Making Your Small Business Workplace LGBT-Inclusive, presented by HRC

Hello, everyone. My name is Stephen Morris, and I am the online media coordinator for the U.S. small Business Administration. I'd like to welcome you to today's webinar. This webinar is made possible through a public private partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, which is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality. These partnerships allow the federal government and the private sector to come together in support of the small business community. It allows us to hold free webinars like this on a variety of different topics. In just a moment, I will turn over to Dina Fetus, the Director of Workplace Equality for hrc. But before I do that, I want to say a little bit about why SBA is so excited about this partnership. We know that as small business owners and entrepreneurs, you need more of two things. Time and money. Our mission at SBA is to provide the nation's 28 million small businesses with the support they need in a world where time and money are both short. We do this through what we call the three Cs. First, SBA provides capital to small businesses in the form of guaranteed loans to start, expand, export, or recover from a disaster. Second, we help small businesses with government contracts, which is a $100 billion market. And finally, what brings us here today is that SBA provides counseling services, often at no cost. Many of you might be familiar with the SBA Resource Partner Network, which includes small business development centers, SCORE mentors, women's business centers, veterans business centers, and our SBA field offices. I encourage you to visit sba.gov to learn more about what services and events you can find in our Resource Partner Network. In addition to the Resource Partner Network, we work with private companies and nonprofit organizations to bring in expertise and in high priority and emerging areas like LGBT workplace protections and non discrimination laws. As America celebrates LGBT Pride Month amid a rapidly changing landscape, we hope you're able to take away a few concrete steps for your small business from the experts who follow LGBT issues every day. So let's get started. I'd like to now turn it over to Dina from hrc.

Dina, thank you so much, Steven. And thank you to everybody who's joining us today. Hopefully, this is one of many conversations you'll have with us with the Small Business Administration and with your cohorts. Again, thank you so much to the SBA for this partnership. My name is Dina Feedoff. I'm the Director of the Workplace Equality Program here at hrc. After this, you have any questions or would like to be in touch, you can check us out on the web HRC.org or email us directly@workplacehrc.org so just in case there are folks that aren't as familiar with the Human Rights Campaign as Susan mentioned, we are the nation's largest LGBT civil rights organization. We are approaching 2 million members and supporters nationwide and also have a steady and heavy footprint across social media. So we let you know about that, really, because as small business owners, so much of today's commerce is intertwined with social media and with these types of efforts as we move forward, if you have an idea or you have questions pertaining to how you can best position yourself as an LGBT inclusive employer and engage with social media, we're happy to do so. So for the most part, my specific program, the Workplace Equality Program, has been known for the last 15 years of building greater workplace equality. We do this through our flagship Corporate Equality Index report, of which you may be familiar. Begun in 2002, this is the nation's premier benchmarking survey to examine how larger businesses, primarily Fortune 500, Fortune 1000, American Lawyer, Amloss Top 200 Law Firms, and others, many of which we would guess, you all are already doing business with or hope to do business with. So we're here to give you that context of our work. Also, we have an extensive database of information on employers. We have a number of resources that we regularly update but also develop. And a little bit later this summer we will be releasing a small business toolkit. So as far as what we're going to try to narrow down on today, and it's still a lot for the hour that we have together. But number one, so that you can readily reference this after the this webinar, where to find the latest information about changing laws and regulations. Second, the key points as to why fostering an inclusive workplace can make employees more productive. When we talk about making employees more productive and engaged, we're talking both about those who do identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, but also the general population. Increasingly, what are known as allies have become some of the most invested parties, if you will, in LGBT workplace equality. Those who aren't LGBT themselves, but perhaps are the proud parent of, sibling of, friend of. And lastly, we're going to give you a succinct roadmap for what are the safeguards, non discrimination policies and other critical workplace initiatives that should be part of your building blocks for LGBT workplace equality. So first, as I mentioned, the lay of the land one really couldn't pick up a newspaper this last year or even today without seeing breakthroughs