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This article originally appeared on DiversityInc.com on August 26, 2004

The number of companies getting a perfect score for reaching out to for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) employees and consumers has nearly doubled in the past year, according to a study by a gay-rights organization.

Twenty-one major U.S. corporations earned a 100 percent rating in the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign (HRC)'s Corporate Equality Index, which is in its second year. In 2001, 11 companies earned a perfect score.

The following companies scored 100 percent this year for the second time in a row: Aetna, American Airlines, Apple Computer, Avaya, Eastman Kodak, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Lucent Technologies, NCR, Nike and Xerox. For Bank One, Capital One Financial, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lehman Brothers, Levi Strauss, MetLife, PG&E, Prudential Financial and S.C. Johnson & Son this year marks the first time they've received perfect scores.

Two-hundred and fifty companies from either the Fortune 500 or Forbes 200 list of privately held businesses were judged on the following seven factors:

• Having a written non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation in their employee handbook or manual.
• Having a written non-discrimination policy covering gender identity and/or expression in their employee handbook or manual.
• Offering health-insurance coverage to employee's same-sex domestic partners.

• Officially recognizing a GLBT employee-resource group, willingness to support the formation of the GLBT employee-resource group or having a firm-wide diversity council or working group whose mission specifically includes GLBT diversity.
• Offering diversity training that includes sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression in the workplace.
• Engaging in respectful and appropriate marketing to the GLBT community and/or private support through their corporate foundation or otherwise to GLBT or HIV/AIDS-related organizations or events.
  *Engaging in corporate action that would undermine the goal of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people.

"What we see this year is improvement in every category measured, from written non-discrimination policies to domestic-partner health insurance benefits and beyond," said Kim Mills, HRC education director. "Corporate America continues to be a leader in the quest for GLBT civil rights."

Eight of the 10 new companies that scored 100 percent did so by adding gender identity and/or expression to their equal employment opportunities policy. While no company scored 0 percent, Aramark, Domino's, ExxonMobil, Meijer and National Gypsum scored the index's lowest score of 14 percent.

ExxonMobil was the only company to overtly resist equal treatment for GLBT employees, consumer and investors by continuing to oppose a shareholder resolution asking the company to add sexual orientation to its equal employment opportunity statement. Lockheed Martin, the most-improved company in the survey, raised its score from 0 percent in 2002 to 71 percent in 2003 by adding sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy and offering domestic-partner benefits.

Lockheed was one of 80 companies -- about one-third of the total -- to boost their scores from the previous year. Meghan Mariman, a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, told DiversityInc that the company's performance on HRC's 2002 Corporate Equality Index was not the catalyst for its change in GLBT policy.

Mariman said the company installed a diversity council in 2001 in order to include an all-inclusive work environment. She said updating of the company's non-discrimination policy and the addition of domestic partner benefits were extensions of that effort.

Cracker Barrel, a company that has faced several lawsuits regarding racial bias, has made some small gains in the GLBT community. Like Lockheed Martin, the company scored 0 percent in 2002. This year, the company upped its score to 29 percent by withdrawing its opposition to a shareholder policy asking the company to include sexual orientation in its non-discrimination policy and then adopting such a policy.

The inclusion of sexual orientation in non-discrimination policies is the most common criterion among the companies surveyed. Nearly all of the companies surveyed, 238, or 95 percent, had such a policy, up from 93 percent last year. Approximately three-quarters, 184, offered diversity training. This is 19 percentage points higher than last year's survey. In this year's survey, diversity training replaced domestic-partner health insurance benefits as the second most common criterion.

"The bottom line," said Mills, "is that successful businesses are increasingly recognizing that equality works."

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