Stonewall, the campaign and lobby group, on Wednesday put out its 2008 Workplace Equality Index, designed to rank the top 100 employers of gay people.
There are obvious limitations to the ranking as a comprehensive guide to the working environment for gay people, or the attitude of companies towards gay customers. The companies in the top 100 are gleaned from 240 that volunteer for the process – a process of self-selection bound to bring out those who are already (at the very least) paying active lip service to being a gay-friendly employer. Plus some of the criteria checked by the 20-question survey – such as having an explicit policy of barring discrimination based on sexual orientation – are unrevealing. Unsurprisingly, 100 per cent of the top 100 have such a provision in place.
But it’s an interesting read – with a good spattering of financial names. Ben Summerskill, Stonewall chief executive, points out that in its first year six of the top 100 preferred to remain anonymous than be associated with a ‘gay index.’ Now that is unthinkable – companies are clamouring for recognition and it’s getting harder to get in the top 100 list.
The Stonewall survey does attempt to get behind the glib, pro-diversity speak of management and discover what’s happening on the shop floor. The top 25 organisations are visited. We learn that 95 per cent of the top 100 have established a LGB employee network group, 87 per cent advertised their product or recruited through the gay media, while 76 per cent offer at least two types of LGB-specific staff support such as counselling or mentoring.
And given the unseemly furore surrounding the end of Lord Browne’s career at BP, how interesting and refreshing to find that 61 per cent of the top 100 have an openly lesbian, gay or bi-sexual person on their board.
The full list is here, topped by Nacro, the crime reduction charity. But what’s this? Scrolling down the list of City and financial names, we notice something of a pattern.
Lloyds TSB at 6; Barclays and Credit Suisse at joint 17; Goldman at number 38, with JPMorgan and Lehman Brothers sharing the spoils with Merrill Lynch at 43.
Hmmm. Until we reached Merrill, we were wondering what the correlation was between being a gay-friendly employer and having weathered the credit squall (relatively) well.
Further down the top 100, we find Citi at 59, Morgan Stanley at 74, and UBS down at 97. Of Bear Stearns and Northern Rock, there is no sign.