in the legal and civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. What's most salient to us is the extent to which the major business community from small, medium and large size businesses have risen to not only afford their own employees with equitable workplace policies and protections, but most notably, there's been a significant uptick in the extent to which businesses are speaking out publicly to support LGBT equality under the law. And by that we mean federal legislation, we mean friend of the court briefs. Certainly this week was the one year anniversary of the Windsor decision. For that and the Perry decision, we had dozens and dozens of small, medium and larger sized businesses weigh in ahead of the Supreme Court decision to essentially say that the Defense of Marriage act is harmful to business and also that a stance affirming marriage equality is very much in their business interest. So with that, when we talk about the lay of the land, socially, politically and legally, key here from an employer standpoint is an understanding of relationship recognition. We use that terminology as opposed to marriage because there are varying state laws. So while there are challenges moving forward, every state that is in this gray or sort of white, gray color on the map is one that has not legalized same sex marriage. Those that are in yellow do have marriage equality. Those in blue and green have spousal equivalency and some spousal rights. Now, this will have implications for your extension of benefits, but also it's worth the snapshot to look at the ways in which, if you're trying to attract and retain talent or even move talent across state lines, conceivably you could be asking an LGBT employee to be moving from a state that recognizes their legal standing as a couple, as a family, to a state that doesn't. So while that's traditionally more applicable to mid and large sized businesses, we certainly see plenty of businesses on state borders. Taking this very much into consideration, the second key map here. And these are all almost identical. Again, those that are in white. These are states that afford no public accommodations protections on the explicit basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. So what that means is public parks, other matters within public domain for which people are typically protected on the basis of their race, gender, et cetera. Similar protections do not currently exist for the LGBT community. Those states in the dark green, California, Nevada, Colorado, Maine, Vermont. These are states that have explicit protections on the basis of what is sometimes shorthanded as SOGI or sexual orientation and gender identity. And lastly, most applicable to employers, this is the state non discrimination law map as it pertains to employment. And so even though there's been significant culture shifts. Certainly, the announcement of the intention of President Obama to sign an executive order cuts across this map in terms of stipulating workplace protections for government contractors. But looking at the most broader national view of the country, every state in white is a state that does not, on its own, explicitly protect employees from hiring, firing, promotional practices that would, in our opinion, wrongfully take into account that person's sexual orientation or gender identity. So those with purple have sexual orientation protections. Gender identity did pass in Maryland and will be implemented, and those in orange have explicit protections across both. So while we're on the subject of SOGI and these acronyms, let's just take one quick pause. Sorry. Give you the web location of these maps. Again, all of this is public information provided by the Human Rights Campaign. But as we talk about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, I just want to take one quick moment to recap the terminology here. It is very important from both a legal standpoint, but also a cultural standpoint in terms of the climate of inclusion that hopefully you're cultivating with your clients, your customers, your employees, and perhaps your owners. So, number one, sexual orientation. This is sometimes wrongfully assumed to be something that only, for example, gay people have, only lesbian people have. Are bisexual. But in fact, everybody has asexual orientation, and this is somebody's enduring physical, emotional attraction to somebody of the same and or opposite gender. So there is, in fact, a whole spectrum here. But again, in the context of workplace policies, sexual orientation can refer to somebody being lgbt. It can refer to somebody being heterosexual or cisgender, meaning not transgender. Now, transgender is a broad umbrella term that encompasses a lot of experiences. But what is core to that experience is often that a gender identity and a gender expression are different from, for example, a birth, assigned sex, or just broader societal norms about how men should behave, how women should behave. So gender identity is distinct from the term sexual orientation, and it can refer to somebody's innate, deeply, profoundly felt identification as male or female, for example. And just because somebody's birth certificate has that person listed as male, for example, that individual may grow up and feel a profound inner sense of actually being female. Certainly, seeing celebrities and