DALLAS — The number of companies in North Texas with policies, training, and outreach to support the LGBTQ community has grown fivefold in the past seven years.
More than 20 companies in North Texas received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2021 corporate equality index. The index scores companies on their policies and inclusivity to those who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer. In 2014, only four companies received a perfect score.
North Texas companies with a perfect score accounted for 61 percent of all perfect scores in the state and 2.75 percent of the national perfect scores. More than 1,200 companies — including Fortune 500 publicly-traded companies, American Lawyer magazine’s top 200 revenue-grossing law firms, and hundreds of publicly and privately held mid-to-large-sized businesses — were ranked by the Human Rights Council.
About 5 percent of the workforce in Texas identifies as LGBTQ, according to an April 2020 report from the UCLA Williams School of Law. In a survey conducted in June 2020 by the Center for American Progress, 35 percent of respondents across the country described making decisions about their job to avoid discrimination, with higher percentages for transgender respondents and people of color.
Companies have continued to change policies to be more inclusive. There were 13 local companies that improved their score from last year, with Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. making the biggest jump, improving their score by 30 points.
“We are incredibly proud to earn a perfect score on the important Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. This recognition underscores the solid foundation that we have purposefully built since our merger less than three years ago,” said Mary Beth DeNooyer, chief human resources officer for Keurig Dr Pepper, in a statement. “While this honor highlights the progress we have made, we’re not done.”
Most North Texas companies that fell short of the perfect score failed to have specific LGBTQ contractor nondiscrimination standards and philanthropic giving guidelines. Nearly a dozen companies did not meet HRC’s threshold of three internal diversity and cultural competency training sessions.
Most companies had equivalent benefits for spouses in same- and different-sex marriages, however, fewer had the same benefits for couples in domestic partnerships.
Dean Foods Co. and Enlink Midstream were the only two North Texas companies to receive zeros on the index. Neither provided information to the Human Rights Campaign and the scores were based on publicly available information.
