Independent: Homosexuals are being courted by employers - from spooks to the city

Homosexuals are being courted by employers – from spooks to the city

By Jerome Taylor
Tuesday, 19 August 2008

When Angela Mason began her 10-year directorship of the Stonewall gay
lobby group in 1992, she had a friend in the corporate world who had
two phones in his house. One he used to take personal calls for him
and his partner. The other was for the office. When it came to being
out and proud in the workplace, few and far between was the employee
who would happily step out of the closet and declare: "I'm gay, let's
do business."

When Angela Mason began her 10-year directorship of the Stonewall gay
lobby group in 1992, she had a friend in the corporate world who had
two phones in his house. One he used to take personal calls for him
and his partner. The other was for the office. When it came to being
out and proud in the workplace, few and far between was the employee
who would happily step out of the closet and declare: "I'm gay, let's
do business."

"People used to genuinely fear that they would lose their jobs if they
were outed, and many did," Mason remembers. "If you were found out it
was absolutely the end."

It was with some sense of satisfaction, therefore, that Ms Mason read
the news this week that MI5 was finally going to step out of the
closet itself and begin openly recruiting people from within the gay
community.

One of the last bastions of the British establishment, a place that,
until the early 1990s, had actually banned hiring gays because of
fears that outed spies could be blackmailed, had finally capitulated
and realised that if you want to hire the best talent, you have to
look at all sections of society. The days of the Oxbridge don giving
white, male graduates a tap on the shoulder and a nod towards Thames
House were truly over.

The domestic intelligence service is now not only going to start
actively employing openly gay recruits, it is also hiring Stonewall (a
group once associated with, and run by, former radicals such as Ms
Mason) to advise the security services on how to encourage its spies
to be more open about their sexuality and how to persuade more gay
applicants to apply for jobs there.

But as dramatic as MI5's announcement seems, it is part of a much
wider silent revolution that Stonewall has been pursuing for much of
the past decade – persuading the corporate world to love gays. And in
the past few years it finally seems to be working.

In the late 1970s, Ms Mason, a young member of the anarchist Angry
Brigades group, was tried and acquitted for planting bombs on the
doorsteps of Conservative politicians. She divorced in the 1980s to
live with her lesbian lover and, by 1992, had been appointed director
of Stonewall.

With such an anti-establishment figure heading Britain's foremost gay
lobby group, Stonewall might have been expected to continue with the
sort of tactics that had made its new director so notorious. Instead,
Ms Mason, and Ben Summerskill, her successor as chief executive, did
something far more radical – they took Stonewall mainstream and began
charming, rather than confronting, the corporate world.

The outcome of that tactic is that MI5 has now joined more than 430
companies, representing more than four million employees, who have
signed up to Stonewall's list of "gay-friendly employers". Those on
the list actively recruit gay people and monitor the sexual
orientation of their staff to ensure against silent discrimination.

Many encourage their gay and lesbian staff to take part in Pride
events as well as supporting the events financially. They are also
expected to have clear and publicised policies for dealing with cases
of sexual discrimination and encourage the promotion of openly gay
staff on to the board or senior management team.

With 15,000 gay students leaving university every year and an
estimated 1.7 million gay men and women of working age, Stonewall
began persuading companies that discriminating against gay employees
was simply bad for business.

The corporate world began to see sense. Where once people were fired
for their sexual orientation, major corporations now jostle with each
other to prove their equalitarian credentials.

To provide an incentive, Stonewall began producing an annual list of
"top gay employers". Local authorities, charities and the voluntary
sector all scored well but, every year, more and more mainstream
corporations began appearing on the list.

By 2007, IBM, LloydsTSB, KPMG and Goldman and Sachs all came in the
top 10 and the pro-pink feeling is spreading. This year, Pinsent Mason
became the first law firm to be included in the Top 100 gay employers
and next year Stonewall expects to have at least 16 more.

"The trick is to present the business case to corporate employers,"
says David Shields, director of workplace programmes at Stonewall and
the man who has spearheaded their campaigning in the corporate world.

