A good place to start

Stonewall has released it’s fourth edition of Starting Out, the national guide for students and job-switchers who want to choose a gay-friendly employer.

With such a vast variety of sectors now available to the university graduate, the gay campaign group has decided to make it easy and include 325 employers in it’s guide that are committed to improving their workplace for lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.

All the organisations are part of Stonewalls Diversity Champions programme, meaning they are actively working towards an environment of equality, one free from fear and discrimination.

It is becoming more and more common to see discerning job-seekers looking for positions where they are truly valued as individuals. Similarly British companies are looking to attract and retain the very best staff in order to reduce their costs, increase profitability and remain market leaders.

The guide can be used as a first point of call and offers practical help and advice. It looks at the rights of the employee in the workplace.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, says: “We want this guide to offer hundreds of thousands of lesbian, gay and bisexual job-seekers the power to take their skills and talents to an employer that will value them.”

Since 2003 it’s been unlawful to discriminate in the workplace on grounds of sexual orientation. Businesses recognise this and many have chosen to go that one step further and be pro-active in making the job a more manageable and accepting space for their workforce.

David Shields, Stonewall’s director of workplace programmes is responsible for the guide and the Diversity Champions programme. which are designed to make sure that workplace equality laws are used in practice.

He says: “The purpose of the guide, for me, is to bring together all of Stonewall’s knowledge on businesses and there commitments to diversity and equality. It allows graduates and people wanting a career change to start their search and seek out the best employer for them.”

A big supporter of the programme is the NUS LGBT society which has fully backed the guide and sees it as a way to encourage other organisations to do more for their queer employees.

NUS says it is a resource that reflects the values and principles that students and their universities have always fought for.

And the employment experts believe that in recognising, establishing and promoting diversity in employment we can step away from gay stereotypes. It is a huge misconception that gay employees end up in certain sectors of community but as Shields puts it: “There is no such thing as a gay employer. Some areas just attract the gay community for social reasons.”

Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are active all over the workforce and range from retail to doctors to lawyers, each with their own need to have gay representation.

Students are encouraged to make the most out of the career options available to them and look to Starting Out as the foundation of their search.

Stonewall also runs a Workplace Equality Index, which rates companies from one to 100 on how well they perform when it comes to looking after their gay staff and how committed they are to the gay community. To make the guide more useful, the WEI ranking for each firm has been included in the guide.

There are also case-studies for each employer, so would-be staff can see what their future colleagues think of working there.

But for people who are still unsure on how to deal with their sexuality in a workplace setting, Shields has some advice.

“Be open about it,” he says, “it’s a part of you so a part of the job. Don’t compromise yourself.”

It doesn’t have to mean going into the workforce with Kylie blasting out of the stereo and rainbow flags covering your computer screen, each individual has their own needs when it comes to sexual orientation and how to express it.

Even more importantly, Stonewall wants to encourage job-seekers to look beyond the stereotypical sectors that gay employees traditionally work in. The guide is designed to make you aware of companies you may not think are good employers when it comes to diversity.

One good example are banks, which have embraced the programme and have found themselves in the guide over the last four years. They have a real commitment to the gay community and realise that some of the best staff can be found from it.

But on the down-side some sectors have been harder to reach. Shields gives some examples: “Many of the businesses not in the handbook are from sectors such as construction and care. The reason being that they have different factors when looking for workforce, they are much bigger and so should have an even bigger responsibility as their employee numbers are much greater.”

Other examples he criticises about not being active in recruiting gays are supermarkets and hotels. Shields singled out multi-national companies such as Tesco, Hilton and Virgin as not showing a lead, in his opinion. He called on these companies to review their work ethics saying that they play a large part in the global market so are influential on gay employment issues globally.

The guide will be launched on 30 October at the University of London Union from 6.30pm where guests will receive a copy as well as have the chance to chat to representatives from Stonewall.

Stonewall is distributing 20,000 copies of Starting Out across the country and will be sending them to colleges and universities. To find out how to receive a copy see stonewall.org.uk/workplace.