Represented & Proud

Templeton and Partners don’t simply change our logo to rainbow colours and post about Pride on our social media channels. As a diverse tech recruitment agency, representation is important to us all year round.

Even in 2023, LGBTQ+ professionals are still experiencing workplace discrimination, abuse, lack of support and fewer career opportunities:

• One in three LGBTQ+ people report being bullied at work
• Nearly seven in 10 LGBTQ+ people have been sexually harassed at work
• More than a third of LGBTQ+ staff have hidden their sexuality or gender identity at work for fear of discrimination
• One in eight lesbian, gay and bisexual people wouldn’t feel confident reporting homophobic or biphobic bullying to their employer
• 74% of diverse professionals working in IT have experienced discrimination at work.

We know that to reach and best serve our LGBTQ+ candidate and customer communities, we also need to be diverse and inclusive in our own internal practices. Two years ago we created the Templeton Diversity Advisory Council, which provides a voice to our diverse employees and champions the inclusive direction of our business.

Our Diversity Council, itself highly representative of LGBTQ+ and other minority groups, implements a variety of initiatives specifically designed to support the LGBTQ+ community including:

• Interactive Colleague Training & Workshops – Sharing first-hand experiences of our LGBTQ+ employees and facilitating knowledge sharing and discussions, to create allies for our LGBTQ+ team members
• Anti-Discrimination Ambassador – Dedicated individual serving as a trusted, impartial point of contact to support with any incidences of bullying, harassment or discrimination and report anonymously to management to resolve
• Discrimination Reporting Tool – Anonymous system to flag and resolve hurtful/damaging behaviours as soon as any incident arises
• Campaigns – Highlighting the stories and career journeys of our individual employees and candidate communities to raise awareness of LGBT History Month, Lesbian Visibility Week and Pride Month.

First hand stories

In our most recent colleague training, one our employees shared her experiences living and working as a lesbian, from growing up and education to throughout her career. She covered the most common questions she’s asked, explained the terms she prefers to use to describe herself and her partner, and tips that heterosexual colleagues can use to ask polite, respectful questions to better understand LGBTQ+ people. Every colleague training provided from our own employees opens up unique life perspectives for our whole team, enabling our colleagues to build closer relationships with better understanding and communication, and helping our whole team across countries continually strive to be the best possible allies to the LGBTQ+ and other diverse communities.

In addition to striving for an inclusive environment for everyone of every sex, sexuality and gender identity, Templeton track and report on diversity data to highlight any instances of discrimination, give a voice to all employees and ensure we continually support employees in every possible way. Templeton’s biannual diversity surveys are completely anonymous, with no personal individual data stored or accessible to anyone, and are used to generate honest feedback from our employees to involve them at the heart of changing our business for good.

We created a dedicated LGBTQ+ Policy to protect, support and empower our workforce of all identities and backgrounds. This policy requires all employees to respectfully observe and use the language requested by individuals to describe themselves. Templeton does not require trans individuals to produce a Gender Recognition certificate or any other document to be recognised in their affirmed gender at work. All employees, including trans and non-binary individuals, have the right to choose, identify with and be referred to by any name and pronoun of their choice.

Because we know that our employees can perform best and are happiest when allowed to express their whole selves, Templeton operate a casual/relaxed dress code. Employees are welcome to wear any and all clothing and hairstyles that are representative of their sex, gender, cultural, racial and religious identities.

High standards

Our public commitments and charter signatures including the UN Standards of Conduct for Tackling Discrimination against LGBTQI+ People and Diversity and Inclusion Charter publicise our allyship to employees, clients and candidate communities and communicate a message of inclusion and welcome. Our anonymous Suggestion Box and regular Town Hall meetings provide qualitative and quantitative feedback to inform our continuous improvement strategy on inclusion.

These initiatives have increased our internal LGBTQ+ representation to 11% (well above the UK’s average of 3.2% as reported by the most recent census) and increased our LGBTQ+ board membership to 15%. 96% of employees report never having experienced or witnessed discrimination at Templeton, and 94% of staff strongly agree they can bring their whole selves to work (up from 88% in 2021).

Templeton’s vision is to make business more diverse, to reflect the communities they serve and build an inclusive future for everyone, which we strive to create every day through our diverse and inclusive workplace.