British Land is to bring in a wave of new measures to make its workplace more inclusive for LGBT staff.
The move is part of a three-year plan launched last year by BL Pride, the company’s LGBT and Allies network.
British Land – one of the UK’s largest REITs – is looking at several areas, including introducing new trans-inclusion policies for the first time, training programmes and the way it engages with its staff and suppliers.
Paul Macey, property finance director and founder and co-chair of BL Pride (which launched in 2015), said: “We are on a journey. We are 12 months into a three-year plan so we are still relatively fresh to this. As well as policies, we are also looking at our engagement with staff, suppliers and training and there are certain goals we want to achieve by 2020.”
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One goal includes bringing in more training programmes both for LGBT staff and the wider company network. “Training is important. What we are finding at British Land is that there is a huge groundswell of support but quite often people don’t know about the area. We have 160 people in our Pride network, roughly half the company, but they all have varied levels of understanding about the LGBT community.”
The programme will encompass formal training for the whole company on areas such as unconscious bias, as well as informal sessions by Stonewall and external training for LGBT staff by membership organisation OUTstanding.
British Land is also set to update its company policies to focus on trans-inclusion in the workplace.
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“This is something we are currently looking at ourselves and we want to ensure policies are worded so that they are not gender specific,” Macey said.
“We are also looking at a transitioning-at-work policy and we are working on a health policy for transgender people.”
The news follows Stonewall, the UK diversity charity, marking employers for the first time on trans-inclusivity for its annual list of Top 100 LGBT-inclusive employers.
The move marks a change of approach for the charity, which had previously focused on employers’ work on lesbian-, gay- and bisexual-inclusive policies.
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