Lloyds Bank, Tesco and GSK on building LGBT+ inclusive workplaces

When Annie New­man joined phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny GSK as a con­trac­tor in 2000, she wouldn’t come out as a les­bian for more than a decade. “It was­n’t because I was­n’t com­fort­able being out in the organ­i­sa­tion,” she explains. “It was because I was­n’t com­fort­able myself. I didn’t want to admit it to myself.”

After years in the clos­et, in 2011 New­man saw a stall in the office run by GSK’s les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al and trans­gen­der (LGBT+) net­work Spec­trum. She stayed in touch with a col­league from the stand, who helped her embrace her sex­u­al­i­ty. “This con­nec­tion was invalu­able and gave me the courage to both come out to my fam­i­ly and, a few months lat­er, come out to col­leagues at work,” says New­man. 

Since 2019, she has led GSK’s Spec­trum net­work in the UK. Found­ed in 1996, it also has branch­es in 37 oth­er coun­tries. The com­pa­ny is one of a grow­ing num­ber of busi­ness­es using net­works to sup­port their LGBT+ staff, often run by col­leagues on a vol­un­tary basis. At Spec­trum, ini­tia­tives include reverse men­tor­ing, where LGBT+ col­leagues share their expe­ri­ences with senior lead­ers, and a lead­er­ship pro­gramme aimed at giv­ing LGBT+ employ­ees the con­fi­dence to apply for top roles. 

Why inclusion is vital to business success

Else­where, Lloyds Bank­ing Group has been run­ning its Rain­bow Net­work for more than ten years. With over 5,000 mem­bers, the group meets fort­night­ly and runs var­i­ous events. These include reg­u­lar “bi-talk” ses­sions for bisex­u­al col­leagues, a month­ly les­bian book club and a “T” work­ing group that explores ways to bet­ter sup­port trans­gen­der and non-bina­ry col­leagues.

“Diver­si­ty and inclu­sion are vital to our busi­ness suc­cess and to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment in which every­one feels includ­ed, val­ued and empow­ered to be their best,” explains Antho­ny Fran­cis, a role mod­el for Rain­bow and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty lead at Lloyds Bank­ing Group.

Stud­ies have shown that LGBT+ inclu­sive cor­po­ra­tions are more suc­cess­ful than those which are not. In 2015, 14 lead­ing firms, includ­ing Amer­i­can Express and IBM, launched Open For Busi­ness, a coali­tion cam­paign­ing for LGBT+ work­place inclu­sion glob­al­ly. Same-sex sex­u­al activ­i­ty remains ille­gal in around 70 coun­tries. In a 2018 sur­vey, the group found LGBT+ inclu­sive com­pa­nies per­form bet­ter finan­cial­ly, with high­er mar­ket val­u­a­tions, greater lev­els of employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion and bet­ter staff reten­tion.

Train­ing is key to rais­ing aware­ness of the chal­lenges faced by LGBT+ staff and those from minor­i­ty groups. At Lloyds, employ­ees com­plete annu­al manda­to­ry inclu­sion train­ing, cov­er­ing areas like uncon­scious bias. In Octo­ber, GSK required all its staff to take diver­si­ty train­ing.

Inter­na­tion­al law firm Pin­sent Masons’ LGBT+ Allies pro­gramme has been run­ning since 2013, offer­ing het­ero­sex­u­al col­leagues train­ing on LGBT+ issues. It pro­vides a forum for het­ro­sex­u­al col­leagues seek­ing advice, such as how to best sup­port a friend or rel­a­tive who is LGBT+.

“Our Allies ini­tia­tive has been one of the things that has made a huge amount of impact to our work in this area,” says Kate Fer­gus­son, head of respon­si­ble busi­ness at Pin­sent Masons. 

Com­pa­nies are also engag­ing with impor­tant events in the LGBT+ cal­en­dar as a means of sup­port­ing their employ­ees and clients, such as spon­sor­ing and march­ing in Pride parades. While coro­n­avirus has paused phys­i­cal events, the pan­dem­ic has not blocked sup­port, with com­pa­nies tak­ing their efforts online. Last sum­mer, Lloyds launched a year-round Always Proud online cel­e­bra­tion, rais­ing more than £10,000 for LGBT+ char­i­ties and shar­ing LGBT+ employ­ees’ per­son­al sto­ries. Vir­gin and Bar­clays have run sim­i­lar cam­paigns.

While there is leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect LGBT+ employ­ees at work in some coun­tries, includ­ing the Equal­i­ty Act 2010 in the UK and the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964 in the Unit­ed States, work­place harass­ment remains an issue. In 2018, LGBT+ rights char­i­ty Stonewall found that near­ly one in five LGBT+ peo­ple (18 per cent) had been bul­lied at work, while more than a third (35 per cent) have hid­den their iden­ti­ty for fear of dis­crim­i­na­tion. 

“Peo­ple spend most of their adult life at work, so if we can get work­place inclu­sion right, it would make a huge dif­fer­ence in the lives of so many LGBT+ peo­ple,” says Emma Kos­min, head of work­place con­sul­tan­cy at Stonewall, which also runs an annu­al Work­place Equal­i­ty Index rank­ing the top 100 employ­ers for LGBT+ peo­ple in the UK. 

How to get started with LGBT+ networks

Com­pa­nies look­ing to estab­lish their own LGBT+ net­works should start by draw­ing up a clear list of aims, says GSK’s New­man. “Set up a char­ter and set out a small num­ber of attain­able objec­tives that you can get and then you can grow them,” she says. 

David Page, exec­u­tive spon­sor of Tesco’s net­work LGBTQ+ At Tesco, advis­es a top-down style. “Dri­ve it from the top, for­malise it in pol­i­cy, con­tin­u­ous­ly devel­op train­ing and get that out to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble,” he says. Lloyds takes a sim­i­lar approach, where Janet Pope, the company’s exec­u­tive spon­sor for sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty, sits on the group’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. 

It is also impor­tant to rep­re­sent the entire LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty, says Page. “In com­mon with many organ­i­sa­tions, we’re prob­a­bly strongest on the G [gay men] and so we need to con­stant­ly make sure we are doing every­thing we can to address the L, the B, the T, the Q, the plus,” he says. 

Com­pa­nies should accept that start­ing a LGBT+ net­work is a jour­ney, says Pin­sent Masons’ Fer­gus­son. “We have learnt that we some­times need to take a step back, to con­sult and ask ques­tions in a respect­ful way, and when we don’t have the spe­cial­ist knowl­edge inter­nal­ly, to seek exter­nal exper­tise and sup­port,” she adds.

Ulti­mate­ly, a work­place that embraces the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty can mean hap­pi­er col­leagues and high­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. For New­man at GSK, hav­ing an LGBT+ net­work was trans­for­ma­tive. “It actu­al­ly became kind of a fam­i­ly to me,” she says. “For me per­son­al­ly, it changed my life and helped me on my jour­ney to feel com­fort­able.”