Gay Diversity

Gay diversity in the UK workplace. Equality and gay diversity programs. UK City investment banks target their recruitment efforts at lesbian and gay students.


Ian Johnson, Out Now
December 11, 2007

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TOPICS: Gay diversity and equality programs. Lesbian and gay community marketing. Gay community demographics. Gay marketing. Lesbian and gay market. UK investment banks recruit for gay and lesbian staff as part of gay diversity outreach programs.

Being gay at work has been a recurring theme at Gay Market News.

Whether or not to come out at work can have major impacts on lesbians and gay men, as reported yesterday in the article on LGBT workplace diversity.

One thing that is encouraging is the increase in brands and companies that are actively undertaking campus and graduate recruitment of lesbian and gay students as part of a gay diversity program.

The latest example took place in London amongst firms in the UK known as 'City Firms' -- the major investment bankers including brands such as Merrill Lynch.

UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph has an informative article about the issues that are behind this trend towards active recruitment of gay staff as part of corporate gay diversity and equality programs. Here is an extract:

Changing times for gays in the City

Not so long ago, being a lesbian or gay worker in the City was something many people chose to keep under their hats.

Times change, however, and the landscape for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (or LGBTs in the dreadful new acronym used by the banks) is unrecognisable from that of a decade ago.

The buzzword is now diversity and the world's biggest investment banks are falling over themselves to demonstrate that they welcome it in their recruits, regardless of whether it is found in their race, gender, age, physical ability or disability, or their sexuality.

[The] organisers [were] greenlightcareers.com, a partnership between recruitment marketing firm Stafford Long & Partners and graduate employment website Diversity Milkround that aims to help students meet progressive employers with an interest in supporting and promoting diversity.

Andrew Reynolds, assistant vice-president for credit risk management at Merrill Lynch, set up the bank's LGBT network four years ago and says it now has between 100 and 120 members.

The 11 other banks involved in Inside & Out - Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, ABN Amro, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan - also have LGTB networks, so if Merrill's participation is average, that means there are more than 1,000 openly gay bankers in the City.

However, gay and lesbian panellists from the investment banks who took part in a question-and-answer session at the event also made no attempt to whitewash the difficulties for openly LGBT bankers working in the UK.

Indeed, the wheel may even have come full circle. "I am worried that I may be employed only because I am gay, or that people may think that I have got the job only because of that,'' a student mused.

"That's not the reality,'' corrected Burgess. "No-one is going to get a job unless they are good enough.''

Another questioner asked if new GLBT recruits should openly declare themselves in investment banking workplaces.

"Listen,'' replied Burgess. ''I have never had a situation in my life where I have sat down with someone and said: 'I have something to tell you'. "If you sit down and say: 'I am lesbian or gay,' you are turning it into a situation where you are stressed and they are going to be stressed.

"You are turning it into a situation that it really is not at all. I just deal with it. When people ask me what I did at the weekend, I tell them. I think the more disarming you can be, the more integrity you can have for yourself."

Peter O'Rourke, a human resources analyst at Barclays Capital, agreed. "I have not found it to be an issue at all,'' he said. "Do not declare yourself on day one. If it comes up, it does. If it does not, it does not."

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