Workplace Equality Index entrant FAQs

Here you can find information about entering the Workplace Equality Index.

About the Workplace Equality Index

What is the Workplace Equality Index?

The Workplace Equality Index is the definitive benchmarking tool for assessing your LGBTQ+ inclusion progress in the UK.

Each year, participating organisations demonstrate their work in different areas of employment policy and practice. Staff from each organisation also complete an anonymous survey about their experiences of diversity and inclusion at work.

After a rigorous marking progress, you’ll receive a score and ranking. We’ll celebrate the best performing employers through our Top 100 Employers list and Gold, Silver and Bronze Employer awards.

Diversity Champion programme members will receive in-depth analysis of your employee feedback, detailed written feedback on your submission, and a tailored meeting to prioritise their next steps.

How much does it cost to enter?

It is free to enter the Workplace Equality Index.

All entrants are marked, scored, ranked and awarded in the same way, regardless of whether they are a member of our programmes.

Is my organisation eligible to take part?

We accept and welcome applications from all sectors and regions of the UK.

The Workplace Equality Index is designed for organisations with a substantial UK-based operation of more than two hundred employees. We do not reject submissions from smaller organisations, but you should be aware that fewer of the questions will be relevant to your organisation.

Entrants do not need to be headquartered in the UK, but the Workplace Equality Index only assesses work that impacts an organisation’s UK employees. For organisations with substantial operations outside of the UK, our sibling index, the Global Workplace Equality Index, may also be a relevant product.

Submitting to the Index

Key dates for 2023

15 June 2022 – submissions open

25 July 2022 – Staff Feedback Questionnaire opens

20 September 2022 – submissions close

25 November 2022 - Staff Feedback Questionnaire closes

February 2023 – Top 100 awards are announced

February to May 2023 – feedback meetings take place

How do I submit to the 2023 Index?

All submissions are created on Stonewall Submit.

Through Stonewall Submit, you complete your organisation’s submission to the Index and nominate individuals in your organisation to be recognised as part of the Top 100 awards.

How do I log into Stonewall Submit?

If your organisation has never made a submission to the Workplace Equality Index, you should use the sign-up function to create an account for yourself.

If you've created a submission for your organisation before, you should log in to the system using your existing login details.

If you’ve forgotten your password, go to Stonewall Submit and click ‘Forgot your password?’ underneath the log-in box. Follow the instructions and your password will be reset. If you don’t receive a password reset email within two hours, contact indices@stonewall.org.uk.

If you’ve changed your work email address, you should email indices@stonewall.org.uk to transfer details from your old account to your new account.

Can I save progress?

Yes. You don’t have to complete it all in one go. You can log in and out, save changes and make amendments where needed before submitting ahead of the submission deadline.

Can my colleagues help?

Yes. Stonewall Submit allows you to add collaborators from your organisation to help complete your submission.

You can also transfer the ownership of your submission to a colleague. Only the owner is able to submit the submission.

Who needs to be involved in completing our submission?

This will likely depend on the size of your organisation and the sections you plan to complete. However, submissions are generally led by D&I or HR teams. Organisations generally also involve LGBTQ+ employees network groups, learning and development teams and procurement teams.

Involving others in the submission process lightens the load on one person and ensures that everything you’re submitting is up-to-date and accurate.

Do we have to complete every section?

The Index is designed as a tool that can be tailored to different organisations’ needs. We welcome submissions that don’t include answers to every section or question.

However, you should be aware that the fewer sections you complete, the fewer points you will be eligible for. This may lower your chances of receiving an award.

Can I get access to my organisation’s previous WEI submissions?

In most cases, yes.

If you were the lead applicant or a collaborator on your WEI 2022 application, you will be able to see it as an historical application on your Stonewall Submit dashboard.

If you were not the lead applicant or a collaborator on your WEI 2022 application, we can give you access after verifying that you are an authorised representative of your organisation.

Go to Stonewall Submit to create an account and validate your email address. Email your regular Stonewall point-of-contact or indices@stonewall.org.uk and request access to your historical submission. We will transfer this over to your account.

Will I get feedback on my Index submission?

We give scoring information and feedback to all entrants.

If your organisation is a Diversity Champion, part of your membership package includes more detailed feedback, including a meeting to discuss your results and plan actions.

What is the Staff Feedback Questionnaire?

The Staff Feedback Questionnaire is a core part of the index, although like all components, it is optional.

The Staff Feedback Questionnaire is a survey that you send out to your staff about their experiences, attitudes and skills.

We will collect the responses, analyse them, and use them as part of your score.

How do I get the link for the Staff Feedback Questionnaire?

We will open the questionnaire on 25 July.

First you will need to complete the 'About Your Organisation' section and the first page of the 'Staff Feedback Questionnaire' section of your employer submission on Stonewall Submit. 

We will be send you a unique link a few days later, with instructions on how to distribute the link to your staff.

There is no way to request your link without completing the relevant parts of your employer submission on Stonewall Submit.

Who in my organisation should I send the Staff Feedback Questionnaire to?

You must send the questionnaire to all your UK employees and we want to hear from both LGBTQ+ staff (including those who aren’t LGBTQ+ network members) and non-LGBTQ+ staff.

The more employees who respond to the questionnaire, the more useful and representative the data will be. If you are a Diversity Champion, we will also be able to provide you with more in-depth analysis and break down the experiences of employees who have different identities.

