CEI 2O18
Findings
Equal Benefits COMPETITIVE EMPLOYER-PROVIDED BENEFITS’ PACKAGES ARE CRITICAL TO
attracting and retaining talent. From health care coverage to retirement investments and more, ensuring LGBTQ-inclusive benefits to employees and their families is an overall low-cost, high-return proposition for businesses. Most employers report an overall increase of less than 1 percent of total benefits costs when they implement partner benefits and marginal increases related to transgender-inclusive health care coverage (i.e. a fraction of a decimal point of cost calculations). In addition, equitable benefits structures align with the principle of equal compensation for equal work. Apart from actual wages paid, benefits account, on average for approximately 31.5 percent of employees’ overall compensation (BOL 2016). Therefore, employers have amended many benefits structures to ensure that this valuable bundle of benefits is equitably extended to their workforce, irrespective of sexual orientation and gender identity. When denied equal benefits coverage, the cost to LGBTQ workers and their families is profound. The HRC Foundation rates and gives guidance on two key components of equal health insurance benefits: ●● Parity between benefits available for opposite-sex
spouses and same-sex partners/ spouses; and ●● Transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage of
medically necessary treatment and care. In addition, employers are rated on having full parity across their entire suite of benefits including non-healthcare benefits such as leave, retirement and others - between oppositesex spouses and same-sex partners/spouses. The premise of parity drives businesses meeting the partner benefits and transgenderinclusive health care coverage criteria. In its CEI scoring, the HRC Foundation does not penalize an employer if a particular benefit is not offered to any employees, but holds employers accountable to provide equitable benefits to LGBTQ employees and their families across the complete package of benefits offered. In other words, all of the benefits extended to employees with a partner or spouse of an opposite sex are equally extended to same-sex partners and spouses. Similarly where routine care, hormone therapies and medically necessary surgeries and procedures are available to cisgender (people who are not transgender), these same health care benefits are equally
24
C O R P O R AT E E Q UA L I T Y I N D E X 2 O 1 8
71%