Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How One Company Built a Career Ladder for LGBTQ+ Talent
Transcript
- Lucas: Let's talk about career ladders — specifically, how one tech firm built one for its LGBTQ+ employees. Not just an employee resource group or a once-a-year pride event, but an actual structured path to management and leadership for people who've historically been overlooked in promotion decisions. Luna: I love this angle. Because we've talked a lot about career ladders for different groups on this show, but LGBTQ+ talent — especially in tech — still faces some pretty stark disparities in advancement. Lucas: Yeah. The data's actually pretty sobering. A 2023 survey from the Human Rights Campaign found that only about 45 percent of LGBTQ+ employees feel comfortable being out at work, and that number drops for transgender employees. But beyond comfort, there's a promotion gap: LGBTQ+ professionals are 15 percent less likely to hold a manager role than their peers, even when controlling for education and experience. Luna: So the company we're looking at today — it's a mid-sized tech firm, about 2,000 employees, based in Austin. They decided to tackle this head-on about three years ago. Lucas: Right. And the name of the company — they've asked us not to use it publicly for this episode because they're still in the middle of scaling the program and don't want to be seen as 'done.' But they shared all their internal data and program design with us. Luna: So what did they actually build? Walk us through it. Lucas: They started with a simple premise: the career ladder at most companies is opaque. People don't know what it takes to get promoted. For LGBTQ+ employees, especially those who aren't out to their manager, that opacity is worse — they don't have the same informal networks to decode the system. Luna: So they made the promotion criteria completely transparent. For every job level — from associate to director — they published the exact competencies, the expected impact, and the specific metrics you need to hit. No more 'culture fit' or 'leadership potential' as undefined criteria. Lucas: Exactly. They stripped out subjective language. Then they paired that with a formal sponsorship program. Not mentorship — sponsorship. Senior leaders, including the CEO, were assigned to sponsor two LGBTQ+ employees each. The sponsor's job was to actively advocate for that person in promotion conversations, not just give advice. Luna: And they tied it to a measurable goal. The company set a target: within three years, LGBTQ+ representation at the director level and above would mirror their overall workforce representation. At the time, it was about 7 percent of the workforce but only 2 percent of directors. Lucas: Two years in, they've seen that director representation move from 2 percent to 5 percent. Not at the goal yet, but a meaningful shift. And retention among LGBTQ+ employees overall — across all levels — went up by 34 percent year over year. Luna: That retention number is huge. I've seen studies that replacing a mid-career tech employee costs roughly one and a half to two times their annual salary. So even a modest retention improvement pays for the program. Lucas: The company calculated that the program cost about $450,000 over two years — that's sponsor training, a part-time program manager, and some data tracking tools. The savings from reduced turnover among LGBTQ+ employees alone was over $1.2 million in the same period. So it's not just the right thing to do — it's financially sound. Luna: But I'm curious — how did they get the CEO on board? Because sponsorship from the top is usually a make or break factor for these programs. Lucas: In this case, the CEO was actually the one who initiated it. She attended a conference where a speaker shared data on the LGBTQ+ promotion gap, and she came back and said, 'We have to measure this at our company.' When the data came back showing the gap at her own firm, she felt a personal responsibility to do something. Luna: So it wasn't a case of convincing — it was a case of providing data that motivated action. Lucas: Right. And they didn't start with a huge rollout. They piloted it in the engineering division — about 400 people — for six months. They tested the transparent criteria and the sponsorship model. Then they expanded to the whole company after they saw early wins. Luna: Smart. Because piloting lets you work out the kinks. Did they run into any pushback? I imagine some managers might feel uncomfortable with what looks like preferential treatment. Lucas: They did. Some managers argued that focusing on LGBTQ+ employees was unfair to other groups. The company's response was: this isn't a zero-sum game. The transparent criteria helped everyone, not just LGBTQ+ employees. And the sponsorship program was actually expanded later to include other underrepresented groups. Luna: So they made it additive, not exclusive. That seems like a key lesson. Lucas: Absolutely. And they also built in accountability. Every quarter, the program manager reported the numbers to the executive team. If a sponsor wasn't actively meeting with their sponsee or advocating for them, that got flagged. It wasn't a feel-good initiative — it was a performance metric. Luna: One thing I really like about this program is that it doesn't just focus on the individual — it changes the system. The transparent criteria, the sponsor mandate, the measurement — those are structural changes. Lucas: That's the big takeaway for me too. Individual resilience training or 'bring your whole self to work' posters don't move the needle. But when you redesign the promotion process and attach senior leaders to it, you actually shift outcomes. Luna: If today's episode was useful to you — maybe you're thinking about how to advocate for a similar program at your own company — that's exactly why we keep these conversations ad-free. The way that stays true is listener support at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small gesture that directly keeps this show going. And we genuinely appreciate every single person who chips in. Now — back to the program. One of the most interesting details is how they measured the sponsorship itself. Luna: Oh, tell me. Because sponsorship is often hard to quantify. Lucas: They asked sponsors to log every advocacy action — every time they recommended their sponsee for a stretch assignment, every time they mentioned them in a promotion committee meeting, every time they connected them with a senior leader. They then correlated those logs with promotion rates. And they found that sponsees whose sponsors logged at least three advocacy actions per quarter were promoted at twice the rate of those with fewer. Luna: That's concrete. So the dose matters — it's not just having a sponsor on paper. Lucas: Exactly. And the company now uses that threshold as a minimum expectation for sponsors. If you're not hitting three advocacy actions per quarter, you get a check-in from the program manager. Luna: It's almost like they gamified sponsorship in a productive way. Lucas: In a way. But it's more like they made the invisible visible. The whole program is about surfacing the hidden mechanics of career advancement and making them accessible to people who are systematically excluded. And the data shows it works not just for LGBTQ+ employees — the transparent criteria helped everyone, but it helped the most for those who started with the least access. Luna: So if you're a listener who wants to push for something like this, what's the first step? Lucas: Collect your own data. That's what this company did. Look at your promotion rates by demographic group. If you see a gap for LGBTQ+ employees — or any group — you have a starting point. Then, find an executive sponsor who's willing to pilot a transparent criteria and sponsorship program in one department. Start small, measure everything, and let the results speak. Luna: And don't forget to include LGBTQ+ employees in the design. The company we talked about had a steering committee that was majority LGBTQ+. Lucas: Crucial point. Nothing about us without us. That steering committee helped shape the sponsorship matching process and the criteria language. They caught blind spots that leadership never would have seen. Luna: So the real meta-lesson might be: the people closest to the problem are the ones best equipped to design the solution — if you give them the resources and authority to do it. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the note I want to leave on. The company didn't hire a consultant to write a program. They asked their LGBTQ+ employees: 'What's broken, and what would fix it?' Then they funded the answers.