The Human Side of Work: Why LGBTQ+ Inclusion depends on Courage, Clarity and Culture
Featuring insights from Jim Glennon, MCIPD, HR Leader, Trainer and Pride UK Quality Standard Assessor
This article is part of The Human Side of Work, a monthly conversation series exploring culture, wellbeing, leadership, and the lived experience of working life in the charity sector. Each conversation offers a reflective and honest perspective from an experienced HR leader on what work is really asking of people and organisations today.
Introducing Pride QS: A national standard designed to strengthen LGBTQ+ inclusion at work
Before diving into the conversation, it’s important to understand the organisation behind Jim’s work. Pride UK Quality Standard (Pride QS) is a not‑for‑profit CIC delivered by a team of CIPD‑qualified LGBTQ+ HR professionals who specialise in strengthening LGBTQ+ inclusion across UK workplaces.
Through a blend of national accreditation, policy review, confidential staff surveys and bespoke training, Pride QS supports organisations to:
- Build confidence and competence among staff
- Strengthen policies and organisational culture
- Improve the lived experience of LGBTQ+ employees
- Ensure services are inclusive, safe and respectful for LGBTQ+ users and customers
Their work sits at the intersection of compliance, culture, wellbeing and human dignity, which is exactly why their insights matter so deeply to the charity sector.
In every charity, every team and every service environment, the quality of work people deliver is shaped by one thing above all else: whether they feel safe enough to be themselves.
It’s a truth felt acutely by LGBTQ+ colleagues across the sector. Despite decades of progress, research continues to show a persistent gap between what organisations say about inclusion and what LGBTQ+ people experience day to day.
As the Government Equalities Office has long reported, discrimination, harassment and bullying remain a reality for LGBTQ+ people in the workplace, particularly for those with minority gender identities. Pride UK Quality Standard data echoes this: only 36% of LGBTQ+ people feel comfortable being out at work, and 5–7% of employees in SMEs consistently report witnessing harassment or negative attitudes, even in organisations that consider themselves inclusive.
Policy vs. Lived Experience: “People aren’t raising issues, and that silence is the problem.”
One of the clearest patterns Jim sees is not just the presence of discriminatory behaviour, but the reluctance of staff to report it.
Even where organisations have EDI, equality, or anti‑bullying policies, they often fail to name the LGBTQ+ identities explicitly. For LGBTQ+ employees who may have grown up or worked through decades where being out was unsafe, that silence matters. As Jim puts it:
“Seeing explicit reference to sexual orientation and gender reassignment as protected characteristics under the Equality Act in organisation policies reassures LGBTQ+ staff. A broad equality statement isn’t enough today, history tells us why.”
This is especially stark when it comes to supporting trans staff. Many organisations still lack a transitioning-at-work policy, meaning the first trans employee to come out ends up carrying the emotional labour of “becoming the case study”, navigating their own transition while educating the organisation simultaneously.
It’s here that lived experience and structural gaps collide. Without clear guidance, HR becomes reactive, not supportive. Without explicit policy language, staff assume LGBTQ+ issues fall outside “normal” complaint procedures. The result? Issues stay “under the radar,” unaddressed, and quietly normalised.
The Role of Leadership: “Your job isn’t to keep the peace. It’s to keep people safe.”
Perhaps the most powerful theme from our conversation was the role of leadership courage.
Some leaders fear naming LGBTQ+ inclusion will “upset other groups,” particularly those with strong religious beliefs. Jim has heard it more than once. But he’s clear:
“Your job is not to keep the peace. It’s to keep everyone safe and that absolutely includes LGBTQ+ people. While religion and belief is rightly protected by the Equality Act, that doesn’t mean people with homo-phobic, bi-phobic or trans-phobic beliefs can be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people at work.”
Safety, in this sense, isn’t symbolic. It’s behavioural. It’s cultural. And it starts with leaders communicating clearly, publicly, and repeatedly that their organisation is a Zero‑tolerance environment for homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.
This doesn’t require funding. It doesn’t require a campaign. It can be as simple as a chief executive saying at a staff meeting or in an organisation email: “This is a safe workplace for LGBTQ+ colleagues.”
