading up to the interviews.  

Our aim was to address important topics including:

• Coming out at work
• Navigating micro-aggressions
• Allyship
• Promoting inclusive practices by engaging with professionals with experiences in these areas. 

This is the first in a series of blogs and focuses on Ashley and Sarissa’s lived experience of being trans in the workplace. 

During their interviews, Ashley and Sarissa discuss:

• Experiences of micro-aggressions and how to deal with these confidently
• How to navigate peers or colleagues who are struggling with pronouns
• How to bring your best authentic self to work, in a way which allows you to shine

Both Ashley and Sarissa also reflect on their own career development and career journeys so far and how their identities have shaped the way they approach work and their professional development. Both Ashley and Sarissa shared with us the barriers they have faced and how they have overcome these to bring their authentic selves to work each day. We asked that the views they shared with us were realistic, authentic and based on their lived experience. Not only did both interviewees offer us all of this, they also delivered passion, advice and inspirational confident stories. We gave both Ashley and Sarissa the opportunity to choose which questions submitted by students they wished to answer and both immediately responded to say they were happy to answer anything our students wanted to ask.

Student questions included:

• Their own journeys
• Experiences at work
• Explicit advice about how to navigate being trans in the workplace

During both interviews we asked for advice for students on how to be an effective ally to a community to which you may or may not belong and what every individual can be doing to promote an inclusive workplace which benefits everyone. We also asked how to constructively challenge or call out attitudes and behaviours that weren’t inclusive. Both interviewees provided practical hints and tips as well as reassurance and realistic reflections on their own experience.  

Whilst both interviews were unique and each brought a different perspective, we picked out two key themes that were clear from both Ashley and Sarissa:

• They felt able to be themselves
• They felt supported to champion inclusivity in their workplaces

We’re incredibly grateful to all of our participants for sharing their stories and contributing to our work in this space. If you need support regarding any of the topics discussed in this blog, please visit the university support page.

View Ashley and Sarissa’s biographies and full video interviews.

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn