This criteria is designed to familiarize an organization with best practices, from The Joint Commission and other sources, to promote equity and inclusion for LGBTQ employees.
Reviewing the practices implemented by other organizations and recommended by experts, an organization can identify and address gaps in their policies and practices. A healthcare organization’s LGBTQ employees play a vital role in ensuring LGBTQ patient-centered care by informally educating their co-workers about patient concerns, offering feedback about organizational policies and practices, and conveying to the local community their organization’s commitment to equity and inclusion.
It is critical that LGBTQ employees, like LGBTQ patients, receive equal treatment, particularly vis-à-vis health-related benefits and policies. Competitive employer-provided benefits’ packages are critical to attracting and retaining talent. From healthcare coverage to retirement investments and more, ensuring LGBTQ-inclusive benefits to employees and their families is an overall low-cost, high-return proposition for businesses. In addition, equitable benefits structures align with the principle of equal compensation for equal work. Apart from actual wages paid, benefits account, on average, for approximately 30 percent of employees’ overall compensation. Therefore, employers should ensure that this valuable bundle of benefits is equitably extended to their workforce, irrespective of sexual orientation and gender identity. When denied equal benefits coverage, the cost to LGBTQ workers and their families is profound.
These policies are also informed by the HRC Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, or CEI. The CEI is the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.
This criterion is divided into two scored subsections. The first subsection consists of 13 scored questions and like the other criterion sections you can either receive full or partial credit depending upon how many initiatives you have in place. The second subsection is related to the provision of transgender healthcare benefits for your employees and is worth 5 points.
There are 13 scored questions in this subsection. In order to receive full credit for this section (15 points), your facility must have at least 6 or more of these best practices in place. Facilities that have 3 to 5 of these best practices in place will receive a partial score of 10 for this section of the criterion.
Scored best practices include:
Healthcare benefits impacting transgender employees
The question in this subsection is scored independently and must be met in order to attain Leader status.