BY BTL STAFF
More than 10 Michigan companies have earned a top score of 100 percent and the distinction of "Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality" on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's 2017 Corporate Equality Index.
They are Ally Financial Inc., The Dow Chemical Co., Dykema Gossett PLLC, FCA US LLC, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Herman Miller Inc., Kellogg Co., Steelcase Inc., Stryker Corp., and Whirlpool Corp.
Included on the list is Lear Corporation, a leading global supplier of automotive seating and electrical systems, and the only Tier 1 automotive supplier to receive a perfect score on the latest CEI.
"We truly value diversity and inclusion at Lear, and I am extremely proud to have received this recognition for our efforts. We aspire to be an employer of first choice where all employees can reach their full potential," said Matt Simoncini, Lear's president and chief executive officer.
The national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to LGBT employees spans nearly every industry and geography. The number of employers rated from the first CEI to the present has expanded from 319 to 887. The nation's largest employers have demonstrated through their actions that LGBTQ people are not just tolerated, but fully welcomed in their workplaces and communities.
The criteria for scoring includes public commitment, organizational LGBT competency, employment benefits, and equal employment opportunity policy.
"In 2016, the LGBTQ community was subjected to unprecedented attacks – from state lawmakers plotting to undermine our historic gains, to tragic, unimaginable experiences of violence, to those who pledged to roll back our rights from the highest offices in the land. And yet, during it all, the unstoppable beat of progress towards greater equality in the places many LGBTQ Americans spend most of their daily lives — their workplaces — didn't just remain steady, it sped up," said Chad Griffin, president of the HRC Foundation.
"These businesses know that LGBTQ equality isn't just the right thing to do, it makes them stronger in our global economy. Ensuring fairness in the workplace is a value and increasingly a policy norm, and not just in the U.S. Now, more than 90 percent of CEI-rated businesses have embraced both sexual orientation and gender identity employment protections for their U.S. and global operations."
Notable Progress
– Seventy-three percent of this year's rated businesses afford transgender-inclusive health care coverage. 2017 represents the greatest increase – an additional 136 participants – between any two consecutive CEI reports. The second-greatest increase was when this requirement to earn 100 went into effect, when 121 additional participants earned credit between the 2011 CEI report and 2012 CEI report (85 to 206 total participants with coverage).
– Eighty-six percent of businesses have inclusive diversity training.
– A record 382 major employers submitted gender transition guidelines — the vast majority of which were adopted from the HRC Foundation's template guidelines (available at www.hrc.org/workplace).
– Forty-six percent of CEI-rated employers offer employees question options to voluntarily disclose their sexual orientation and gender identity on anonymous surveys or confidential HR records.
– Eighty-eight percent of CEI-rated employers have an employee resource group or diversity council that includes LGBT and allied employees and programming. Seventy-three percent of all rated employers have employee groups, 26 percent have diversity councils and 19 percent of all rated employers have both. Of those companies with an officially-recognized LGBT employee group, 96 percent reported being expressly for LGBT and allied employees.
– Sixty-six percent of CEI-rated businesses met the standard of demonstrating at least three efforts of public commitment to the LGBT community – marketing, advertising and recruitment efforts, philanthropic contributions to LGBT organizations, LGBT diverse supplier initiatives and public policy weigh-in – and have inclusive philanthropic giving guidelines.
Read the entire report online.
