All companies open for business in 2019 need to take stock of recent cultural changes in the weather. Lip service paid to diversity is not enough any more. Young people demand to live in a world where groups like LGBTQ employees are treated the same way as any U.S. employee, so the business world needs to take heed. These issues have been on the table for decades, but now action is demanded. We asked employees, “Is your company supportive of LGBTQ employees?”
The information comes from the latest reading of an ongoing study by Comparably.
Nearly four-fifths of all employee respondents feel their company is appropriately supporting of members of the LGBTQ community. Men are slightly more positive about this fact than women.
African-Americans fell far below the average in answering this question. The other ethnicities were closer to overall averages.
When broken down by age, responses show that younger employees are less satisfied with how their company deals with LGBTQ employees. Only 70% of Gen Z respondents (18-24) felt that LGBTQ workers were treated fairly. By the 46-50 age bracket, that number has risen to nearly 85%. This implies either that the standard for what constitutes a company being “supportive” has different meanings to the younger generation than it does people at the crest of their professional lives, or that younger people tend to work for less progressive companies in this regard.
88% of employees in HR answered “yes” to this question, putting responses from those departments way above the average percentage. This makes some sense, as workers in that department would be most sensitive to issues of fair hiring and treatment that might otherwise lead to unpleasant litigation against their companies. Falling below average percentages for all employees are responses from workers in Legal and Design.
In general, and in most work departments, men are more positive on the issue. Again, whether this means they have a different standard than female employees when it comes to a working definition of “supportive” remains to be seen. Only in the IT, Admin, and Operations departments were women more likely to respond “yes” to the question about supportive treatment of LGBTQ workers.
Workers in tech hub cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and San Diego were most likely to say “yes” to the question. This implies, on some level, a more progressive sensibility from tech companies and startups. On the other hand, workers in Atlanta and Houston still feel there is room for improvement when it comes to the way their employers treat LGBTQ workers.
Latest reading as of May 30.
