Trans+ employees aren’t the only ones bearing the brunt of bigotry—it costs employers, too

Over the past year, we’ve seen companies move away from the LGBTQIA+ community. There was a significant drop in activations during the Pride season. We’ve also seen DEI budget cuts at Google, Meta, and more recently at Microsoft and Ford. Big players make bigger mistakes, all based on weak evidence and fear.

The reality is that leadership teams are failing to keep track of data. And that’s because “waking up” – or just standing up to discrimination – is a competitive advantage.

If we want to be serious about success, we need to take a breath and consider the data. As Fortune focuses on the most successful businesses led by queer people, let’s take a look at what it’s like to exist as a transgender person in business today, and what a “woke workplace” would mean for them and the organizations they work for.

The burden of bigotry

This burden cannot be overstated. Your employees’ problems are your problems and they limit your growth ambitions. Members of the Trans+ community face significant challenges in the workplace. Discrimination, harassment and exclusion have a devastating impact on career development and personal well-being.

UCLA’s Williams Institute found that 20 percent of Trans+ employees left their jobs in the past year because of personal treatment, a rate four times higher than that of cisgender employees. All that talent goes out the door.

More than half (55%) of all transgender employees have experienced non-inclusive behaviors at work, according to Deloitte’s Global LGBT+ Inclusion at Work 2023 report. These experiences aren’t just about feeling unwelcome, they’re often direct barriers to career advancement. About 66% of respondents said their identity played a role in being turned down for important assignments and 73% said their identity played a role in being overlooked for promotion.

Speaking to community members in my network, Trans+ inclusive provision and education is patchy, meaning experiences can vary widely, leading to psychological insecurity, career blockages and the inevitable talent drain.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation recommends that companies adopt provisions such as name and pronoun sharing, access to facilities, confidentiality and privacy, health care coverage and training throughout the business.

The risk of encountering bigotry and the variation between these support structures is what prevents Trans+ people from feeling able to fully participate in work as themselves. I know that many who are locked out of the workplace, have experienced discrimination, are delaying their social and medical transition, cannot access gender healthcare at their employer, or feel they have to leave their employer to “start over” as they are authentic. elsewhere.

Fixing this for Trans+ employees, and indeed all employees who experience discrimination in the workplace, can be a huge boon for any business.

Wake up, grow up

Deloitte research tells us that diversity of thought brings a 20% increase in creativity and innovation. Help teams better identify risks, reducing them by up to 30% – it could be the difference between being the Blockbuster or Netflix of your industry. Simply put, a diverse workforce makes an organization more resilient, agile and prosperous.

However, estimates from Out Leadership suggest that less than 1% of the 5,670 board seats at Fortune 500 companies are filled with an LGBTQIA+ director. So there is still work to do. That’s why I’m glad to see Fortune’s new initiative celebrating boardroom diversity by spotlighting those companies with queer CEOs. And I’m excited to see two transgender leaders make the Fortune LGBTQ+ Leaders list, Sue Nabi, founder of Orveda and CEO of Coty, and Martine Rothblatt, founder and CEO of United Therapeutics.

And when we look at advertising, a topic I cover regularly, new research published this week with data from 58 countries and 392 brands shows that more inclusive advertising campaigns produce a 3.5% increase in sales in the short term and more than 16% in the long term. on average.

“It is extremely important that the decisions we make in business and society are rooted in sound assumptions and scientifically proven facts, rather than anecdotal evidence and unproven truths,” commented Andrew Stephen, L’Oréal Professor of Marketing at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. on these findings.

In the UK, Channel 4 reported that in 2023 there was only one trans person in the 1,000 TV ads they audited over a 12-month period. Only 3% of these included LGBTQIA+ people.

So let’s drop these anti-business lies and look at the data: when you “wake up,” you grow.

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