spokespeople advocates such as Laverne Cox on the COVID of Time magazine, we're very much in a moment in which there is an increasing discourse about transgender people. A call to action, if you will, in terms of civil rights for people who are transgender, and certainly a major role and precedent from the business community to support that. Now, gender expression is often connected to a person's gender identity, but it's certainly more fluid and much more contextually situated. Meaning that, you know, short hair, long hair can indicate masculinity or femininity depending on a cultural context. But in general, talking about somebody's gender expression in the workplace can refer to dress, grooming, speech patterns and so forth. And so why have so many businesses? What explains those headlines that we saw at the top of this? What is that business case for LGBT inclusion? Well, you all are business owners yourselves or working for small businesses. And I think of paramount interest to us is the fact that the total buying power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adult population for 2013 was projected to be US$830 billion and that's billion with a B. The 2014 stats are not quite ready, but this comes from Wittic Communications, which was actually one of the early founders of LGBT market research and polling. Second, and this is much broader in terms of encapsulating the sentiments amongst state level chambers of commerce, amongst municipalities even looking to be more LGBT inclusive. And that's the work of thought leaders such as Richard Florida who wrote the Creative class businesses will increasingly have to evaluate the legal landscape offered by a potential new location in their calculation of where to expand operations. Connected to that, we've pulled a quote from a vice president from General Mills who testified in support of the passage of the Employment Non Discrimination act, the law that would finally make the state non discrimination map completely, even in color, but it's not yet law of the land. And he said if employees cannot bring their full self to work, and if employees live in fear of being treated differently simply based on who they are, it comes at a cost to the company. And so what you really see here is number one, businesses seek to attract and retain top talent. And that top talent case is not only specific to LGBT people, but as Richard Florida discusses, the extent to which a company is truly inclusive, the extent to which a small business is truly inclusive and viewed as forward looking is often going to be what will tip the score in favor of somebody who may not even be LGBT themselves but decides to go work for the 15 person small startup as opposed to a larger corporation with less inclusive policies and less of an investment in LGBT inclusion. Also, just the sheer force of the business opportunity here, in addition to the sheer buying power of $830 billion, the LGBT community, study after study, is one that is quite savvy and loyal to many sizes of businesses that they know are really talking the talk and walking the walk. In other words, they're Treating their employees fairly, they're engaged in the community and they have that presence. And so to give you all just some further context of broader business trends, and then we'll pull out those aspects of these policies and benefits that would be slightly pivoted for small business, we're going to start by just letting you know, again, the lay of the land here. I mentioned that in 2002 we started the first corporate equality index, this national ranking again as primarily medium and large sized businesses. And in a couple of slides we'll talk about how that has had a direct effect on small businesses entering these larger businesses supply chains. But first, just to level set, hey, where are we? Is this fringe? Is this new? Is this part of mainstream business? And the answer is really a resounding yes in terms of how mainstream LGBT equality is. So at this moment in time, in just 12 years, the number of perfectly scored major companies has gone from just 13 in 2002, when admittedly this was a little more fringe, to over 300. And that covers absolutely every industry and every geography. And so when we talk about 100% scoring company, the framework for equality is the same whether you're a scored business in the corporate Equality index or whether you're a small or mid sized business seeking to be more LGBT inclusive. So really it's these four key, non discrimination, equitable benefits, competency, best practices, and public engagement. So first, non discrimination, as I mentioned, people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender are not guaranteed the same consistent protections that all workers have on the basis of their race, their ethnicity and so forth. In other words, sexual orientation and gender identity are not encoded into law in the same way that these other categories. And so instead we have a patchwork of state laws and also guidance from the administration, which brings us to some of the points we have about why it really behooves all businesses to set forth their own non discrimination policy that is in fact clear and consistent. The state level map has been changing. Just a couple of years ago, for example, when businesses ranging from Walmart to Home Depot implemented gender identity