In my case - the downside to misgendering someone is extremely high. If my work day was to skip work and go hiking, or go into work and misgender someone, the latter has much higher downside consequences in some areas.
The other issue, I've had preferred pronouns change. I'm not sure if that has settled down, but there was a lot of new language / wording constantly churning. There was a him that was a her, but then I found out they preferred they instead of her - so I'd been mis-pronouning them even though I wasn't misgendering them.
Given the amount of risk involved in getting this stuff wrong, it really is safer just to use names.
If you use names, you need to use them for everyone. This can get complicated for some folks because names like Ted, Bob, Sue, Joe etc may be more familiar from a pronunciation standpoint for a white person for example, but then that person avoids pronouncing Khamala or Nkosazana because they are uneasy with how to pronounce the name. That becomes obvious pretty quickly.
Managers also have had some awkward situations correcting minority employees use of terms if the manager is of a different background, ie, someone saying latino community (who is themselves latino), and manager has to correct them that it is latinx not latino.
The other issue, I've had preferred pronouns change. I'm not sure if that has settled down, but there was a lot of new language / wording constantly churning. There was a him that was a her, but then I found out they preferred they instead of her - so I'd been mis-pronouning them even though I wasn't misgendering them.
Given the amount of risk involved in getting this stuff wrong, it really is safer just to use names.
If you use names, you need to use them for everyone. This can get complicated for some folks because names like Ted, Bob, Sue, Joe etc may be more familiar from a pronunciation standpoint for a white person for example, but then that person avoids pronouncing Khamala or Nkosazana because they are uneasy with how to pronounce the name. That becomes obvious pretty quickly.
Managers also have had some awkward situations correcting minority employees use of terms if the manager is of a different background, ie, someone saying latino community (who is themselves latino), and manager has to correct them that it is latinx not latino.