Better Business Building
PREVENT COSTLY LAWSUITS, MANAGE COMPANY REPUTATION, AVOID LOSS OF REVENUES
“In highly efficient business models, people are the most competitive advantage and the most valuable resource for market credibility and revenues.” Lisa E. Kirkwood
Gender Diversity & LGBTIAQ+ Inclusivity in the Workplace – Basic Strategies for More Engaged Leaders and Teams by Dr. h.c. Lisa E. Kirkwood – The True Stories Merchant™
Did you know?
In 2025, LGBTQ+ workplace legal disputes involved major costs, with employer defense and settlement fees often ranging from $50,000 to over $500,000 per case. Escalating costs were driven by federal rollbacks on DEI policies, federal court rulings vacating EEOC harassment guidelines, and widespread legal uncertainty.
For many employers, walking the line between preventing workplace harassment and navigating personal employee accommodations became highly specialized and expensive. While over 25 states (including California) had strict state-level protections, employers operating in regions with restrictive state policies faced conflicting legal obligations and compliance ambiguity.
LGBT/LGBTIAQ+ What does it mean? The acronym itself is probably confusing for the majority of straight people. What started as GLBT a few decades ago, turned into LGBT and expanded into LGBTIAQ+ and it stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual, and other orientations and gender identities that may not be explicitly covered in the acronym.
However, overall lack of knowledge in this regard is not an excuse to avoid accountability in proven cases. Typical legal costs for this type of employee lawsuit are quite hefty. For internal investigations and pre-litigation, the costs are $10,000 – $50,000, which encompasses resolving complaints, HR audits, and severance negotiations. Single-plaintiff lawsuits can be $75,000 – $250,000+ in defense costs for wrongful termination, harassment, or retaliation claims.
Class action lawsuits can claim $500,000 – $2,000,000+ in defense and settlement costs, typically involving systemic discrimination or widespread benefit exclusions. And for damages and settlements, jury awards frequently range from $50,000 to well over $300,000 per employee depending on jurisdiction. All these figures are within the annual estimate of legal costs in the US, between 500 million and 1 billion dollars, caused by employee lawsuits across different industries and organizations, in the federal, state, and private sectors.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ensures the enforcement of legal judgments against non-prevailing employers to the full extent of the law, which often means higher than usual monetary compensations to employees and former employees who win the case.
Yet, standard policies in numerous organizations completely ignore the LGBTIAQ+ segment of workforce and market share, which is quite detrimental to both employee productivity and business profits. By looking the other way, if doesn’t mean this highly sensitive issue and the LGBTIAQ+ community will simply disappear, and so the straight majority does not have to deal with them anymore. LGBTIAQ+ is a growing minority worldwide, at various levels of global society. Isolation is not the right answer, and it can cause conflict and tensions, or loss of trust, reputation, productivity, and revenues, just to name a few.
I once interviewed a transgender lady who underwent a radical life change, and she shared some of her challenges. She used to be a man constantly under pressure to perform at his job until one day, he felt so overwhelmed that, in an unusual moment, he asked his wife to put make up on him just to see how it would feel like to be a woman and maybe less burdened by the stress of having to always overperform.
His wife put make up on him, then they saw his reflection in the mirror, and they both realized that he would look good as a woman. From that moment on, for a long time, he considered transitioning and sex change until he finally took the step. He had support from his wife and children, who understood the difficulty of the situation and helped him through this identity crisis.
An outsider can only imagine what his family members thought or felt. This person remained married to the same woman, same wife, and the children ended up with two mothers. This story seems so surreal, I am simply retelling it, but it’s just one of the many unmentioned personal dramas unfolding every day in our world. What do we really know about the life challenges of a non-straight person to think that we should judge them? We can’t help their circumstances, we can’t change them, what good is it to make things even more difficult than they already are?
At the very least, acknowledge the situation and try to be kind about that and use the correct pronouns, if you know them. Acceptance does not mean embracing a totally different lifestyle, although that’s also an option that a number of straight people are exploring nowadays. Let’s just treat each other with respect and decency, like we want to be treated. People are people, we are all human beings with the same universal need for care and love.
Keep that in mind the next time you face a difficult situation in your workplace that may be caused by disputes between straight and LGBTIAQ+ employees. It does not have to be like that, and should not be overlooked, as it can get really costly really fast. If for nothing else, for the sake of keeping a good reputation for your organization, as well as avoiding unnecessary losses caused by litigation costs, you should offer proper training to your employees. When necessary, readjust your HR policies to be more gender inclusive to ensure a harmonious integration of all your employees, regardless of gender diversity or identity, and sexual orientation.
If your training does not cover LGBTIAQ+, it’s ok to hire a third-party coach that specializes in this type of issue and can assess things from a neutral perspective. This will pay off in the long term, when your team members can bring their full selves to work, be engaged, productive, and maintain a good atmosphere that encourages cohesiveness, creativity, innovation, and leads to significant business growth.
Dr. h.c. Lisa E. Kirkwood – The True Stories Merchant™
Global voice. Soulful connector
Keynote speaker, 5 X Amazon bestselling author, expert consultant
Global Diversity & Intercultural Communication
Team Building & Development
Leadership & Empowerment
www.thetruestoriesmerchant.com
+1 323-364-3757