protections, that was the same year that five states implemented gender identity protections at the state level. And so businesses of any size certainly don't want to be catching up to state or federal mandates, but rather they want to be ahead of that curve and effectively train their own employees to understand these standards. So skipping around some of these bullets as to why this would behoove a business, fundamentally we're talking about affording equal opportunity. We're not talking about quotas, we're not talking about targeting one population or another to come work for you, but simply affording equal opportunity that somebody who wants to work for your business will not be discredited simply because they happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans. So again, certainly necessary for talent acquisition. It is keeping a pace with changing legal and public opinion landscapes. Again, while it isn't quite law of the land yet, a majority of people in the United States do support fundamental workplace protections for the LGBT community. There's minimal upfront cost, if any cost, and this does not raise the risk of litigation. That is one of those myths out there that is consistently debunked by study after study. Now, in terms of what exactly are we talking about? We really are simply talking about an equal opportunity statement, a non discrimination statement. We've got Costco here, but we have quite literally thousands more that you could choose from. But simply listing alongside the other characteristics that would not be the basis for employment decisions, sex, ancestry, disability, veteran status, et cetera, to add the terminology sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. So again, no sort of, you know, mystery math there or anything else. We really are talking about a very straightforward fundamental set of protections spelled out in your equal opportunity statement. Now, again, to contextualize this in terms of the titans of American business at this point in time, over 60% of the Fortune 500 include both sexual orientation and gender identity protections. And the visual on the right hand side of the screen, there is just the sheer growth in the last 12 years beyond the Fortune 500, but amongst other employers that are graded in the corporate equality index. So you see, for example, the conversation around gender identity protections, as evidenced by that 5%, was, you know, almost next to nothing within corporate America. And now 86% of all of our rated corporate equality index companies have gender identity protections. A subset of that, the Fortune 560%, have gender identity protection projections. Second, we talked about equitable benefits and I'll get into some specifics because it really falls into three key categories momentarily. But fundamentally with equitable benefits, we're talking about equal compensation for equal work. This is something that is again necessary for talent acquisition. With mandates changing, and with the striking down of the Defense of Marriage act, with state level marriage laws changing, increasingly, simply extending equitable benefits helps the business to keep a pace with the changing legal landscape and also workforce expectations. So for example, if you're a small business in the State of New York and historically you've provided spousal benefits, if your spousal benefits do not include same sex couples, then that is Well, I have to caveat this. I'm not giving you official legal advice. All signs point to that actually being grounds for a lawsuit, because again, a private business can't decide which definition of spouse they'll use when the state has already recognized both sane and different sex couples for marriage. This is typically a minimal upfront cost. Most of our data does come from larger employers. However, this is consistent across different size employers. And if there are specifics that you'd be interested in, we can certainly help you with that. But this is not something that opens the floodgates, if you will, to an overrepresentation of one population or another. But rather, our businesses continue to see this as a minimal upfront cost that yields results in, in the form of recruiting and retaining top talent. So just to further bring home the point, when we talked about equal compensation, on average, aside from actual wages paid, 20% of an employee's overall compensation comes in the form of benefits. And so if you have two similarly situated employees, one happens to be gay, one happens to be straight, and the gay employee can't access the same benefits as the straight employee, that's essentially unequal pay or unequal compensation for equal work. And that has really struck a note with businesses that we work with in terms of, you know, this is not about just special benefits or special privileges, but rather equalizing compensation in the form of benefits of across populations. The visual to the right shows the growth. The top these magenta graphics show the growth in same sex partner benefits from 69% of our rated businesses in 2002 to 90%. And that's a population of businesses that has also continued to grow, so covering more ground in terms of equitable benefits. And then the lower graphic there shows what is nothing shy of an incredibly dramatic increase in the availability of transgender inclusive benefits. And