Celebrating Pride at Volue: A Sense of Belonging

Taking pride in who you are  

I think that most of life, when you really think about it, is about fitting in. All of us at one time or another have ‘followed the script’: the career path, the life choices or the way we present ourselves at work. All too often, this is because it’s easier. Pride is one of the very few moments in the year that pushes back against all of that. To me, it says: you don't have to shrink yourself. You don't have to be the version of you that makes other people comfortable. 

I went to my first Pride parade in Oslo a few years ago, not entirely sure what to expect. I think I assumed it would feel like something that wasn't quite meant for me. What I actually found was entirely different.  

I saw families. Grandparents. Teenagers with their parents. People of every age and background, just being there in celebration. Together. That image has stayed with me. It was ordinary people, out in the street, saying that who you are deserves to be celebrated. The emotion I felt watching that was something I didn't entirely anticipate. It also made me think about the people who weren't there. The ones for whom showing up still carries a cost. 

When I think about what inclusion actually means, I mean it broadly. Sexual orientation and gender identity, yes, but also neurodiversity, different life experiences, people who have taken unconventional paths. I count myself in that last group. I've made choices that don't follow the expected pattern, and I know how it feels to look around and not quite see yourself reflected back.

Building an inclusive workplace  

The reason to build a genuinely inclusive workplace isn't primarily strategic, though of course the strategic case is real. It's because people spend a significant portion of their lives at work, and they deserve to spend that time without pretending to be someone they're not. If we only care about inclusion when it's convenient, we'll stop caring the moment it becomes inconvenient.

I often tell people about this example. Last year we gave out Pride lanyards across our offices. Not long after, I got a message from someone asking why colleagues in another location hadn't received theirs yet. 

I've thought about that message a lot. It wasn't a complaint. There was no frustration in it, just a quiet kind of concern. It mattered to this person that everyone had one. Not as a gesture, but as a signal. Someone, somewhere, was sitting at their desk wondering whether they'd been forgotten. And someone else noticed and said something. 

The delay was logistical, nothing more. But the message told me something about our culture that I found genuinely encouraging. People were paying attention. They were holding us to our own values — not loudly, not as a criticism, just as a reminder.  

Celebrating Pride at Volue  

We will do several things to celebrate Pride this month, from events, to internal and external visibility. That's worthwhile. But none of it means much if it isn't connected to how we operate the rest of the year. Inclusion lives in hiring decisions. In whether a meeting makes space for the quieter voice. In whether someone feels safe raising a difficult topic. It lives in the small, yet challenging, moments that many of us experience each and every day.  

Pride month, for me, is a chance to be more open about the values we should be living anyway. A moment to recognise the people for whom visibility still matters enormously. Most of all, as a reminder that the world is genuinely better when people can be themselves in it.