Bi Inclusion at Work: The Largest LGBTQ+ Group, the Least Visible

Today is Bi Visibility Day, and the awkward fact behind it is this: bi+ people are the largest group within the LGBTQ+ community, and the least visible inside most organisations that employ them. Many employers with well-established LGBTQ+ networks have never run a single bi-specific initiative. myGwork's new Bi Inclusion Guide for Employers, published today and free to download at the bottom of this page, sets out the evidence and what to do about it.

There is also a deadline attached this year. From 30 October 2026 — five weeks away — the Employment Rights Act 2025 makes employers liable for harassment of staff by third parties, including customers and clients, across all protected characteristics, unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it. Generic policies will not meet that test.

Bi+ people are the majority, and the gap is widening

In Gallup's February 2026 data, 59% of LGBTQ+ adults in the United States identify as bisexual. In the UK, ONS figures published in December 2025 put 855,000 people aged 16+ as bisexual, and among 16 to 24-year-olds, 5.1% identify as bi against 2.9% gay or lesbian. In the 2021 Census for England and Wales, twice as many 16 to 24-year-olds identified as bi as gay or lesbian; among young women, three times as many.

The implication for employers is uncomfortable and straightforward. If your LGBTQ+ network, role-model programme and Pride communications are built around gay and lesbian experience, they are speaking to a minority of the LGBTQ+ people you employ — and the mismatch widens with every graduate intake.

The outness gap is the largest in the community

Bi people are consistently the least likely to be out at work, and the gap is not marginal.

• 39% of bi workers in Great Britain are open with no one at work, against 14% of lesbian and gay workers. Only 24% are open with everyone, versus 58% (TUC, 2024, 1,001 LGBT workers).
• 36% of bi employees in the US are out to their supervisor, against 75% of gay and lesbian employees (Williams Institute, 2022).
• 42% have hidden or disguised being bi at work for fear of discrimination, and only 28% strongly agree they would feel confident reporting bullying or harassment (Stonewall, Bi Report, 2020).
• 59% of bi employees self-report their orientation in employer diversity surveys, against 79% of gay men and 77% of lesbians (HRC). The bi people in your data are a fraction of the bi people in your workforce.

That last figure is the one that makes the rest invisible. Most employers who look at their diversity data and conclude there is no bi-specific problem are looking at a sample that under-counts the group by roughly a third, drawn from the people who felt safest answering.

Why it stays hidden: erasure and double discrimination

Bi erasure operates in the background of most workplaces without anyone intending it. A bi colleague mentions a girlfriend and is filed under "lesbian"; two years later she mentions a husband and is quietly refiled under "straight — must have been experimenting". Neither label is hers.

Because most bi people are in different-gender relationships — 88% of partnered bi adults in Pew's data have a partner of a different sex — being bi rarely announces itself. The practical consequence is a constant, low-level decision about whether to correct people. Every new team, client or manager means either coming out again, often to blank looks or intrusive questions, or letting an inaccurate assumption stand.

For how deep that pattern runs, our history of bisexuality traces the erasure back a good deal further than the modern workplace.

Then there is prejudice from both directions. Stonewall found 27% of bi women and 18% of bi men had experienced discrimination from within the LGBT community itself, and 43% of bi people had never attended an LGBT space or event. A bi colleague may feel unwelcome in the very network set up to support them — particularly if its programming, language and leadership are exclusively gay and lesbian.

What it costs

Bi people carry the heaviest mental-health burden in the LGBTQ+ community. In myGwork's own 2024 research, 59% of bi+ and plurisexual respondents had experienced depression — the highest of any group, against 45% of LGBTQ+ respondents overall — and 44% had experienced generalised anxiety disorder, against 31% overall. Stonewall's 2018 health research found 41% of bi people had thought about taking their own life in the past year, against 28% of lesbian and gay people.

There is a pay gap too. A meta-analysis of 24 studies (Drydakis, 2021) found bi men earn on average 10.3% less and bi women 5.1% less than their heterosexual counterparts — for bi men, a larger penalty than the 6.8% gay men face.