that's something that we have really pushed hard for the last couple years and gone quite literally from zero in the first CEI to 46% of our company. Beyond basic health insurance benefits, there are other benefits that can be updated and extended to same sex couples, family and bereavement leave, adoption benefits, employee discounts, if you have wellness discounts or wellness subsidies, certainly retirement benefits. The whole bundle of so called soft benefits should be extended equally to your LGBT employees. I'm going to turn now to give what amounts to probably the quickest overview of what is, in fact, a very complex subject, and that is the area of transgender inclusive benefits. Why do we enunciate, quote, transgender inclusive benefits? Because especially for those of you or Most of you, I'm guessing, who are fully insured, most commercially available insurance products have still within their books what are known as transgender exclusions. And so, just as if you've ever flipped to the back of your insurance booklet to see if your chiropractic care will be covered, or if acupuncture is covered, or if you're looking to get some sort of cosmetic surgery, rhinoplasty, often you see a long list of exclusives, in other words, what this plan won't cover. And right alongside those quote unquote cosmetic or experimental exclusions. For years the insurance industry had these exclusions like the ones we have listed here. And these are direct pulls from major health insurance products. So the second bullet, gender transformation exclusions on treatment or surgery to change gender, including any direction or indirect complications or after effects thereof. Now, what that means in a day to day reality sense and in plain English, is that somebody who is potentially on your insurance plan, you may not even know this person's gender history, seeks to alleviate migraine headaches and goes to the doctor. Well, if your plan document has an exclusion, this broadcast, the person's bills for chronic or routine care could still be denied because of this broad, broad language of indirect complications or after effects thereof, in effect linking the illness with linking the illness or the medical issue, in this case, hypothetical migraine headaches with the fact that the person has had gender affirmation surgery or treatment. And so what can smaller businesses do and bear with us? It looks like one of the graphics didn't show up, but there are really sort of three strategies. And again, many of the law firms that participate in the Corporate Equality Index help to inform this. But as a smaller employer, likely you are fully insured. So the three main options to mitigate these transgender exclusions, number one, you can self insure for add on benefits. From an employee standpoint, the experience or the look and feel of the options is the same, but you're assuming the financial risk of a smaller bundle of benefits. The second is to approach and negotiate with the insurer for add on benefits to their off the shelf plan. And then the third, which is a bit more grassroots, but certainly something that we love to see and something that can really have a deep impact on whole communities of businesses, but to connect with other area businesses to leverage your buying power. Let's say the 10 or 12 of you are the top clients of insurance company X, the top customers. You can leverage your buying power and approach that provider as a cohort and ask that these exclusions be mitigated and that medically necessary care for transgender individuals be covered as it is for anybody else. Okay, as we head into the last two categories here, I want to leave us time for questions. The third major area of LGBT inclusion speaks to competency, best practices. In other words, cultural competency. You know, one of the perhaps situations that we see on television or a way to show when a business, for example, is not culturally competent is, you know, if two men, for example, check into a hotel and the individual behind the desk of the hotel or the BNB says, oh, it must be a mistake. It has you with one king size bed. We'll fix that for you immediately. We'll ensure that you have two beds. So the lack of confidence there is that, oh, two men would certainly not be a couple, just as a man and woman would often be received as a couple. So we better split them up. We better assume what they want as our customer. That's something that I think we've seen in sitcoms, but we see it over and over again in terms of how businesses of all sizes react to their customers, whether or not they are assuming things about their customers. Again, not out of malice, but just it may not be top of mind that, hey, probably those two gentlemen know exactly what they're doing. They're out for a weekend away, and like any married couple of 15 years, they're likely to share a bet. So when we talk about that, you know, we're really talking about, it's one thing to have the policies which are necessary, but they're not sufficient for cultivating a climate or an everyday practice of inclusion, whether it's in how your employees interact with one another, how you interact with external customers, and so forth. And what we found is that even with all of the incredible progress we've had nationwide, taking into account a range of public private sector employers, a range of employer