How well does your company score on LGBT issues? The Human Rights Campaign’s 2013 Corporate Equality Index came out yesterday and DiversityInc Top 50 companies score significantly higher than Fortune 500 companies with twice as many having perfect scores.

Now in its 11th year, the CEI is a credible, fact-based assessment of corporate commitment to LGBT workplace issues. This year, 688 companies participated, including 293 of the Fortune 500 companies. The HRC toughened its criteria last year, assessing four areas: equality of benefits for same-sex partners and spouses; transgender benefits; organizational competency (training, resource groups); and public commitment to the LGBT community.

“HRC has long rejected the idea that LGBT people should have to depend exclusively on the ballot box to guarantee equal protections in the workplace, and our corporate allies have surged well ahead of lagging legislation to afford these crucial workplace protections,” the organization stated.

Companies that score 100 percent receive a Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality designation from the HRC. Fortune 500 companies had an average score of 81, with 110 of the 293 (37.5 percent) receiving a perfect score. By comparison, DiversityInc Top 50 companies had an average score of 96.8, with a total of 38 (76 percent) receiving a perfect score compared with 28 (56 percent) last year.

What Sets DiversityInc Top 50 Companies Apart 

Looking at the criteria of the HRC, the DiversityInc Top 50 companies do better on every front compared with the Fortune 500.

• Have same-sex domestic-partner healthcare benefits: 100% vs. 62%
• Prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation: 100% vs. 88%
• Prohibit discrimination based on gender identity: 96% vs. 57%
• Have LGBT resource groups: 96% vs. 83%
• Offer organizational cultural-competency practices such as training with measurable results: 100% vs. 42%
• Have public commitment to LGBT issues (recruitment, marketing, philanthropy): 100% vs. 48%

All of the companies on the DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for LGBT Employees received 100 percent CEI ratings.

Here is a list of the 38 companies in the DiversityInc Top 50 that received a 100 percent CEI rating:

PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 1 in the DiversityInc Top 50)
Sodexo (No. 2)
Kaiser Permanente (No. 3)
AT&T (No. 4)
Ernst & Young (No. 6)
Kraft Foods (No. 7)
Deloitte (No. 8)
Prudential Financial (No. 9)
Johnson & Johnson (No. 11)
Accenture (No. 12)
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation (No. 13)
American Express (No. 14)
MasterCard Worldwide (No. 15)
Merck & Co. (No. 16)
IBM (No. 17)
Cummins (No. 18)
KPMG (No. 22)
Aetna (No. 24)
Dell (No. 26)
Automatic Data Processing (No. 27)
General Mills (No. 28)
Eli Lilly and Company (No. 29)
Target (No. 30)
Bank of America (No. 31)
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (No. 32)
Wells Fargo (No. 33)
Booz Allen Hamilton (No. 36)
Medtronic (No. 38)
Verizon Communications (No. 39)
Time Warner (No. 40)
Toyota Motor North America (No. 41)
Monsanto (No. 44)
Chrysler Group (No. 45)
The Coca-Cola Company (No. 46)
Capital One (No. 47)
Lockheed Martin (No. 48)
Kellogg Company (No. 49)
MetLife (No. 50)