It’s important that suppliers understand your commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion from the outset and know that they’re expected to share that commitment when working with your organisation.
Train your procurement staff
While it’s important for every member of staff to receive diversity and inclusion training that familiarises them with LGBTQ+ inclusion at work, this isn’t always enough for them to know how to embed LGBTQ+ inclusion in their line of work. We’d recommend you provide staff in charge of procurement – whether they’re a cohesive procurement team, or individual budget holders scattered across departments –with training that helps them understand:
- The importance of LGBTQ-inclusive procurement – you can use the ‘What’s in it for you?’ section to explore this.
- Your organisation’s LGBTQ-inclusive procurement policy – laying out the key facts about your organisation’s inclusive procurement strategy – from the tendering process to how you work with existing suppliers. This might include information on where you would decide to terminate or not award a contract on the basis of non-inclusive practice.
- How to speak confidently about LGBTQ+ inclusion with suppliers – giving staff tools like inclusive language and terminology, and a sound general understanding of good practice.
- What happens when we don’t uphold values of inclusion in procurement – using case studies to highlight the potential problems that may arise.
This training is most effective when it explicitly refers to LGBTQ+ identities. This can be done as part of a broader training encompassing all aspects of inclusive procurement.
Ask the question
Having questions in your tendering document that explicitly refer to LGBTQ+ inclusion not only sets these expectations with potential suppliers, but also allows you to assess where they are on their journey towards LGBTQ+ equality. You may decide to give those questions a certain percentage of weight within the overall document, or not weigh them but use them as a way to decide how you will work with the supplier to support them with LGBTQ+ inclusion in the future.
These questions could include:
- Whether the supplier has policies on bullying, harassment and discrimination
- Whether they have a transitioning at work policy
- If they do have these policies in place, consider asking qualitative follow up questions to make sure the policies are of a good standard. For more information about LGBTQ+ inclusive policies, check out our Inclusive Policy Toolkit
- Whether they monitor complaints of bullying, harassment or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity
- It can also be helpful to ask for an example of how such an instance was dealt with
- Whether they have a diversity and inclusion strategy or policy
- How they vet their own suppliers
- Whether they have been found to practice unlawful discrimination in tribunal, and if so, what changes they have put in place as a result
You may also choose to have more specific and tailored questions in cases where LGBTQ+ inclusion is particularly relevant to the product or services provided by the supplier. For example, if the potential supplier is a recruitment agency, you may want to ask more in-depth questions about their recruitment processes.
Which suppliers should I focus on?
If you are a big organisation, chances are you have a very high number of suppliers and will need to prioritise those that are furthest away from your desired standards of LGBTQ+ inclusion.
It’s particularly important to get this right with suppliers whose employees work in direct contact with your organisations’ employees, such as your Employee Assistance Programme, or recruitment agencies. Suppliers whose employees work in direct contact with your customers or service users – such as cleaning, catering or security staff – can form key relationships too.
You may also want to consider the following:
- Whether they’re among your biggest suppliers, and how much you spend on this contract
- How much room for influence you have with your supplier
- The impact they can have on staff or other stakeholders. For example, finding an LGBTQ+ inclusive Employee Assistance Programme could be highly beneficial to your LGBTQ+ employees
Make your awarding decision
If one of your prospective suppliers isn’t yet delivering LGBTQ+ inclusive work to the standard that you’d like, this doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t work with them. It can be just as effective to give feedback on where they could improve and work together to reach your standards of inclusion.
We’d recommend creating a clear and consistent process for requiring improvements in LGBTQ+ inclusion work – for example, by including tangible goals and a timeframe for improvement within the contract itself. Creating a timeline with your suppliers to meet key standards or criteria can help signal your commitment to progressing LGBTQ+ inclusive practice; as well as providing time for your supplier to amend their policies and working practices.
Alternatively, you may find it helpful to implement a clear threshold of LGBTQ+ inclusion work that suppliers have to meet in order to be awarded a contract.
If you decide not to award a contract, you can still make opportunities to influence your suppliers to embed inclusive practice. We’d recommend providing clear signposting to suppliers on how to improve – for example, by sharing your criteria; or examples of your policies or training, if you’re particularly proud of these.
Want to advance your work even further by developing your procurement team’s inclusivity?
We run 90-minute Empowerment workshops on embedding LGBTQ+ inclusion in your supply chain. Reach out to prospect@stonewall.org.uk now to book your session.