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.
To receive credit, your facility must:
Upload summary plan documentation of health insurance coverage with the eligibility and definitions section(s) that define who is eligible for benefits. These definitions must include same-sex spouses as well as different-sex spouses AND the health insurance contract must have the same requirements for same and different-sex spouses. Definitions noting “legally married spouse” (or variations of this) will count.
More information:
In 2015, the United States Supreme Court determined in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a Constitutional right to marry nationwide. Any business that provides benefits based on marriage to an employee's different-sex spouse must now provide marital benefits to an employee's same-sex spouse.
HRC’s annual review of summary plan documents via the Corporate Equality Index reveals gaps updating the definition of “spouse” for the purposes of defining eligible dependents across benefit plans.
Plans submitted in the 2016 survey included references to the “Defense of Marriage Act” (ruled unconstitutional in the United States v. Windsor in 2013) as well as language that would define a “spouse” as an opposite-sex spouse only. Such language is out of step with the current law, post-Windsor, and post-Obergefell, and should be updated to ensure clear access for all legally wed couples, both same and different-sex.
Examples:
To receive credit, your facility must:
Upload current documentation of domestic partner coverage that clearly indicates unmarried domestic partners are eligible for healthcare benefits.
More information:
Learn more about why HRC strongly recommends continued provision of domestic partner benefits. See this piece from the HEI 2017 for more information.
Examples:
To receive credit, your facility must:
Upload a copy of your family and medical leave policy.
More information:
Examples:
To receive credit, your facility must:
Upload a copy of your bereavement leave policy.
Examples:
To receive credit, your facility must:
Provide who your healthcare insurer is, how the benefit is communicated to employees, and upload the summary plan documentation (or summary material modification documentation) that is readily available for all employees both prior to selecting and after enrolling in the plan that explicitly indicates coverage is available.
More information:
Your healthcare plan must meet the following baseline criteria without exclusion for medically necessary care:
For the HEI, facilities must submit two different documents to validate and prove the availability of these benefits.
More information:
Examples:
In order to receive credit, a facility must:
Upload a copy of the gender transition guidelines.
More information:
It is often said that when a person transitions gender, everyone around them transitions along with them. In other words, a workplace transition involves change not only for the employee but also for their manager, colleagues and clients.
Business leaders know the importance of proper planning, communication and training in implementing successful organizational change. A successful gender transition is no different. A little planning can go a long way to ensuring a successful outcome for all involved — the transitioning employee, managers, colleagues and clients/customers.
Gender transition guidelines, a written set of guidelines to manage an on-the-job gender transition, outline protocols for gender transitions that clearly delineate responsibilities and expectations of transitioning employees, their supervisors, colleagues and other staff.
Here are some examples of gender transition guidelines:
In order to receive credit, a facility must:
Provide the contact information of the group and either provide a public webpage for the group or upload other documentation demonstrating how employees are made aware of this group.
More information:
Visit our comprehensive page on LGBTQ employee groups to learn about the different types of groups organizations have, the objectives of such groups, see example established employee resource groups, and more information on establishing an employee group or expanding your existing group.
Examples:
In order to receive credit, a facility must:
Provide a link to a website describing the work of this office/council OR upload a document demonstrating that LGBTQ diversity is part of its mission.
Examples:
In order to receive credit, a facility must:
Upload a copy of the survey and/or the results demonstrating the inclusion of LGBTQ demographic measures.
More information:
Examples:
In order to receive credit, a facility must:
Upload a copy of the survey and/or the results demonstrating the inclusion of LGBTQ specific questions.
More information:
Examples:
In order to receive credit, a facility must:
Provide a screenshot of the demographic section of its HRIS showing sexual orientation and gender identity options.
Examples:
In order to receive credit, a facility must:
Provide validation of an internally held and employee-focused LGBTQ awareness day such as newsletter article, photos, flyer.
More information:
Some LGBTQ holidays your facility might celebrate include (but are not limited to):
Examples:
To receive credit, your facility must:
Describe how hiring efforts are proactively LGBTQ-inclusive and upload any related materials. Simply having an employment non-discrimination statement that includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” posted on job descriptions or career website does not count for this criterion.
More information:
See our page on LGBTQ professional recruitment events to find recruitment or career events with a national focus. You can also reach out to your local LGBTQ community center to see if there is an LGBTQ job fair in your area.
Examples:
To receive credit, your facility must:
Provide the name of the person and their position. This must be a senior/executive-level administrator at your organization.
More information:
The presence of visible LGBTQ employees in management communicates to the LGBTQ employees of your company that their company is open and accepting and enables LGBTQ employees to be open at work, which in turn improves their engagement and retention.
Check out HRC's "The Cost of the Closet and Rewards of Inclusion" report which finds that despite a changing social and legal landscape for LGBTQ people, still over half (53%) of LGBTQ workers nationwide hide who they are at work.