Following the ‘LGBT+ Price Festival’ in Liverpool, the prominence of LGBT+ diversity issues in the workplace is even more so important to address.
Recently the ‘FTSE 100’ firms released their annual 2019 report. Although the number of companies to reference LGBT+ inclusion has risen by (12 per cent) in the last 5 years, shockingly over 1/3 of ‘FTSE 100’ companies failed to have any mention regarding the inclusion of the LGBT+ community.
Further analysis shows 17 FTSE 100 companies which changed their Twitter logos to support the LGBT+ pride month still failed to mention the community in their annual report.
At HPC we believe to truly encourage the development of an employee’s talents and skill set the company must attain the correct balance between diversity and inclusion of all minority groups.
Suki Sandhu OBE, founder and chief executive of Involve, said: “Annual reports are a huge importance for FTSE 100 companies as it is there chance to highlight the key issues and initiatives that they are focusing on”. It is a step in the right direction that FTSE 100 businesses have included the LGBT+ diversity into the annual report and is not simply celebrated in a handful of tweets during the LGBT+ pride month. Although a staggering (35 per cent) of FTSE 100 companies that did not note the inclusion of the LGBT+ workforce, showing there is still a lot of ground that needs to be covered for all companies to take the norm approach of “Loud and Proud”.
Some leading examples of “Loud and Proud” within the FTSE 100 are pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline which pledges support to the United Nations LGBT+ global business standards, educational company Pearson which has updated all of its textbooks to include LGBT+ community references and Barclays which has supported over 25 price celebrations across the UK this year.
The fantastic work done by these leading FTSE 100 companies sadly does not make up for the (35 per cent) of companies which did not recognise the LGBT+ community in the annual report for 2019. Research carried out by ‘YouGov’ shows LGBT+ employees are paid (16 per cent) less that their heterosexual employees and a staggering (70 per cent) of LGBT+ employees have experienced some form of sexual harassment at work.
Recruitment website ‘Jobsite’ showcases statistics that the current workforce may also be to blame for the gap on the road to LGBT+ inclusion as (62 per cent) of the workforce feel more comfortable discussing immigration issues rather than the (54 per cent) of employees which feel comfortable discussing LGBT+ rights.
If you would like more information on how you can make your business more “Loud and Proud” or how to encourage further discussions with your employees regarding the LGBT+ community please get in touch with the HPC team.
Phone: 08448005932
Email: contact@highperformanceconsultancy.com
Twitter: @HPC_HRservices