Our friends at Echelon reported last week that Equality Forum has released the results of their annual Fortune 500 project measuring the number of companies that “voluntarily include sexual orientation in their employment non-discrimination policies.” This year’s number is 471, meaning that 92.4% of the Fortune 500 include that protection in their policies. When Equality Forum initiated the project in 2003, the number was 323 (or 64.6% of the Fortune 500).
This is good news, but it’s only part of the story. As the numbers indicate, including sexual orientation in your employment non-discrimination policies is pretty much of a no-brainer (well, unless you’re ExxonMobil). The real test is what else you do. HRC’s annual Corporate Equality Index (out later this month) measures the same thing as part of a broader set of criteria including whether or not a company includes gender identity and sexual expression in its employment non-discrimination policy and whether or not a company offers domestic partner benefits.
None of these surveys is the definitive answer (although HRC’s is increasingly viewed as the yardstick), but taken together they present useful information about corporate willingness to engage on the policies that help to create a workplace culture of inclusion for LGBT people. In addition to corporate policies, you really have to look at corporate activities to get a full sense of how engaged and involved a company is in our community. Next month we’re going to debut a new tool to measure this involvement that we hope will add to the conversation about what to do and how to measure the effectiveness of those activities.
We’ll blog about this in more detail later this month (when we talk about the HRC numbers due out mid-month). In the meantime, what’s on your list of policies, activities or measures that should be used to determine a company’s true engagement with our community?
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The HRC CEI is increasingly being viewed as a marketing tool. A sort of “minimum required” checklist of LGBT issues in the workplace. However, there are dozens-if not hundreds-of employees working for 100% scored companies that face discrimination, harassment and intolerance. Until someone devises a corporate culture measurement tool similar to the Best Places to Work Institute’s survey, and companies begin voluntarily participating, the CEI only promotes policy-making with an eye towards PR and not toward making significant and real culture change.
Hi Jere. Thanks for commenting. I agree that HRC’s Corporate Equality Index (2009 version is out today, by the way) is a “minimum required” checklist for LGBT issues in the workplace and that was my point – that you have to look at a combination of factors and information sources to get a true sense for a company’s real record. You’re right that companies with high scores may still have bad workplace cultures, but I’d rather have the scores (from HRC, Equality Forum and others) as a starting point than to not have them at all. I think this situation will change over time as more and more corporations move from just making the policy changes necessary to demonstrate their willingness to have fair and open workplaces and to addressing the cultural changes necessary to actually have fair and open workplaces. Progress needs to be made on many fronts, that’s for sure, but at least it is being made.
Its a good post!! I am sure this situation will change over time. The CEI promotes policy only towards high PR and not toward making considereable real culture change.