sizes, still, nationally, 53% of LGBT workers remain closeted on the job. And of course, there are particular considerations with a small working group or a small business in that it may, in fact be reasonable for the boss to think, hey, I don't think we have any LGBT people here. I'm sure I'd know if we did. But the data points to really a different conclusion, which is likely. We have somebody who's lgbt, and almost certainly we have somebody who is very closely connected to somebody who's lesbian, gay, again, a parent of, a best friend of, sibling of. So we talk about LGBT inclusion and LGBT diversity being one that is not readily apparent. You can't take A photograph of your restaurant. You can't take a photograph of your office and be able to point out just by visual cues, oh, that person must be lgbt. And this person must be proud mom of a transgender son. So because of that, it does require a different kind of training and consciousness reason about that. And we have a lot of resources that again, are publicly available. We are happy to work with you on. And of course, as all of you probably know, the old maxim, people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. So this is so important because you, you want to attract and keep people. And so the extent to which competency really is about retaining workers on the basis of what is their everyday experience like on the job. So after this call and webinar, there are a lot of sources of training and education. Certainly the Human Rights Campaign foundation, local advocacy groups, local college and university LGBT group groups can also be helpful. And so with that, I'm going to turn into the last category that in some ways is perhaps most closely linked to market opportunities for small businesses and LGBT inclusive larger businesses. And that's what we call the fourth bucket upon which we grade businesses, a public engagement or commitment to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. You see there the headline from Forbes, more companies come out for LGBT rights. Many businesses see a reputational benefit to supporting equality groups and programs. We have seen huge growth in diversity supplier opportunities. And I know that SBA has a partnership with one of our coalition partners, the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, which is really the premier source of information on this, but we certainly work with them and have integrated LGBT owned businesses into our work. We find that being open about your efforts, whether it's that you yourself are LGBT owned, you contract with LGBT owned businesses, you are invested in equality. This is something that very much appeals to Millennials and also is seen as a broader bellwether for issues of diversity and inclusion. In plain English, it's something that particularly Millennials look at to decide, hey, do I want to work for this company? Do I want to buy my tech gear from this company? And we know from our data that this is something that folks of all orientations and gender identities are in fact taking into account. So, as I said, public engagement does take several key forms. It can be sales and profit support, sponsorship, supplier diversity, marketing, recruitment, and LGBT focused job fairs and support for equality under the law. Now, through the work of the Corporate Equality Index, we talk about the fact that market norms have significantly shifted to a space where equality is the expectation, LGBT equality is the expectation. So, for example, in the 2014 Corporate Equality Index 61%, almost 2/3 of all of our CEI rated employers noted that they require suppliers to prohibit discrimination based on the protections in their own inclusive non discrimination policy. So in other words, Fortune Co. X is insisting that all those that do business with them do in fact prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And in terms of continued market opportunity, 20% of our businesses include LGBT owned businesses in their diverse supply chain procurement process. And again, if you're interested in that, the real source is the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Again, I believe SBA is partnering with them, but they have just what's happened over the last 12 years is really three key shifts in the business climate. Number one, the profile of LGBT workers as talent that businesses want to attract and retain. This has really been elevated by extension, when folks leave their job in the evening or in the morning, they spend money. And so the profile of the LGBT consumer market has been raised significantly. And third, the extent to which major businesses seek consistency in their values of equality in terms of their supply chain, diverse supply chain management in terms of just basic expectations of suppliers with whom they do business. All of this has shifted significantly to a pro equality position. And lastly, so that we can leave about 20 minutes for questions, some key takeaways. Number one, the benefits of LGBT inclusion, fundamentally improved ability to recruit and retain talent, lower turnover costs, reputational factors and the LGBT buying power. Again, whether you're looking at, you know, right now we're at the tail end of Pride month where there's just a proliferation of opportunities in which often the town in which Pride is taking place attracts