Gallagher Supports and Advocates for LGBTQ+ Equality
Challenge
Support employees to be their authentic selves at work, provide education and foster Allyship for our LGBTQ+ colleagues, while cultivating lasting partnerships with organizations that advocate for LGBTQ+ equality.
Actions
In the spirit of the Gallagher Way, our employees are encouraged to learn about all diversity, equity, and inclusion topics, including the LGBTQ+ community. We aim to create thoughtful, informative resources throughout the year for our employees related to this topic such as a Transgender Allyship guide, which lists ten steps to build ally skills. By fostering a culture of education and cultivating psychological safety at Gallagher, our LGBTQ+ colleagues are able to bring their authentic selves to work while being surrounded by allies who contribute to the community in a number of ways such as:
- Contributing to our internal shared blog and telling personal stories of what it means to be part of the LGBTQ+ community
- Adding pronouns to our email signatures
- Donating to LGBTQ+ organizations with a match from the Gallagher Foundation
- Offering a variety of ways for employees to get involved and support the LGBTQ+ community such as marching in Pride parades around the globe
Gallagher offers inclusive policies and benefits to our employees and is recognized as a “Best Place to Work for LGBT Equality” by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation for four consecutive years. Gallagher cemented our commitment to the LGBTQ+ community by establishing multi-year partnerships with organizations such as the Legacy Project Education Initiative and It Gets Better Project, launching an internal campaign focused on the importance of recognizing gender pronouns and their proper use, and joining the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce to help identify and support LGBTQ+ diverse suppliers and businesses.
Outcomes
The Gallagher Way encourages employees to support one another – regardless of our differences and encourages us to look for ways to increase our involvement in our communities.
The whole idea of an inclusive culture is about bringing different perspectives around the table to better serve our clients. If we only listen to handful of perspectives, we’re just not going to do as well. I personally, am very involved in making sure that what we do as an organization is focused on this. Every single chance we get, we should include the opportunity to become even more inclusive as an organization.
For us, the CEO Action for Inclusion pledge provides us an opportunity to align with and learn from other organizations working to bring about similar change. At the end of the day, it’s our people that make a difference for our clients, the communities we work in and the lives of millions of people who put their trust in us.