Page 36 - Fyne winter 2014

Welcoming the first ever ‘out’ CEO of a FTSE 100 company isn’t the only major change
since last year; our ‘Top 100’ is twice as long and includes three times as many transgender
business leaders. We were proud to announce almost a quarter of the Top 100 work within
the traditionally less inclusive banking and financial services industries, including our
distinguished no. 2 Antonio Simoes who heads up HSBC’s operations in the UK.
The technology sector is making headway too. This year, almost three times more list
members are from tech companies than in 2013. The heads of organisations like Yahoo,
Google and Apple have all recently admitted they’re not happy with how diverse their
workforce is and know more needs to be done. Hopefully our lists will be seen as notable
progress.
But there’s still more to do. Not having any visible bisexual people on the list is a big
issue and there are very few ethnic minorities leaders included. We’ve seen an increase
of transgender members since last year but the community is still under-represented with
no male trans nominees. Perhaps this is unsurprising when 90% of transgender employees
experience harassment at work, according to a 2011 transgender discrimination survey.
Equally, as Claudia Brind-Woody, vice president and managing director of Global Intellectual
Property Licensing at IBM (our no. 10 on the Top 100) points out, women have double
barriers to overcome: “You do have women who choose not to come out because of what
people call the double-glazed glass ceiling. Research has shown that women hesitate to raise
their hand again and come out because they are already discriminated against.”
I know from our work with hundreds of LGBT professionals that the mental capacity required
by LGBT employees to hide who they are in the office reduces their ability to perform. This
can ultimately damage a business’s bottom line. On the other hand, business leaders who are
themselves at work are more inspiring and authentic leaders, motivate their teams better, and
as a result create more wealth for the company.
WINTER 2014
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