Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2017 Corporate Equality Index is the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.
In this 15th Edition of the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, a record 517 employers earned a top rating of 100 percent. This is the largest jump in toprated businesses in a single year in the entire history of the CEI. The CEI catalyzes change by appealing to businesses’ competitive nature: behind every top rated business in the 2016 report, numerous peers were spurred to catch up in the 2017 CEI.
The CEI criteria reflect leading policies, benefits and practices for the LGBT workforce and their families. The criteria are premised on the notion of parity rather than prescription. In other words, HRC promotes the adoption of LGBT-specific language into existing corporate practices (e.g. ensuring that existing health care coverage affords coverage for routine and chronic care of transgender individuals as well as transitionrelated medical coverage). By using the CEI as a guide, businesses can ensure that their existing policy and benefit infrastructure is inclusive of the LGBT workforce and their families, resulting in greater recruitment and retention of a talented, diverse workforce.
The most significant progress in the CEI has been the wide-scale adoption of transgender inclusive initiatives across businesses.
- A full 82 percent of the Fortune 500 have gender identity protections enumerated in their non-discrimination policies and 96 percent of the entire CEI universe of businesses offer explicit gender identity non-discrimination protections in the U.S.
- Fifty percent of the Fortune 500 and nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of the CEI universe of businesses offer transgender-inclusive health care coverage, up from 0 in 2002 and over six times as many businesses as five years ago. With 136 new employers offering this coverage in the 2017 report, this represents the greatest increase in a single year of employers offering transgender-inclusive health care benefits.
- A majority of CEI-rated businesses (86 percent) offer education and training programs that specifically include definitions and/ or scenarios on gender identity in the workplace; and,
- Nearly four-hundred (387) major businesses have adopted gender transition guidelines for employees and their teams to establish best practices in transgender inclusion.
These reflect low-cost, high yield investments in major businesses’ talent as well as in their broader profile as forward-looking, responsible businesses. Top-rated CEI employers span nearly every industry and major geography of the United States. Of the employers in the CEI with global operations (57 percent), a strong majority (98 percent) has extended sexual orientation and gender identity-based workplace protections throughout their international operations.
In addition to the depth of investment the top-rated businesses have made in the name of equality, the 2017 CEI shows an unprecedented breadth of brand new businesses. This year’s CEI contains an impressive 72 new businesses that opted into the survey. A grand total of 5,228 major brands fall under rated CEI businesses.
