I guess employment qualifies as a Real World Issue, right up there with all of the rest of the daily things we all face in life. Anyway, as I was digging through some stuff helping another member out, I came across this from the Human Rights Campaign - the Corporate Equality Index 2022 Report. Definitely a good read and. in my opinion, a very positive report of how well things are getting out there in the workforce. Michelle
When I was working, I was a member of our LGBT employee affinity group for 12 years. We used the CEI as a tool in getting company management to understand the value of policy changes and how they compared to other companies.
Corning, Inc. is an international company with many factories and R&D installations around the world. The business model is based on devoting a higher percentage of profits to R&D efforts in order to create technologies and high margin products that no one else has done. In order to do that, a very highly talented and capable workforce is needed. These days younger folks are more sensitive to the social conscience of their employers, or potential employers. Scoring well on the CEI helps to reinforce that point. When I was there, we scored 100% for many consecutive years as the criteria continually ramped up.
Note that HRC also does a number of other studies:
https://reports.hrc.org/reports
For full disclosure, after I retired I held office in our local HRC group for about 2 1/2 years…
To add a bit…
Some of the interesting things about these results is who is not on the list and how competitors in a given industry stack up.
For example, with their anti-LGBT leanings and donations, you wouldn’t expect to see Chick-Fil-A here and they are not. Or, if you check the scores of UPS and FedEx, you will see a 15 point difference in their scores. Due to confidentiality, the responses to the questions are not available, but you can see where points were lost in which categories.
It isn’t unusual for people who are unfamiliar with the survey to try to discount it. The reality is that the questions are not static and ramp up over time. At least some of the questions become more stringent every couple of years or so and eventually all of the questions are reworked. Improvement is needed in order to continue to score well.
In completing the survey, it isn’t enough to just say that you are doing something or are addressing an issue. You have to show documentation of your policies and procedures and and provide evidence of how they have been implemented.