And it shows up as attrition. In the Williams Institute study, 58% of out bi men had left a job because of how they were treated. That is hidden turnover: it does not appear in an exit survey as "biphobia", it appears as a resignation.

What changes on 30 October 2026

Sexual orientation is already a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, and section 12 defines it explicitly to include bi people. Three features of the Act matter particularly here: discrimination because of a perceived orientation is covered, so an employee assumed to be gay or assumed to be straight is protected either way; harassment "related to" sexual orientation does not have to be aimed at the person's own orientation, so biphobic banter in earshot of a bi colleague nobody knows is bi can still be harassment; and employers are liable for harassment by their staff unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it.

From 30 October 2026 that liability extends to third parties — customers, clients, patients, contractors. For bi employees this is not abstract. Sexualised "jokes" about bi women are among the most commonly reported biphobic comments, and they come from customers as readily as colleagues.

"All reasonable steps" is the operative phrase, and generic policies are unlikely to satisfy it. Training with bi-specific examples, a risk assessment that contemplates third-party harassment, and clear reporting routes are what the standard looks like in practice. This is general information and not legal advice; take advice on your own jurisdictions.

Eight things that actually work

The encouraging part is how cheap most of this is. From the guide's key actions:

• Say "bi". Audit your policies, communications and training: does "LGBTQ+" in practice mean "gay and lesbian"? Name bi people explicitly.
• Count bi people. Offer bisexual, pansexual, queer and a free-text option separately in self-ID, and report bi+ data rather than folding it into "LGB". You cannot close a gap you cannot see.
• Make benefits partner-blind. Check that every family, partner, relocation, health and bereavement benefit applies regardless of a partner's gender — and that the forms say so. Fields labelled "husband/wife" undo a good policy.
• Give the network a bi lead. And run bi-specific programming, marking Bi Visibility Day and Bi Awareness Week rather than only Pride.
• Surface role models. A senior leader who mentions in passing that she is bi and married to a man does more for bi colleagues than a month of Pride graphics.
• Challenge the tropes. "Greedy", "confused", "just a phase", "you're basically straight now" — from straight or LGBTQ+ colleagues — are harassment risks as well as culture problems.
• Prepare for October. Third-party harassment liability arrives on 30 October 2026.
• Brief your wellbeing provision. Make sure your EAP and mental-health first-aiders know bi people report the highest rates of depression and anxiety of any sexual-orientation group.

Frequently asked questions

When is Bi Visibility Day?

23 September each year, founded in 1999 by Wendy Curry, Michael Page and Gigi Raven Wilbur. Bi Awareness Week runs from 16 to 23 September, and Bi+ Health Awareness Month is in March.

Are bi employees protected by the Equality Act?

Yes. Section 12 defines sexual orientation as orientation towards persons of the same sex, the opposite sex, or either sex — so bi employees are protected from direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation in exactly the same way as gay, lesbian and straight employees.

Why report bi+ data separately from gay and lesbian data?

Because combining them into "LGB" hides the fact that bi people are less out, less engaged and less well than their gay and lesbian colleagues. A single LGB figure can look healthy while the bi population inside it is not.

What should a manager say when a colleague comes out as bi?

Thank them, don't ask about their partner, ask what support if any they would like, and treat the information as theirs to share. Don't turn it into a bigger deal than they have made it.

Download the Bi Inclusion Guide for Employers

The full guide is below: the evidence on outness, health and pay; the legal position in the UK, US and EU; practical guidance on policies, benefits and data; a language table of what to say and what to avoid; guidance for managers and colleagues; a section on intersectionality; and a one-page bi inclusion checklist you can work through with your network.

It also lists bi-specific support organisations and helplines, which are worth circulating internally whatever else you do this week.

If you want to know whether your organisation is built to produce this kind of inclusion rather than relying on individual goodwill, our Active Allyship Index scores that in about twelve minutes.

The Bi Inclusion Guide for Employers is published by myGwork, the global business community for LGBTQ+ professionals, graduates, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Throughout, "bi" and "bi+" are used as inclusive umbrella terms for everyone attracted to more than one gender. The guide is for informational and best-practice purposes and is not legal advice.