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A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on. “Go woke, go broke” is one such lie. It’s used as a stick by right-wing groups to beat brands into abandoning inclusivity pledges, policies, and partnerships. It forces them to cancel campaigns with diverse talent for fear of the onslaught of outrage. The implication is that inclusive values and practices will lead to financial ruin.
Over the past year, we’ve seen businesses distancing themselves from the LGBTQIA+ community. There’s been a marked decline in activations during Pride season. We’ve also seen DEI budget cutbacks at Google, Meta, and more recently at Microsoft and Ford. The big players are making bigger mistakes—all based on poor evidence and fear.
The reality is that leadership teams are failing to take account of the data. And that’s because “going woke”—or just opposing discrimination—is a competitive advantage.
If we’re going to be serious about success, we need to take a breath and take in the data. As Fortune focuses on the most successful businesses led by queer people, let’s look at what it’s like to exist as a transgender person in business today and what a “woke workplace” would mean for them and the organizations they work at.
The burden of bigotry
This burden cannot be overstated. Your employees’ problems are your problems—and they are limiting your growth ambitions. Members of the Trans+ community face significant challenges in the workplace. Discrimination, harassment, and exclusion have a devastating impact on career development and personal well-being.
UCLA’s Williams Institute found that 20% of Trans+ employees left their jobs in the past year due to personal treatment, a rate four times higher than cisgender employees. All that talent is walking out of the door.
More than half (55%) of all transgender employees experienced non-inclusive behaviors at work, according to the 2023 Deloitte Global LGBT+ Inclusion at Work report. These experiences aren’t just about feeling unwelcome, they are often direct barriers to career advancement. Some 66% of respondents said their identity played a role in being denied important assignments and 73% said that their identity played a role in being overlooked for promotion.
Speaking with community members in my network, Trans+ inclusive provisions and education are patchy, meaning experiences can vary wildly, leading to a lack of psychological safety, stalling careers, and the inevitable exodus of talent.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation recommends businesses adopt provisions like name and pronoun sharing, facilities access, confidentiality and privacy, healthcare coverage, and training across the entire business.
It’s the risk of encountering bigotry and the variance in these support structures that stops Trans+ people from feeling able to fully participate in work as themselves. I know many who are closeted at work, have experienced discrimination, are delaying their social and medical transitioning, can’t access gender healthcare with their employer, or feel they need to leave their employer in order to “start again” as their authentic selves elsewhere.
Fixing this for Trans+ employees, and indeed for all employees who experience discrimination at work, can be a huge boon to any business.
Go ‘woke,’ get growth
Deloitte’s research tells us that diversity of thinking brings about a 20% increase in creativity and innovation. It helps teams identify risks better, reducing these by up to 30%—that could be the difference between being the Blockbuster or the Netflix of your industry. Simply speaking, a diverse workforce makes for a more resilient, agile, and prosperous organization.
Yet, estimates from Out Leadership suggest that less than 1% of the 5,670 boardroom seats at Fortune 500 companies are filled with an LGBTQIA+ director. So there’s work to be done. This is why I’m happy to see Fortune’s new initiative celebrating diversity in the boardroom by spotlighting those companies with queer CEOs. And I’m thrilled to see two transgender leaders make the Fortune LGBTQ+ Leaders list, Sue Nabi, the founder of Orveda and the CEO of Coty, and Martine Rothblatt, the founder and CEO of United Therapeutics.
And when we look at advertising, a topic I cover regularly, new research published this week with data from 58 countries and 392 brands shows more inclusive ad campaigns produce a 3.5% boost in short-term sales and more than 16% in the longer term on average.
“It’s crucially important that the decisions we make in business and society are rooted in correct assumptions and scientifically proven facts, rather than anecdotal evidence and unproven truisms,” L’Oréal Professor of Marketing at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Andrew Stephen commented on these findings.
In the U.K., Channel 4 reported that in 2023 there was just one trans person in the 1,000 TV ads they audited over a 12-month period. Only 3% of these included LGBTQIA+ people.
So let’s drop these bigoted anti-business lies and look at the data: When you “go woke,” you get growth.
More must-read commentary published by Fortune:
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- The ‘sustainability recession’ will end soon—and not by choice
- ‘Godmother of AI’ says California’s well-intended AI bill will harm the U.S. ecosystem
- The most underrated leadership skill, according to Jake Sullivan
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
