and Transgendered Supportive Organizational Policies

The central premise of this article is that organizations have social and economic interests in building policies and practices that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) workers. This argument is based on empirical evidence that (a) LGBT workers continue to face discrimination at work from which they are not protected under federal law, and (b) discrimination has negative consequences for individual’s mental and physical health, and on reasoning that (c) organizations share responsibility for the social good of the communities in which they operate. We offer practical suggestions for creating LGBT-supportive organizations and propose that industrial–organizational psychologists have an ethical obligation to support such efforts. The United States has enacted federal leg-islation prohibiting discrimination in the workplace on the basis of a variety of demo-graphic factors. The United States has been slow, however, to enact legislation pro-hibiting discrimination against those who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisex-ual, or transgendered (LGBT). A substan-tial body of evidence has accumulated demonstrating that LGBT individuals face unequal treatment on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity in employment practices, and that the expe-rience of such discrimination has conse-quences for well-being and organizational outcomes. Our contention is that, even in the absence of federal legislation protecting Correspondence concerning this article should b