thousands and thousands of visitors from across the state and even sometimes across state lines. You certainly, as the legal landscape is shifting, want to be ahead of that curve and comply with local state laws or mitigate risk. And also the fact that supplier diversity programs, if you're LGBT owned or you're seeking pro equality business, hopefully this broader context helps to to show that in fact those lucrative contracts you want built into that will be an expectation of explicit protections for sexual orientation and gender id. Steps to success. Review your own policies and practices. Add on to your non discrimination policy if you haven't already. Sexual orientation and gender identity. Look across your suite of benefits and ask the simple question, do an internal audit if you will. Do I have benefits parity for my employees with same gender partners or in same gender marriages? And am I also providing equitable health care for transgender employees? And certainly, even if you don't know of anybody in your business who is LGBT identified, as we've seen, you likely have them or you are perhaps missing out on some creative top talent. So certainly this is not something you want to wait to adjust until somebody has to ask. Definitely proactive is the name of the game here. Lastly, seek training and education. As we said at the top of this call, what SBA is doing is hopefully one of many conversations we can have. We can be a resource, SBA will be a resource. And please don't be shy about connecting with us and downloading resources from our website. Lastly, be a voice of support for local, state and federal legislation. There's not a single issue of equality upon which lawmakers don't ask. Well, tell me where the business community is on this. Perhaps most recently and most visibly, when Governor Jan Brewer in Arizona was presented with a bill from her state legislature that would have made denying LGBT people service legal, she really heard the most from the business community. Small business community, medium and large size businesses, some of whom had partnered with our partners in the state, the one community. And again, the extent to which a business speaks out on these issues connect with other pro equality businesses. Out of those often you get relationships built out, career opportunities built out, and certainly market and product opportunities and exchanges built out. So with that, we're going to pause now and round out the call and see if there are questions.

And so just a reminder, we are taking questions through the notes and you can do so by either selecting the Send Note tab at the top of your screen or the Notes tab on the right hand side of your screen and address your notes to all. Deana, we did not receive any notes during your presentation yet.

Okay.

Dean, I did send a question through to you, but we have had a couple of questions come in that I believe I can address. A couple people are asking if we are going to have this available to them and I believe the answer is yes. You will be emailing it out in a PDF and it will be available on YouTube.

Certainly. And I think I can see the other two questions here. I'll answer the first one because it's quite, it's a streamlined question. The second one is maybe a little more multidimensional. So the first one for small business owners, is there a specific logo that can be displayed to show that you're LGBT friendly? I'm so thankful you asked because in the coming weeks HRC is unveiling our equality as our business toolkit. And so that will be something that is a tool of education and engagement and has affiliated logos and Collateral. So we're partnering with SB to ensure that all those that showed interest on this call that we can stay in touch with you as we roll out that small business initiative. The other question is broader. Are there lessons from small firms approaching diversity for the first time? Common mistakes, missteps, or things overlooked? Diversity is normally an HR function. Larger firms, but smaller firms don't have HR departments. Small business owners do it on their own. So an excellent, excellent question. I think one of the first aspects of potential pitfalls to avoid and aspects of success. I'm thinking of a small business we worked with in Philadelphia. And as happens with small businesses, the woman spearheading an LGBT inclusion effort effectively wore five hats. She was managing their payroll. She was looking at external opportunities with the community with marketing and recruiting, and was also sort of a soundboard, if you will, to employees internally who were having challenges. Basically an HR function, but certainly a multidimensional one in a small firm. And one of the issues she had is her very well intentioned idea was to compile a small list of the people she knew to be lgbt, but she had learned about their being LGBT through different means. So one was through a job recruiting fair, one or two were folks that had come out or she had heard about them through, you know, through the grapevine, not in again, a negative way. So what started as a very good inclination is to communicate to a small group of people about a fledgling initiative. To have a little LGBT group or some targeted marketing and programming was actually something that in execution could have felt jarring to some people who were not