"It simply doesn't make good business sense to have a reputation for
being a workplace that is not open to gay and lesbian employers.
Graduates who were out and proud at university are simply not willing
to hide away once they get into the workforce. They'll simply take
their skills to another company."

For Mr Summerskill, persuading MI5 to become a gay-friendly employer
was proof that even those organisations not historically thought to be
friendly towards the gay rights movement are, in fact, coming in from
the cold.

"I think what's really interesting about our corporate approach in the
past three years is the sheer variety of companies we have attracted,"
he says. "Many of them are not the usual suspects you would have
signing up, and I think what we did with MI5 is an example of that.
These are very counter-intuitive organisations. Even though the ban on
recruiting gay spies was lifted more than a decade ago, the message
had trouble sinking in.

"But MI5 is so focused on recruiting the very best talent that they
realised it was critically important to hire staff from all walks of
life."

Ashley Steel is the only known lesbian on the board of a Square Mile
company. She came out five years ago after spending some time working
for KPMG's offices in San Francisco.

"I think once I'd fully come out I knew I couldn't go back in," she
says. "I've been at KPMG for more than 23 years now and it is a
completely different place to what it used to be."

She says major corporations are so keen to harness the best talent
that former prejudices have had to be dropped.

"If there is a war of talent going on, then why on earth would you
want to put people off who are gay or black or female? It simply
doesn't make business sense. And I think clients want to see a diverse
workforce."

She believes there is still some way to go – after all, there is no
openly gay person on the board of a FTSE 100 company. "Groups like
Stonewall were originally set up to change the law and they did. We
have thing like the equalities bill and civil partnerships. But
changing a law doesn't change a person's behaviour, and that is what
they are trying to do with the corporate sector."

Angela Eagle, the first lesbian MP to come out while still in the
House of Commons, agrees. "What we have is legal equality in theory,
but that does not necessarily eliminate the discrimination that
continues to exist," she says.

But for Ms Mason, who now works at the heart of government advising
local authorities on equalities and cohesion with the Improvement and
Development Agency, the corporate change of heart could hardly be more
stark.

"Those companies that have positive employment practices do it
precisely because it signifies modernity," she says. "It's cutting
edge and glamorous. There's still lots to do but when I look back, we
have come miles and miles."

Six pioneers in the corporate world

Ashley Steel, KPMG

A vocal and openly gay director at KPMG, Ashley Steel is the only
known lesbian on the board of a Square Mile company. She has regularly
spoken out about how the corporate world needs to do more to promote
gay people in the workplace. She came out only after working for KPMG
in San Francisco. In 2005, she became KPMG's first board champion on
sexual orientation.

Paul Tanner, 90TEN

The owner of the PR agency 90TEN, Paul Tanner specialises in public
relations for the gay and lesbian communities. He has launched
numerous health initiatives to encourage gay men to vaccinate
themselves against hepatitis A and hepatitis B as well as being hired
by a number of prominent NHS trusts to improve their sexual health
services.

Sir Michael Bishop, BMI

A former baggage handler at Manchester airport, Sir Michael, above,
turned BMI into the UK's second largest airline after BA. Not known
for speaking out about gay rights, his presence at the head of BMI
proves being out and gay shouldn't stop you getting ahead in business.

Robert Taylor, Kleinwort Benson Private Bank

One of the City's best known openly gay movers and shakers, he earnt
his stripes at Coutts & Co where he was head of private banking. Is
now chief executive of Kleinwort Benson Private Bank.

Angela Mason, activist

Radical campaigner turned government insider, Angela Mason began her
political career as an anarchist with the Angry Brigades in the 1970s
before coming out in the 1980s and taking up the gay rights cause.
Served as director of Stonewall throughout the 1990s, making it more
mainstream, charming corporations and leading the fight for the repeal
of Section 28. She now chairs the Fawcett Society, a women's rights
campaigning organisation

Charles Allen, Global Radio

A former chief executive of ITV, the openly gay Charles Allen is now
one of the most powerful figures in the world of radio. His company,
Global Radio, is the UK's largest radio provider and includes the
popular Heart, LBC and Galaxy radio stations.