We're creating a “Civil Service Allies Week”
Allies are important to making workplaces inclusive, so we're creating a week to celebrate our allies and to encourage others to help.
The best estimates we have show that LGBT+ people make up at least 2.5% of the population1. As LGBT+ people, we are in a very small minority.
That’s also true in the Civil Service. Based on responses to the Civil Service People Survey, we estimate up to 20,000 civil servants are lesbian, gay, bisexual or ‘other’2. We see and hear about LGBT+ civil servants doing fantastic work to make things better for people like them at work every day, but we also know that they couldn’t do all of that without support from people who don’t identify as LGBT+.
Why we need an Allies Week
We want to recognise the important role of allies in making our workplaces more diverse and inclusive. We also want to encourage more colleagues to step up and be active allies in their organisations. So we’re creating an Allies Week to do that.
We know allies are going above and beyond to make sure their colleagues feel safe to be themselves at work. We have LGBT+ champions in almost every department, and active ally networks in some too. We want to highlight what they’re doing, in part just to say “thanks!” and ask them to keep going.
We also know some people want to help, but they don’t know where to start. We want to demonstrate what good, active allies do. We want to make sure that saying you’re an ally is more than just wearing a rainbow lanyard and showing up to a Pride event.
That’s what Allies Week will be for: to champion those doing lots already, and to ask others to get on board.
Allies Week is coming soon
We’re hoping to hold our first Allies Week in the week from 29 October to 2 November 2018.
We want to make Allies Week an annual event. This year we’re going to start small, and next year we’re hoping to have a full range of activities across the UK. Keep checking our website, Twitter, Facebook for everything we’re doing during Allies week.
Get involved
If you’re an ally, and you want to get involved in Allies Week; contact us.
Whether you want to write a blog, share a video, or run an event, we’d love to hear from you.
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Data from the Office of National Statistics suggests that around 2.5% of the UK population identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual; the overall LGBT+ population is very likely higher. ↩
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The People Survey included gender identity monitoring for the first time in 2017, but as this was an experimental question it doesn’t provide a good basis to make a wider estimate at the moment. ↩