The questionnaire is a fantastic way to perform a temperature check of experiences, attitudes and opinions within your workplace.

Writing a high quality submission

We entered the 2022 Index, can we copy our answers over?

Yes, absolutely.

The first step is to get access to your 2022 Index submission. See the question above on accessing your organisation’s previous submissions.

Once you have access to your 2022 Index submission, you can load up the historical submission and your 2023 draft submission. You will be able to copy and paste content, download and re-upload files.

It is very important that in copying over content, you check it is all still up to date.

Some questions related to specific time windows, and activity that was recognised in 2022 may be out of the time window to be awarded in 2023.

If your policy, practice or procedure has developed since your last submission, you might be losing out.

Can we include links in our Index submission?

You can, but this is may be a risky approach. If the link breaks or is inaccessible to external contacts, we will be unable to review your work fully. It is best to include a full description of your work, including evidence such as screenshots where invited, in the submission.

How should we format and label files that we submit as evidence?

We would encourage you to include the relevant question numbers in names of files you upload. We would also recommend highlighting the relevant sections of longer documents or files to ensure the marker can see which sections you are referring to in your descriptions.

Can I review the submission before submitting?

Yes, we would encourage you to carefully check your submission before submitting it. There is a preview option to help with this. We would particularly recommend checking that all your evidence has correctly uploaded by downloading and viewing the files.

Marking your submission and our index awards

Who marks our Index submission?

The Workplace Equality Index is marked by Stonewall experts in the field of LGBTQ+ workplace equality.

All markers have undergone extensive training to ensure that, regardless of who marks your submission, you will be marked to the same high standards.

Your marker may not be familiar with your work before reading your submission, so we can only award for work that is described in your submission.

How many marks does each question get?

We have carefully balanced many factors in deciding how each of the index sections and questions are weighted.

Each section is worth a different number of points, as shown below.

My organisation has specific challenges, how do you make the scoring fair to us?

We know that different organisations face different challenges and incentives. For example, smaller organisations may be more restricted by budget and larger organisations may find it takes longer to embed cultural change across all their operations.

We have carefully reviewed the index criteria to make sure that they are accessible to organisations of different sizes, sectors and ways of working.

The index covers eight different areas of practice and we don’t expect organisations to achieve 100%. This gives entrants the flexibility to focus on different areas and still achieve strong results.

What awards can we win?

You can win:

Top 100 Employer ranking

Gold Employer award

Silver Employer award

Bronze Employer award

Highly Commended Network Group

Network Group of the Year

Employer of the Year in Scotland

Employer of the Year in Northern Ireland

Employer of the Year in Wales

Will we get a Bronze, Silver, or Gold Employer award?

If your organisation has LGBTQ+ inclusion built into its structures and staff experiences, then you will be eligible for awards.

You will need to get enough points in three categories to be awarded.

Bi-specific points are points awarded for questions that relate specifically to bi identities. Trans-specific points are points awarded for questions that relate specifically to trans identities, which includes non-binary identities.

You must meet all three of the thresholds to win an award at each level.

Will we be recognised as a Top 100 employer?

The Top 100 Employers list recognises the most LGBTQ-inclusive employers in the UK and places are highly coveted.

To be recognised as a Top 100 employer, you must be in the Top 100 scores of our Gold and Silver award winners.

Will any of our staff be recognised as individual award winners?

You will have the opportunity to nominate your staff to be recognised as Changemakers of the Year. We recognise 5-10 Changemakers each year. Our awards panel analyses each of the nominations – this is separate to the marking of your submission.

Will our network win Network Group of the Year?

You will have the opportunity to nominate your organisations LGBTQ+ network group as Network Group of the Year award. Our awards panel analyses each of the nominations – this is separate to the marking of your submission.

Will our network group be recognised as a Highly Commended Network Group?

We will also recognise the work of a wider group of LGBTQ+ network groups through our Highly Commended Network Group award. 

These are decided based on scores in the LGBTQ+ employee network group section of the submission, taking into account bi and trans specific work. You do not need to nominate your network group.

Confidentiality and data

Will our score and rank be shared outside our organisation?

We will never share your score outside of your organisation. We will only share your rank and award if you are achieve a Top 100 place or if you specifically opt in to us doing so.

Where you choose to celebrate your result – regardless of award or rank status – we may join in on the celebrations! For example, if you choose to tweet out you results, sometimes the Stonewall Twitter account will amplify that with a retweet.

We will sometimes share aggregated data – that doesn’t name your organisation – showing averages of results. For example, we will share the average score of organisations that operate in Scotland with other employers in Scotland. But we never name the employers are part of that average, unless they are in the Top 100.

Will we be publicly named as participants?

We will only name Top 100 employers and entrants who win other awards and specifically consent to be named publicly.

Will our score and rank be shared widely inside our organisation?

Generally no, if you don’t want to.

Results that are shared publicly (for example, Top 100 rankings), will be accessible to those inside your organisation too.

Beyond what’s publicly shared, we will only share your results with our main contact at the organisation or individuals who led the submission.

It’s up to you how widely you share your results internally, though we would encourage you to share your participation with staff so they can see your commitment to making your workplace more LGBTQ+ inclusive.

How do you protect the data we submit to the index?

We take the protection of personal and commercially sensitive data very seriously. You can read our full data protection and privacy statement on Stonewall Submit.