Pink Shirt Day: Everyone should feel safe and comfortable at McKay.

In case you aren’t familiar, Pink Shirt Day is an annual event that takes place in May and focuses on putting an end to bullying. It was started by two students in Canada who were horrified by the bullying they saw happening at their school when a new student was homophobically harassed for wearing pink – and they wanted to do something about it.

Since then, it’s grown into an international movement that encourages people everywhere to take a stand against bullying and discrimination in whatever form it may take.

For McKay, Pink Shirt Day reinforces our desire to continuously look for ways to make our workplace a more inclusive and welcoming place, so this morning, while our team proudly wore their pink shirts, we took some time to reflect and re-familiarise ourselves with our company’s values and stance on bullying, harassment, and discrimination within our workplace.

Although we acknowledge that we cannot control bullying without knowledge of it, we hope that by joining the Pink Shirt Day movement each year, we can prompt conversations that encourage our people to Kōrero Mai, Kōrero Atu (Speak up, Speak out).

For Lindsay Faithfull, McKay Managing Director, “Pink Shirt Day is an important to McKay because it is a reminder of the fact, we have to live our values and that means respecting each other”.

This is echoed by People and Culture General Manager, Stuart McDonald, who took time this morning to reinforce McKay’s Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Policy by addressing some of the most frequently asked questions surrounding workplace bullying.

Stuart wanted to remind all McKay staff that they deserve to “enjoy coming to work at McKay and to want to work in an environment where they feel supported, where they feel safe, and where they can go home at night not being worried about the workplace”.

If you’re interested in hearing more about why Pink Shirt Day is important to McKay, you can listen to Lindsay Faithfull below.