Dive Brief:

• Six years ago an employee at Symantec, the anti-virus software maker, told his manager that he was coming out as transgender.
• The employee, Cass Averill, and the manager, Mike Barton, found themselves in the awkward position of making up a corporate policy as they went: Averill would use a new name, new pronoun and new bathroom, according to an article at SFGate.com.
• Symantec management, responsible for both creating an effective organization and protecting the rights of individual employees, responded by building an effective policy for Averill and any other transgender employees within the workforce.

Dive Insight:

Today, more employers nationwide face similar questions, according to SFGate. More than 400 U.S. corporations, including Nike and Intel, already offer transgender-inclusive health care policies, and nearly 300 have gender-transition guidelines in place, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

But the thousands of companies that haven't must adapt soon -- or risk discrimination lawsuits, according to SFGate. Symantec's experience, then and now, offers important lessons. Six months after Averill and Barton's first meeting, 300 employees who worked directly with Averill received an email from Barton's boss, letting everyone know what was happening. To date, Symantec's approach has worked very well, SFGate reports.