Global law firm Pinsent Masons yesterday beat competition from the UK Security Service (MI5) and a northern English fire department to be named the country’s most LGBT-friendly workplace.
LGBT rights charity Stonewall handed out the award, saying that Pinsent Masons had introduced “a range of inclusive policies and practices for lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.”
Nearly 450 firms had competed to be recognized as Britain’s most LGBT-inclusive employer, which has previously been won by companies ranging from Lloyds Bank PLC and housing association Gentoo Group.
“As a business, we have an obligation to seek to promote progress where we think it is right to do so,” Pinsent Masons senior partner Richard Foley said.
Foley said increasing diversity was a “social and moral obligation” — both for individual companies and the overall business world — and the best way to win back the trust of a skeptical and disengaged public.
“Corporations and the corporate world have the responsibility to re-earn the trust that we lost at the time of the global financial crisis,” he said.
Almost 4 million people — or 6 percent of the population — in Britain identify as LGBT+ and surveys suggest that more diverse workplaces make good business sense.
“When you say this stuff out loud, it’s just blindingly obvious from a moral point of view — or whether you embrace it for very good business sense,” Foley said.
The London-based law firm, which employs more than 3,000 worldwide, had launched “specific trans-inclusive staff training to create a welcoming environment for trans colleagues, clients and visitors,” Stonewall said in a statement.
Pinsent Masons runs offices in 13 nations, including countries such as Qatar and Singapore, which still criminalize gay sex.
“If you go into a country, you can actually help to promote progress,” Foley said.
The firm was part of a 29-strong consortium, including the bank Santander Group and professional services firm Deloitte, that last year issued a statement calling for marriage equality in Northern Ireland, which retains a ban on same-sex weddings.
The firm, which has 449 partners across 24 offices worldwide, has also been vocal on UK’s gaping gender pay gap.
Legislation requiring companies with more than 250 employees to publish salary data passed into law in 2017, and the results show a persistent lag in women’s pay and promotion to top posts.
Yet while there has been subsequent investigation of pay gaps for black and ethnic minorities, there remains little information on whether gay or trans people are paid the same as their heterosexual colleagues.
“We certainly should be discussing this,” Foley said.
However, he said that establishing a metric would be difficult as many people were not “out” at work.
For instance, Foley said that he did not know the number of LGBT partners at Pinsent Masons.
Thirty-five percent of British employees hide their sexual orientation at work, Stonewall said.
Research by the Boston Consulting Group based on 4,000 staff in 12 countries found that just half of LGBT employees were open about their sexuality.
The next three companies in Stonewall’s annual list were law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, the Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service and MI5.
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