New Report on How LGBT Employees Navigate Workplaces

“Policy to Practice” is a two-week series of conversations and blog posts about what it takes to turn an inclusive employment non-discrimination policy into practice in the workplace. This post comes from Eric Bloem, Deputy Director of the Workplace Project.

Before coming to work at the Human Rights Campaign, I spent several years working as a consultant, traveling cross-country to various client sites for a range of diverse businesses.

On my first day at each new assignment, I had a routine – to introduce myself, schedule meetings to understand project deliverables, and familiarize myself with my workspace. In addition to the normal first day activities, I also evaluated the environment around me to see if I would be accepted by my team if I were open about my LGBT identity – something that my non-LGBT colleagues never had to consider. 

I found that each new client, each location, felt very different in this regard – what we’re now calling LGBT workplace climate. Some felt much more accepting than others. The result was that on projects that I didn’t feel comfortable being open, I wasn’t. Over the course of an assignment, very few if any teammates got to know me on a personal level. I was successful, but I rarely felt comfortable or able to share and connect with my colleagues and clients in the same way that my non-LGBT colleagues were able to.

The first time I read HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, I was surprised to find many of the businesses I had worked with, day-in and day-out, rated 100%. In my mind, not all of them felt equally inclusive — regardless of the policies they may have had.

It is a question that stuck with me, even as I interviewed at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation to join the Workplace Project. I inquired about the inconsistency between how I felt going to work at these client-sites and how open I could be about being LGBT. The response was clear: the CEI only measured LGBT policy — it was difficult to assess the individual, everyday experiences of each employee to account for workplace climate of these businesses.

While the CEI remains the preeminent benchmark of LGBT workplace policy for American businesses, and while the criteria are changing to require greater competency on LGBT issues, the Workplace Project still needed to provide resources for employers to address the very real challenges of workplace environments that prevent LGBT employees from being open and limit their success.

Over the last two years we’ve searched for the answers to three questions:

• What is workplace climate?
• What and who are the primary shapers of workplace climate for LGBT people? And,
• How can workplace climate be improved?

This project, “Degrees of Equality,” started with a series of 14 focus groups of both LGBT and non-LGBT participants, each varying by race, age, gender among other sub-groupings.  It also included the largest national survey of LGBT employees’ to-date, with 761 respondents. The result is a groundbreaking, comprehensive study of LGBT workplace climate.

Degrees of Equality: A National Study Examining Workplace Climate for LGBT Employees is the first of many resources that we’ll release as part of the Degrees of Equality initiative. We’re in the process of putting final touches on a dedicated LGBT climate assessment tool as well as a comprehensive toolkit of resources that businesses and individual managers can utilize to improve climate.  It is our hope that with these resources, we will improve the lives of LGBT employees who go to work each day and feel unable to be open and contribute to their fullest potential.  

I encourage you to read the report at www.degreesofequality.org, and to check back with us often. This website will be updated as we continue to release new resources as part of this project.