How to make your benefits more inclusive: Turning LGBTQIA+ allyship into action

 

Pride month is an important time for the LGBTQIA+ community to celebrate their identities and commemorate their history. For companies and people outside of the community, Pride month is a month of allyship — including at work. Every year, we see more and more companies speaking out about their support and care for LGBTQIA+ team members and customers, and this visibility is a great first step toward a more inclusive future. But allyship should not be limited to the month of June. As companies, support for LGBTQIA+ team members should continue year round.

The question is: Where should you begin? A great place to start is with your benefits package.

In the U.S., employer-based benefits coverage is the norm, with millions of Americans receiving their coverage through their employers. If people are relying on their employers for these benefits, they should meet their specific and unique needs. As HR and benefits professionals, now is the time to take a hard look at the plans you provide to ensure they’re inclusive of all employees and provide the best care options available, and then refresh them, as needed, to better support LGBTQIA+ team members.

Here are a few ways you can evaluate and revamp your benefits to celebrate and support your employees all year long.

Listen to your LGBTQIA+ team members 

As a first, crucial step in building better benefits, listen to your LGBTQIA+ team members and learn from them about their experiences and specific needs, as well as any pain points that the current benefits package doesn’t address. This may sound obvious — because it is — but it’s a step that’s commonly skipped or downplayed despite being quite possibly the most important one.

Set up time to connect with your LGBTQIA+ employee resource groups to receive feedback and thoughts on the current plans and processes. Allow them to speak candidly about what’s working — and what’s not. These conversations can help you understand some of the nuances of care that you may not have considered before. On top of this, you should also send out anonymous employee surveys to provide everyone with a place to open up without compromising their privacy.

Listening and creating a precedent for allowing your employees to provide honest feedback will demonstrate that you care about their needs, as long as this step is followed by clear action to create more inclusive benefits.

Provide a wide range of options 

An individual’s health care needs are unique and personal, much like their identity. The best way to support all employees is by providing a wide range of options that reflect this, so everyone has equitable access to care.

For example, if your company is offering fertility benefits, IVF and egg freezing are great options that cater to the needs of many, but they don’t support everyone’s journey to forming a family — and only offering these options may unintentionally exclude certain members of your team.

This is why it’s imperative that benefits provide access to alternative options, as well, like gestational carrier (GC) services, adoption, foster care, and donor-assisted reproduction. Beyond that, providing extended support options in the form of care navigation and emotional support helps your team members seek guidance along their journeys and better understand the best options to fit their needs, providing everyone in your workplace with the same level of access to care.

Prioritize inclusive language 

Language matters, and it’s especially crucial for effective care. In a 2017 study, 9% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people surveyed and 21% of transgender people surveyed said that a medical provider had used harsh or abusive language when they sought medical care.

As an employer, you, of course, can’t control every aspect of your team’s medical experience, but you can make sure that all language in your company’s benefits materials is inclusive, and that all vendors you work with meet these same standards.

When we’re talking about inclusive language, this goes back to listening to those within the community to ensure that no materials — internal or provided by an outside vendor — are causing undue harm or stress. Make sure that materials avoid unnecessary gendered language and pronoun usage, as this can immediately isolate individuals looking for care. Also, be aware of avoiding terms like “non-traditional” or “artificial” when referring to care options. These terms can create barriers and stigmas that don’t help anyone receive the care they need.

Confirm that medical providers are inclusive 

One common barrier for LGBTQIA+ people seeking medical care is the fear of discrimination, whether that comes in the form of misgendering, ignoring prevailing problems, or even refusal of service. Unfortunately, there are a lot of medical professionals who are untrained or unwilling to properly support LGBTQIA+ people. In fact, a 2018 survey of medical students at New England-based medical schools found that around 80% of respondents felt “not competent” or “somewhat not competent” with the medical treatment of LGBTQIA+ individuals.

As an employer, you can take stock of the medical providers available in your plans, and ensure that your team has access to providers who are capable of care and who provide affirming support for LGBTQIA+ people.

There are a number of questions you can ask benefits vendors to evaluate this, including:

• What do you consider an LGBTQIA+ affirming provider under your plan?
• How do you ensure LGBTQIA+ people are receiving quality care?
• Do you provide medical options for people beyond the gender binary?
• How easy do you make it for LGBTQIA+ people to find health care providers who have experience in the space?
• What percentage of providers covered under your plan identify as LGBTQIA+ affirming?

Holding providers and vendors accountable will help your employees receive access to the best care, and it also has the potential to create a wave of positive change if this is something we all ask for in our care options.

Benefits can be tricky, and there’s by no means a one-size-fits-all approach for every company. But, that doesn’t mean that there should be unnecessary barriers to care for certain employees. Take the time to research and update your benefits plans regularly so that all employees feel valued, heard, and equitably cared for, even long after Pride month ends.

Leslie Neitzel is CHRO at Carrot Fertility.