Small statements like this carry enormous weight, especially for newer or more vulnerable staff. They also set cultural expectations that filter through every team, policy and line management decision.
The Data Gap: Why charities must collect LGBTQ+ inclusion data and what’s at stake when they don’t.
One of the most significant challenges in the charity sector is the absence of reliable data on LGBTQ+ employees.
Few charities track sexual orientation or gender identity in their HR systems. Even fewer report on pay, progression or inclusion outcomes for LGBTQ+ colleagues. Without data, organisations cannot see where inequity exists, and without that visibility, psychological safety becomes harder to cultivate. As Jim say’s, “If you don’t count us, we don’t count’ and his advice is simple: make LGBTQ+ data collection routine, expected and confidential.
Confidentiality is paramount. Many LGBTQ+ employees are not out to senior management, often because the culture has not yet earned their trust. External survey facilitation, guaranteeing confidentiality, can remove that barrier and unlock essential insights.
Three practical steps:
- Include LGBTQ+ questions at induction, alongside ethnicity and disability
- Add meaningful LGBTQ+ questions to annual staff satisfaction surveys
- Use external organisations to manage LGBTQ+‑specific surveys, ensuring true anonymity
Charity staff are often overextended, but opting out of LGBTQ+ inclusion‑related surveys should not be acceptable. Leadership must set the tone: participating in data-gathering is part of the organisation’s commitment to equity; this should be an EDI requirement, not an EDI option.
Wellbeing, Minority Stress and the Long Shadow of History
Pride UK training materials point to research showing LGBTQ+ employees experience higher rates of anxiety and depression, which can directly impact performance and retention. Jim places this within the broader concept of minority stress, the cumulative psychological impact of years or decades of discrimination.
Even as legislation has changed, the effects of past hostility persist, particularly for older LGBTQ+ colleagues who lived through criminalisation, medicalisation – including electric shock treatment –, and systemic stigma.
An LGBTQ+ person reading a staff handbook will look for themselves in it. If what they see is silence, they feel the organisation’s silence. If what they see is explicit inclusion, they feel seen.
Genuine organisational care requires more than policy; it requires weaving LGBTQ+ visibility into everyday communication, wellbeing resources, leadership messages, and the subtle signals that shape day‑to‑day working life.
Culture Is the Real Work: “Explicit. Consistent. Embedded.”
Across every theme in the conversation, one message echoed: culture is the foundation.
An inclusive culture is not created by a single policy, survey or training programme. It is created by:
- Explicit language in every relevant policy
- Consistent leadership messaging throughout the year, not just during Pride Month
- Embedded expectations that discrimination will be acted on
- Normalised conversations about identity, safety, and belonging
- HR teams are empowered and trained to respond to LGBTQ+ issues with confidence
- Systems and surveys that give voice to LGBTQ+ workplace experiences otherwise hidden
None of these steps operates in isolation. Together, they shape the day-to-day realities that allow LGBTQ+ colleagues to thrive and that help organisations live up to the values they often champion publicly.
A Final Reflection
The charity sector prides itself on compassion, fairness and humanity. But compassion without action is sentiment, not change. As Jim’s insights make clear, LGBTQ+ inclusion today requires more courage, more clarity and more intentionality than ever, particularly in a political climate where LGBTQ+ rights are contested, and trans people are routinely debated rather than supported.
Work, at its best, should be a place where people do not have to hide. Where safety is not conditional. Where lived experience is honoured. Where inclusion is not a statement but a practice.
Ultimately, it’s not whether HR supports LGBTQ+ inclusion specifically (though that’s very important in current times), it’s whether people at work experience HR leadership as inclusive to all people, whether they are LGBTQ+ or not, and if HR leaders can build an inclusive organisational culture where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work.
Additional Resources: Please see Pride QS website for FREE monthly lunchtime webinars. These are aimed at HR leaders and cover a range of topics such as policies. https://www.prideukqualitystandard.com/services-4
Thank you for reading this article.
With gratitude,
Tatiana
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