Australian Workplace Equality Index materials cover workplace inclusion and do not address purchasing

The current submission round

Advanced Submissions for the current round of the Australian Workplace Equality Index close at 5pm AEDT on Monday 22 February 2027. Employers seeking Silver or Gold are now assembling their evidence, and the results will be announced at the Australian LGBTIQA+ Inclusion Awards later in the year. For participating organisations, a tier serves as public evidence of their commitment to LGBTIQA+ people. That evidence is easily read as covering more of an organisation’s activity than it does, and this article sets out what the index assesses.

How the index is structured

The AWEI was developed in 2010 and is run by Pride in Diversity, the workplace inclusion program of ACON, which describes it as the leading benchmarking tool for LGBTIQA+ inclusion in Australian workplaces. It has four components: a roadmap to guide an organisation’s inclusion strategy, a submission assessed against set criteria, a national employee survey and a pathway to award nominations.

Submissions are made in two streams, the Standard Employer Stream for organisations with more than 500 employees and the Small Employer Stream for those with 500 or fewer. Every submitter first completes a Foundation Submission, which covers a baseline of inclusion work and can be lodged either within or outside the annual submission period. Achieving Bronze on the Foundation Submission is the condition for lodging an Advanced Submission, through which an organisation competes for Silver or Gold.

The scoring thresholds are published. Bronze requires 80 per cent of the available Foundation points, which is 64 of 80 for a standard employer and 40 of 50 for a small employer. On the Advanced Submission, Silver requires 60 per cent and Gold 85 per cent, equivalent to 72 and 102 of 120 points for a standard employer. Pride in Diversity states that these fixed entry points were introduced with the fifth iteration of the index, and that tier thresholds were previously set by ranking the scores of all participants. Platinum recognises sustained performance, defined as Gold in four of the last five years or Employer of the Year twice in that period.

The areas covered by the submission, as listed by Pride in Diversity, are HR policy and diversity practice; bullying, harassment and support; inclusion of trans and gender diverse employees; strategic focus and accountability; employee networks; visibility of inclusion; training and professional development; executive leadership; data analysis; community engagement; survey participation; and additional work. Most of these concern how an organisation treats the people it employs.

Participation and the awards

Any organisation may take part in the AWEI. Participation is included in Pride in Diversity membership, and non members pay a fee. The employee survey gives an indication of scale: in 2025, 147 organisations and 35,380 individuals took part, and 26.6 per cent of respondents were identified as being of diverse sexuality, having a trans or gender diverse experience, or both.

The 2026 Australian LGBTIQA+ Inclusion Awards, held on 29 May at ICC Sydney, followed the same workplace focus, with Bendigo Bank named Employer of the Year and Russell Kennedy Lawyers named Small Employer of the Year. The individual awards open for nomination this year include CEO of the Year, Network Leader of the Year, the LGBTIQA+ Role Model Award and the Sally Webster Ally Award. These awards recognise leaders, networks, allies and culture within organisations, which is what the index was designed to measure.

References to suppliers in the published materials

We reviewed the AWEI’s published pages and the most detailed question set that is publicly available. The submission page, the submission FAQs and the tier recognition page do not mention suppliers, procurement, supply chains or supplier diversity.

The Foundation Submission for the fifth iteration, which covers Bronze status from 2023 to 2026, was released under freedom of information by the then Department of Health and Aged Care, and its six sections assign point values to each question. The round now open falls after the period that document covers, so the current questions may differ. The only reference to a supplier in the document is a guidance note on dress codes, which explains how to evidence support for trans and gender diverse staff when uniforms are sourced from an external supplier. No question in it asks an employer what it purchases from LGBTIQA+ owned businesses.

The Advanced Submission questions are not published, so we are unable to say whether its community engagement or additional work sections give credit for purchasing. The Foundation document notes that points can be gained in the additional work section for any LGBTIQA+ inclusion work, which would allow for it. On the public evidence, however, the AWEI does not ask employers to report where their purchasing is directed, an omission consistent with its design as a workplace index.

The approach of the American and British indexes

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index in the United States takes a different approach, and its 2026 edition, released in February 2026, had 1,450 participants scored out of 100 points across four pillars. The fourth pillar, outreach and engagement, carries 20 points. Fifteen of those points require a business to implement at least one of five forms of engagement, one of which is supplier programs that include certified LGBTIQA+ suppliers. The remaining five points require inclusive non discrimination standards for contractors and suppliers, where such standards exist, together with inclusive philanthropic giving guidelines.

The 2025 report described rated businesses as meeting the standard by demonstrating at least five efforts of public commitment, from a list that included LGBTIQA+ supplier diversity programs, and reported that 876 of 981 rated businesses with supplier diversity programs specifically included LGBTIQA+ owned enterprises. Under the 2026 criteria, a company can earn all 15 points for outreach or engagement through recruitment, marketing, philanthropy or inclusive products without operating any supplier program, so on the published wording the supplier route has become easier to avoid. The same report recorded a sharp fall in public participation, with 131 Fortune 500 companies submitting in 2026 compared with 377 in 2025.

Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index in Britain takes a third position, listing supply chains among the nine areas its criteria cover and describing its 2022 to 2024 round as asking organisations to show how they have changed practice in their supply chain, including by ensuring existing suppliers are committed to LGBTIQA+ inclusion. Those criteria address how suppliers conduct themselves and make no reference to who owns them.

Of the three indexes, the British index asks how suppliers behave, the American index offers purchasing from certified LGBTIQA+ suppliers as one optional way to earn points, and the Australian index, on its published materials, asks about neither ownership nor purchasing.

Implications for corporate decision makers and owners

For a decision maker in a large Australian company, a Gold result in the AWEI is strong evidence that the organisation’s policies, networks, leadership and culture have been assessed against demanding criteria. It gives no evidence about purchasing, including whether the procurement team knows who owns its suppliers, records that information or has ever purchased from an LGBTIQA+ owned business. A company that wants that information will need to ask its procurement team directly.

Employers already undertaking the workplace work are well placed to ask those questions, because an employer that participates in the AWEI employee survey has already invited its staff to complete a confidential survey in which they can identify their sexuality and gender experience. A supplier form inviting owners to disclose LGBTIQA+ ownership raises the same issues of consent, purpose and access to the responses, and such an employer has already had to resolve them for its own staff.

For owners, the tier lists are useful in a more limited way, identifying organisations that have invested in LGBTIQA+ inclusion internally, which makes them reasonable organisations to approach about whether that commitment extends to procurement, although a tier is not evidence that it does.

Companies, and those who read their results, should therefore treat workplace inclusion and supplier purchasing as separate areas of practice, each requiring its own evidence.

Sources

Pride in Business publishes analysis on LGBTIQA+ economic participation in Australia. It is funded and published through Just Gold’s impact program.

Get The Briefing. A new analysis piece and research updates, by email every fortnight.

Australian Workplace Equality Index materials cover workplace inclusion and do not address purchasing

The current submission round

How the index is structured

Participation and the awards

References to suppliers in the published materials

The approach of the American and British indexes

Implications for corporate decision makers and owners

Sources

More from The Briefing

What the 2026 Census will show about business owners by sexual orientation and gender

Recognising a supplier category does not by itself lead to purchasing

Record spending with certified social enterprises is not reported by owner identity

Corporate Pride commentary has overlooked procurement, which on public evidence was never built at scale