The Out & Equal Workplace Institute has launched the Diversity Leaders Research Initiative (DLRI).

The Institute is currently looking for companies that have implemented an LGBT identity survey, or are looking to do so, to participate in this study and the development of a model.
If your company is interested, please contact institute@outandequal.org.

The goal of this project is address challenges to LGBT workplace equality by focusing academic, peer-reviewed research on specific issues facing corporations, and providing these research results in business-friendly formats.

Through the initiative, the Institute will develop an LGBT identity survey tool, which businesses can use to measure the success on recruitment, retention and professional development of their LGBT workforce

In 2007, we will develop tools to address the issue of metrics, and measuring the success of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workforce. By law, employers track the diversity of their employee populations by ethnicity, gender, age and other Equal Employment Opportunity or Affirmative Action (EEO/AA) categories. This data set can be used to track recruitment, hiring and retention trends, as well as identify patterns of advancement and turnover, and in general help employers measure their progress on diversity goals and identify their return on investment for a specific population. Identifying LGBT employees has been a thorny problem for employers because they are not legally required to track this population and there are significant legal and cultural concerns about doing so. This research project is geared to provide human resource professionals with the instruments to assess their success on recruitment, retention and professional development of their LGBT workforce.

A special thanks goes to IBM, for providing critical funding and technology support for this initiative.