Have TEN big firms just quit Stonewall?

BP, NATWEST AND EY VANISH FROM ‘100 BEST LGBTQ+ EMPLOYERS’ LIST

Stonewall has just announced its 2023 list of the ‘Top 100 Employers’ for LGBTQ+ people to work for – and a few big names are mysteriously absent this year, having appeared on the 2022 list.

The 2022 list is hard to find on Stonewall’s website (all links now lead to the 2023 list). However, it appears in an article by Pink News dated 24 February 2022, titled These are the UK’s best employers for LGBT+ people, as ranked by Stonewall.

Assuming this list on Pink News is accurate, we have cross-referenced the two lists.

While plenty of huge brands that appeared last year – such as law firm Clifford Chance (#1 this year), Sky (#19), KPMG (#8) and HSBC (#12) – remain near the top, we’ve counted ten big names that featured on the 2022 list, yet are not on the the 2023 list, published today.

These are: BP (#46 last year), NatWest (#49 last year), EY (#89), GSK (#49) and the Bank of England (#57). Also missing are law firms Slaughter & May (#8), Pinsent Masons (#10), Eversheds Sutherland (#18), Allen & Overy (#40) and financial services firm Macquarie Group, which was #1 last year.

Other notable absences this year include Cardiff University (#7 last year), Teach First (#33 last year), Surrey Police (#37) Camden Council (#47), the House of Lords (#63) and the University of Bristol (#64), among others. None of these names appears on the 2023 list.

It is unclear whether these organisations did not apply to be listed, dropped out before the list was published, or were unsuccessful in reaching the top 100 this year. As this is not an area of expertise for Graduate Fog, we will step back and leave it to other journalists to dig into the details. It will be interesting to hear what these organisations all say…