L&Q’s Spectrum Network

EiDA16 Shortlisted Nominee

Outstanding Diversity Network Award

Spectrum leads L&Q’s work on LGBT issues. Its co-chairs sit on the Equality and Diversity Working Group. The network has worked with L&Q’s team to review staff and family-friendly policies to make sure they include LGBT-specific language. As a result, L&Q’s policies covering maternity, paternity, adoption and carer’s leave have been revised, as well as its harassment and bullying policy. In the last year, Spectrum members helped establish HouseProud, a national LGBT network group for the social housing sector to swap best practice and innovation. Spectrum also opened its meetings to include L&Q’s contractors and worked with them to makeover a garden at an L&Q-owned hostel for homeless young gay men in East Ham. Their visible presence has resulted in fundamental changes in attitudes across the organisation. In 2015, they ensured L&Q made Stonewall’s list of top 100 employers for the first time ever, ranking 69th – up from 194th two years earlier. It made the list again in 2016, reaching 64th – a real measurable achievement.

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