In celebration of INvolve’s 2023 Outstanding LGBTQ+ Role Model List, we take a look at companies and sectors that are pioneers in LGBTQ+ reporting with a focus on those reporting their LGBTQ+ Senior Leadership Representation and Sexual Orientation Pay Gap – both of which are pioneering measures. All companies within deserve to be celebrated for leading the way on LGBTQ+ DEI Transparency.
Companies Reporting Their LGBTQ+ Senior Leaders Representation
Seeing Senior Leaders who look or identify as them allows LGBTQ+ junior talent to boost their confidence in their own ability to rise to the top. A June 2023 Deloitte survey of over 4,000 LGBTQ+ participants from 13 countries revealed that over half considered the visibility of ‘out’ LGBTQ+ leaders as a key factor in deciding to apply for a job.
Here are 20 companies that share that data.
Pioneers for Reporting LGBTQ+ Senior Leadership Data
Reporting on LGBTQ+ Senior Leadership Representation is a growing trend as you’ll see towards the end of this report. There are a just a handful of companies that have been reporting this metric since 2017 and 2018, with two notable organisations seeing a steady growth in representation over the period; Bank of England and Clifford Chance.
Note: Companies and sectors define their “Senior Leaders” differently. For Law and Management Consulting firms it’s typically defined as Partners and for Finance it’s employees at the Managing Director level. These three sectors cover 85% of the companies in the above insights. For Vodafone it’s Senior Leadership, for the BBC it’s Leadership and for the Bank of England it’s Senior Management.
It’s also worth noting that representation data is based on Self-ID programs. Companies phrase questions for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity differently. Employee participation rates in Self-ID programs also differ among companies and currently there are no established global standards of accountability and consistency for public reporting – ie some companies may not in fact be reporting the percentage of LGBTQ+ employees across their entire workforce but rather these numbers may reflect only some geographies or business units. This makes benchmarking LGTBQ+ Workforce data approximate.
Companies Reporting on Their Sexual Orientation Pay Gap
In 2021, the Human Rights Campaign reported that LGBTQ+ employees in the US earn about 90 cents for every dollar that the average worker earns. Another study from the Social Science Research Network in 2022 showed that ten years post-graduation, LGBTQ+ college graduates in the US earn 22% less than their heterosexual, cisgender counterparts.
Windo holds the sustainability data of companies in the Fortune 100, FTSE 250, and The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers. Of these there are 9 companies that share their Sexual Orientation Pay Gap data.
Growing Trends & Sectors Leading the Way for LGBTQ+ Reporting
A majority of the Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 publicly report on Gender and Ethnic Minority Senior Leadership Representation. When it comes to reporting on LGBTQ+ representation there are fewer but a growing number of businesses that are leading the way.
Through the data held on Windo we’re able to identify trends and insights in DEIB reporting and are seeing an increasing number of businesses reporting across all diverse groups on Overall Representation, Leadership, Board Diversity, Targets, and Pay Gap data.
Next we highlight six sectors that are leading the way in LGBTQ+ reporting: Law, Finance, Consulting, Healthcare, Tech and Media & Communications.
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