The main focus of this issue is sexual orientation equality.Best practice survey
We surveyed employers from the top 100 gay-friendly organisations in Stonewall’s equality index, gaining examples of policy from 30 organisations across sectors and representing a range of small, medium and large employers. The sector with the largest response was the police service, demonstrating the commitment amongst many police forces to address a perception by lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people that the police are not sympathetic to them. Our findings show that some police forces have been particularly active on LGB issues. Many of their employment policies are closely related to action being taken to engage with the LGB community, and include ways of dealing with homophobic hate crime.
Most organisations have made changes to their employment policies; for example, to ensure they expressly cover samesex partners. Many have LGB networks and champions that play an important role in raising awareness of LGB issues and provide support for LGB employees.
Monitoring, as in all areas of diversity, is important. However, disclosing one’s sexuality can be a sensitive issue and it is clear that employers must reassure employees that they take LGB issues seriously to encourage them to be open about their sexual orientation. The problem is that guidance states that employers should assure employees of anonymity, which can then make monitoring more difficult. Our respondents share ways in which they encourage employees to disclose their sexuality in monitoring exercises.
Our case study on sexual orientation is on the organisation that topped the Stonewall index – Lloyds TSB. A key message from that employer is to avoid being oversensitive and cautious, and to discuss issues of sexual orientation in the same way as other issues. It learned that it needed to be confident in what it was doing for LGB employees, in order for the employees themselves to feel confident that coming out was the right thing to do. So, for example, when the LGB network was first set up, letters were sent to members at their home. But the bank stopped doing that at the request of the staff – it was felt to be secretive and separate from the organisation.
When the bank’s strategy was out in the open – with mentoring, training, networks and top-level commitment – a culture change happened quite rapidly.
One of the future challenges identified by Lloyds TSB is engaging with lesbian employees who, it discovered, still are not as accepted by colleagues as gay men.
Included in In the Courts this month is the EAT decision in Grainger plc v Nicholson, where the EAT held that a belief in climate change and the environment is capable of falling within the meaning of religion or belief in the discrimination legislation. An important aspect of the case is that it concludes that a belief in a political philosophy could qualify as a belief. This, argues Michael Rubenstein, leaves the way open to claims from members of fascist groups such as the British National Party, and that the suggestion for dealing with such beliefs (as not “worthy of respect in a democratic society”) is too subjective. He suggests, in his Diary, that a way in which some employers could lawfully keep fascists out of the workplace could be through application of the genuine occupational requirement exception, relying on the fact that the Regulations apply to “non-belief” as well as beliefs.
Also in In the Courts are two cases on compensation awards. We report the EAT decision to increase the Vento range of awards in line with inflation (Da’Bell v NSPCC).
In the Court of Appeal decision in Chagger, the court rules that an employer who unlawfully discriminates by dismissing an employee can be liable for “stigma loss”, compensating for the effect on the employee’s career for the stigma of having taken legal proceedings against their former employer.
Subscribers to EOR Online can read the full text of all the articles mentioned above as well as our usual news, diary and case reports in Issue 195.
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