Major companies in Pennsylvania are on the right track when it comes to meeting the needs of LGBTQ employees, according to a new survey by the Human Rights Campaign.
The 17th annual Corporate Equality Index rated more than 1,000 national companies and law firms on their commitment to providing equal and inclusive practices, policies and benefits to LGBTQ workers. Out of the 48 companies surveyed in Pennsylvania, half of them earned a perfect score of 100 and a spot on the HRC’s “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ Equality” list.
Those include The Hershey Company, IKEA, Giant Food Stores, PNC and 10 Philadelphia-based outfits, including Aramark, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Ballard Spahr LLP.
The average score for Pennsylvania-based companies and law firms is 87 percent. Besides the 100-point scorers, 11 corporations earned 90 points and above, including Wawa and Comcast NBCUniversal. Three companies, including American Eagle Outfitters, earned 80 points and above.
“What I see when I look at the Pennsylvania numbers is a very strong showing of companies that are committed, and I think that’s reflective of the results nationally — that more companies are actually very committed and doing a lot of good work in this space,” said Beck Bailey, acting director for the HRC’s Workplace Equality Program, which works year-round to compile the annual Corporate Equality Index.
To gather the necessary data, the HRC invited every company on the Fortune 1000 and American Law 200 to participate, and then invited any company with more than 500 full-time employees to voluntarily take part. The organization rates the entire Fortune 500, whether they actively participate or not.
Companies are rated on a broad set of criteria in four categories: Do they offer LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination policies? Do their LGBTQ workers and their families have access to the same benefits as their heterosexual counterparts? Do they encourage an inclusive workplace culture and display a public commitment to LGBTQ equality? Do they take part in responsible citizenship?
The criteria was tougher than ever this year, said Bailey, which resulted in some major Philly corporations such as Comcast (90) and Urban Outfitters (75) actually slipping from the year before.
“In the last 17 years, we’ve made four changes to the survey criteria. We are on our fifth set, which is the toughest, most stringent we’ve put out there,” he said.
Nationally, despite the tougher slog, 572 of some 1,000 rated companies earned a perfect score. Other promising data shows that 93 percent of Fortune 500 corporations offer sexual-orientation nondiscrimination protections, 85 percent have gender-identity nondiscrimination protections, and 500 national employers have adopted supportive inclusion guidelines for transgender employees who are transitioning.
“This really kind of shows that [being inclusive of LGBTQ employees] is the predominant and standard business practice,” Bailey said, adding the data acts as a compass of sorts for jobseekers, pointing them toward corporations that fully support their LGBTQ workers.
“If I’m a jobseeker and I want to know if a company provides transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage, that’s something that’s really difficult to know until you work there, when you sit down and go over the benefits,” he said. “Our benchmark actually makes that information transparent and allows companies to reflect to LGBTQ jobseekers that they have these important benefits and practices to support them.”
He called the CEI a win-win for businesses too.
“It signals to consumers that these brands are committed to supporting the community. That’s good for the businesses to be able to let consumers know that, ‘Hey, I’m spending my money with a company that supports LGBTQ inclusion.’”
So which companies in the commonwealth still have a lot of work to do?
Fort Washington’s Severn Trent Services had the poorest showing at 15 points. Rite Aid, based in Camp Hill, scored 50 points. In Philadelphia, Pep Boys only achieved a score of 30, the second-lowest in the state. It was docked for, among other things, not offering equal medical and soft benefits to the domestic partners of same- and different-sex employees. And it earned only a fraction of the points allotted for prohibiting sexual orientation- and gender identity-based discrimination in the workplace.
Pep Boys did not respond to a PGN request for comment.
Surveys of this kind are especially valuable to consumers and jobseekers in Pennsylvania, a state that still lags behind in offering mandated discrimination protections for its LGBTQ citizens.
The Pennsylvania Fairness Act — which would make it illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in the workplace, housing and places of business — is currently garnering cosponsors and more momentum than it previously had.
“It’s still in the early phases, and hasn’t been formally introduced,” said Jenna McGreevy, constituent-services advisor for Rep. Dan Frankel (D-23rd Dist.), who introduced the bill. “It currently has 85 cosponsors from both parties, which is a record for the bill.”
It’s a matter of time but “somewhere in the near future,” she said, before the legislation gets officially introduced.
For now, Bailey suggests that those looking to work in a safe, fair and inclusive environment scroll through the list of high-scoring companies on the HRC’s CEI.
“These companies are saying, ‘Look, we’re not relying on the state to tell us the right thing to do. We’re going to be inclusive of LGBTQ folks and have LGBTQ and gender-identity protections, even though the state doesn’t mandate us to,’ because certainly it is the right thing to do, but also because it’s good for their business.”