ready to be out. In other words, people who didn't realize this woman knew that they were gay would suddenly get an email or confidence. So thankfully she reached out to us before she did this. And one thing that we strongly encourage is that when embarking on an LGBT inclusion initiative, or even just starting that conversation, that one it encompass other forms of inclusion. For example, many people with disabilities have to come come out as having a disability. They're not always readily or visually apparent. So framing something in the context of what types of characteristics and demographics are we all bringing to the workplace that may have an effect on our work that may actually be an untapped source of knowledge and creativity. And opening that conversation in a broader context. The second key component here speaks to what was her well intentioned thought, which was, I'll communicate my LGBT inclusion initiatives to those people I think are lgbt. And you know, what could have been, what was better about the direction we went is to not assume that One you know, who all the LGBT folks are, or that this initiative would only appeal to somebody who's gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. So to make things as broad and widely encompassing as possible would be ideal. And I'm just glancing again now at the second set of questions. Okay, so perhaps connected to this, there's a comment and set of questions about the fact that many small business clients experience a struggle of keeping up with the larger companies. And certainly there's often more flexibility. But I would also translate some of the assets of being a smaller employer with far less, if any, red tape and bureaucracy. Play these to your advantage. So a couple of best practices come to mind. The extent to which one of our smaller firms negotiated their transgender inclusive coverage with their health insurance provider. So again, they did not have the flexibility of being a big question corporation with a big self funded plan, but rather they did something that might seem really unorthodox. They had a very frightened conversation with the account executive that they were working with at the insurance company and explained that this is something that they needed to do. They were seeing this as an emerging trend across their industry. They also wanted to distinguish themselves as being a smaller employer of choice and they were able to negotiate with negligible costs the inclusion of the transgender coverage. So at the level of benefits, this is something that there is both. Strength in numbers, if we can use today's webinar as a jumping off point for wider cohort work, if you will, in terms of impressing upon area insurance providers that LGBT inclusion really needs to be more of the norm in their off the shelf products. But it's hard to paint completely with a broad brush about what is truly best in class for a small versus a large business. It really depends on making the business case internally, depending on your desired business outcomes. And so again, taking it out of the jargon, what does that mean? Well, if you are seeing seeking to position yourself amongst key clients, then one way to do that is to look at leverage. The data we have in terms of the large businesses that, for example, are seeking LGBT owned businesses in their supply chain. Look at both national and regional organizations like the Human Rights Campaign as a convener of local community members, companies and so forth, all of whom may be opportunities to network and do business with. So, you know, in short, almost like looking for a job, you know, position yourself for that success. Tap into these networks, whether it's the large businesses from which you want to actually solicit contracts, if it is the, you know, social and area business networks across employer size all of that can be quite helpful. The third is, you know, certainly earned media. The narratives to date really speak to many large businesses. You know, weighing in on marriage, publicly weighing in on legislation. One way to really differentiate yourself in the community. You know, pen and op ed. Talk about why LGBT inclusion matters at your business, and likely you may be one of the first voices out of the gate, and you will be affirmed. You know, I was just in a meeting this morning with a small business in which somebody said, you know, people just came out of the woodwork. Once we put this conversation forth, we were really pleasantly surprised by how much support we got after the fact. So those are a couple of. Those are a couple of key tips here. And I'm looking at the clock and also leaning on our moderator. Yeah, there's a really helpful comment about more community colleges implementing LGBT groups, that it would be beneficial to attend their meetings to become more aware of their trends and thoughts as you speak to them about opportunities that exist in the workplace. So certainly, again, tapping into your prospective employee pool is a great way to keep a pace with this. Okay, with that, I see that we're at the 3 o' clock by my clock, so I'll turn back to the moderator. But just again, let you all know that we welcome your feedback, your questions, workplacehrc.org and thank you so much to Stephen Morris and the entire team at the Small Business Administration for this partnership.