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Social Research Digest – April 2012

Summary

The Human Rights Campaign’s 2012 Corporate Equality Index chronicles a decade of progress in workplace equality. The HRC’s CEI report provides an in-depth analysis and rating of large U.S. employers and their policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

Key Findings

• 2012 marks the first year of new more stringent criteria regarding transgender health benefits.
• 189 participants earned the top rating of 100 percent, evidence the CEI has helped transform the American workplace for the better over the past ten years.
• In the first year of the CEI a decade ago, 13 businesses achieved a top score of 100 percent.
• In its debut year in which 319 participants were rated, the CEI noted that most of the largest U.S. employers fell within the middle of the ratings bell curve: workplace protections on the basis of sexual orientation, domestic partner health care benefits and some internal inclusion practices were becoming more common but transgender inclusion lagged.
• Year after year, participants have successfully used the CEI guideposts and HRC Foundation staff as resources to push themselves towards the gold standards captured by the CEI criteria.
• The CEI standards have most dramatically shifted the way the largest U.S. businesses have incorporated transgender protections and benefits in the workplace.
• In 2002, only 5 percent of participants included “gender identity” in their non-discrimination policy.
• Today, 80 percent of participants have implementing this basic, yet crucial, protection for employees.
• Even among non-participants, the CEI has helped create market norms where LGBT workplace equality is essential to staying relevant among competitors.
• The evolution of workplace protections among the Fortune 500 in the past decade reflects the progress seen among participating companies in the CEI, further demonstrating the improved landscape in which LGBT employees now work.
• Eighty-six percent of the Fortune 500 include “sexual orientation” in their nondiscrimination policies and 50 percent include “gender identity.”
• The majority of the total Fortune 500 — 60 percent — offer equivalent medical benefits between spouses and partners and 19 percent offer transgender-inclusive health care benefits, including surgical procedures.

Author(s)

Human Rights Campaign Foundation

Source

PDF report

Tags: bisexual, Corporate Equality Index, employees, gay, Human Rights Campaign Foundation, lesbian, transgender, US, workplace equality