LGBT@Work: Conclusions / Summary Report

With an extract from American Poet Walt Whitman’s “Pioneer o Pioneer”, Santiago Iniguez, Dean of the IE Business School opened the first LGBT international business forum in Madrid. A truly remarkable event, set to become a milestone in the rights and normalisation of the LGBT community in the workplace.
In his opening speech, the Dean emphasized the importance of celebrating diversity and promoting tolerance in the workplace. Furthermore, he reinforced the notion that innovation is the result of a truly diverse environment.
His final and very inspiring remark was also borrowed from Whitman’s genius: “keep your face up to the sun and the shadow will fall behind you”.

MSD, Google, IBM, Idealista and Vueling sponsored the event that drew an international audience of nearly 70 people. In all the forum offered an impressive list of speakers and drew representatives from a variety of companies: McKinsey was represented by Jennifer Wong, Deutsche Bank by Jean Luc Vey, IBM by Albert Kehrer, MSD by Uxio Malvido, TNT by Paul Overdijk, GE by Martin Zalewski, Google by Bernardo Hernandez and two inspiring entrepreneurs: Ivan Massow and Enrique Sarasola.

The morning session focused on issues related to LGBT employees in the workplace presented by speakers with real world corporate experience.

In Germany only 10% of companies actively participate in diversity issues and only a few of those include sexual orientation in their efforts. Deutsche Bank is one of the most active and is at the forefront of such initiatives. Jean Luc Vey, from Deutsche Bank (DB), provided a thorough overview of current conditions for GLBT employees within the bank. At DB a series of internal and external initiatives contributed to the company recognizing domestic partnerships and establishing inclusive pension plans. existing initiatives range from identifying executive champions within the organization to awards recognizing the accomplishments of the LGBT community.

Vey also provided a rather shocking statistic: 42% of people in Spain still think that a openly LGBT employees would be denied a job, training or promotion because of his or her sexual orientation.

Martin Zalewski provided an interesting perspective on how GE works to make GLBT talent visible, engaged and valued through a system that attracts, develop, engages and retains GLBT employees.

Paul Overdijk, from logistics giant TNT, said “people who feel good and appreciated perform better”.

He also added that employers who have an active policy on diversity or gay issues are more attractive in professional labor markets (information based on US and UK research)

Paul concluded saying that hiding one’s true identity costs a great deal of energy and undermines professional performance.

The afternoon session focused on role of the LGBT commnunity in the marketplace and the notion that to truly understand the intricacies of an increasingly diverse and fragmented market, companies must reflect this diversity with its workforce.

In response to this Bernardo Hernández (Google), the moderator for the session, opened the general discussion citing his experience at Google where the diversity of its workforce is directly related to the diversity of its customer base.

Albert Kehrer, from IBM, added to this that customers and suppliers are global and multicultural and companies should embrace this richness to attract and retain top talent.

Albert quoted Richard Florida, an American economist and Urban Studies theorist, whose studies and research have proved that areas in the US with higher economic growth have more diverse populations.

Adding an entrepreneurial element to the session was Ivan Massow, a prolific British entrepreneur and politician, founder of Jake, the most successful online gay professional network. Ivan’s chief contribution to the gay community was to provide insurance that covered Aids/HIV treatment to the gay community in the UK.

Spanish entrepreneur Enrique Sarasola, founder of Hotel chain Room-Mate, advised the audience from a business standpoint to steer away from behaving like a ghetto - “It makes business sense to be open to all markets, not only to the [ones with a homosexual or bisexual focus]” said Enrique.

In conclusion, despite the positive tone of the event, it is clear that there’s still a long road ahead before we achieve complete equality in the workplace. For this, we have to reinforce actions that give us visibility and credibility.

The actions discussed during the Forum included:

• Fostering a constructive work environment
• Raising internal awareness
• Recruiting premier talent by recognizing visible and active employees
• Building a robust professional network
• Achieving buy-in from local management
• Encouraging the participation of the entire LGBT community - specifically lesbians

The following actions are essential in overcoming the different challenges identified during the day:

• Engage people – educating people and recognizing LGBT employees will create an increasingly friendly environment in which more and more individuals will feel to be open about who they are.
• Find opportunities to show who we really are, challenging stereotypes and prejudices
• Establish networks to bring people together to promote change and take advantage of the benefits an organized communities can provide.
• Strengthen the connections between GLBT groups and companies
• Increase the number of active companies

ieOUT would like to thank everyone and every company that participated in LGBT@Work.

In order to maintain the momentum generated in the forum, we invite you to continue the discussion on our blog (ieout,blogs.ie.edu ). We also would like to take this opportunity to reiterate our continued interest in developing further initiatives, activities and speakers in the future. Please email your ideas and suggestions to ieout@ie.edu