Five ways workplaces can better support LGBTQ+ parents & non-traditional families
September 11, 2025Although workplaces are getting much better at supporting LGBTQ+ parents, there’s still a long way to go to become truly inclusive and embrace all families. Employers are still grappling with how to shape culture and policies to support families and parenting, especially to ensure parental leave policies are inclusive. Here are five ways that HR or DE&I can ensure that their parenting and care policies are inclusive and also meet the needs of LGBTQ+ employees and non-traditional families.
1. Ensure inclusive language is used in conversations and policies
Inclusive language is vital to make LGBTQ+ people feel more included. That includes in conversations, written policies and forms, and not making assumptions about an employee’s family set-up or partner. Sometimes, policies are simply out-of-date and need to be tweaked with current terms.
For example, offering a “parent” option on forms; or citing “parental leave” instead of “paternity leave” can make a huge difference, especially for LGBTQ+ parents, as AstraZeneca’s Gill Hayes-Bell highlighted. “When my partner was pregnant, I got to the point where I needed to tell my line manager. Clearly, I was not the parent that was pregnant, but wanted to find out what my rights were as a new parent.” When her manager referred to the “paternity leave” in the company policy, it led to a conversation about the importance of inclusive language.
“The company and HR were fast to act and changed the policy immediately to ‘parental leave.’ I remember the company’s panic-stricken employment lawyer calling to apologize, admitting that it should have been spotted earlier,” shared Gill.
Thankfully, most companies are quick to react in cases like this, but ensuring language is inclusive for LGBTQ+ parents and all family set-ups shouldn’t be a reactionary measure. Companies need to be more proactive about ensuring the language used across the company’s policies, documents, and conversations are inclusive. “Just be inclusive from day one in every word that you write down because it can really can make a meaningful difference,” confirmed VF Corporation’s Jan Van Mossevelde who is also the company’s Pride Lead, working with HR to ensure policies are inclusive. He believes that just making a few tweaks in policy can really make a “massive difference” for the well-being and inclusion of LGBTQ+ parents.
2. Educate staff by encouraging year-round open conversations on LGBTQ+ parenting
Workplaces need to work harder to encourage more open conversations about LGBTQ+ parenting families to combat stereotyping and making assumptions about colleagues’ family set ups. For LGBTQ+ couples (with or without children), there can still be issues between balancing home and work identities, with many people feeling uncomfortable bringing up their partners at work or bringing them to work events. Education and conversations are needed therefore to combat stereotyping, such as assuming parents to be in straight relationships. “Knowing the difference between respectful questions, and disrespectful intrusive conversations is key,” according to LGBTQ+ Consultant Saski.
“Having coffee chats, or speed networking events, where people have the ability to get together that allow colleagues to actually share experiences and raise questions help, according to experts. During Pride Month this year, for example, Sanofi is launching a campaign called ‘Just Ask’ to encourage people to ask questions about LGBTQ+ issues they don’t understand in a respectful way, highlighted Sanofi’s Suncere Hernandez. “Of course, education around the topic should not be limited to once a year during Pride Month, so Sanofi promotes year-round initiatives like ‘word of the month’ to educate and broaden the vocabulary around LGBTQ+ people, while providing the opportunity to ask questions around that. For example, this month’s word of the month ‘bisexuality.’”
More companies need to ensure LGBTQ+ parenting conversations like this happen all year round. “Getting confident with language, particularly around LGBTQ+ identities, is the biggest first step companies can take to ensure inclusion,” added Saski.
3. Ensure HR/DE&I/line managers understand additional challenges faced by LGBTQ+ parents
With increasing representation at work, it is crucial for all firms to understand how they can better support LGBTQ+ employees. It goes beyond offering everyone the same benefits. Starting a family as a same-sex couple is much less straightforward than for heterosexual couples and usually involves third-party assistance.
This needs to be recognized by employers and they need to become more aware of the many options available to LGBTQ+ people wanting to become parents. Awareness of the variety and complexity of paths is also vital to avoid making assumptions. That means understanding the challenges associated with surrogacy and adoption to ensure policies are inclusive and embrace all families. Options to have children include IVF/AR with anonymous donor gametes, known donor with three parent family, single surrogacy, childbearing by trans men, and more. HR, DE&I and line managers should be aware of the many challenges associated with these options and the advance planning required.
Options like IVF/AR, require significant medical intervention, while surrogacy and adoption arrangements involve considerable legal hurdles. Additionally, the financial burdens of IVF and surrogacy are high. Private IVF cycles can cost thousands, with often low rates of success and those going through medical procedures or facing adoption panels will experience high stress levels. That means the associated “emotional and financial pressures are likely to be draining” (as reported earlier). This also means that employees undertaking IVF, for example, have medical requirements – which start very early in the process – should be able to approach managers/HR very early, and will require understanding and flexibility from managers.
As well as awareness, employers and colleagues need to be compassionate toward any colleague going through this process, which is, of course, is not limited to LGBTQ+ parents and can apply to anyone exploring alternative ways to have children and grow their family. Organizations must also be conscious that offering exactly the same support to every employee does not mean they have the same opportunity to access it. Policies should therefore also acknowledge and address these specific challenges.
Regular, collaborative conversations between all parents and staff and HR are also a must. It’s vital to ensure the right support is offered at the right time, as VF Corporation’s Jan shares, highlighting his LGBTQ+ parenting experience of having twins at a recent event, which you can listen to here.
4. Encourage intersectional conversations through Employee Resource Groups (ERG)
HR/DE&I should also enlist the help of employee resource groups to help educate and encourage intersectional conversations, and support LGBTQ+ parents and non-traditional families. Many ERGs organize joint webinars or educational seminars with relevant organizations to talk about various issues from LGBTQ+ issues to single parenting.
“As co-chair of our Safe Space Mental Health Awareness Group, we do a lot of work with our LGBTQ+ colleagues in that space as well, and encourage intersectional conversations on a variety of topics, like miscarriage, infant loss, etc.,” highlighted AstraZeneca’s Gill. “We’ve found these drop-in sessions appeal to all staff, including men, women, LGBTQ+ colleagues etc. These activities make a huge difference in terms of bringing people closer together through their emotional connections and encourage intersectional conversations.”
5. Offer better signposting to external resources
Although smaller companies often don’t have the resources or adequate policies in place to offer the support that larger companies can, they can offer better signposting to external organizations to help LGBTQ+ parents and non-traditional families, such as:
The IP Non-traditional Family Network
A community for people in solo parent families, blended families, adoptive families, LGBTQ+ families and other non-traditional families in the UK IP professions. It’s also for their allies. The network provides support and a safe space for sharing ideas.
This ground-breaking show was originally created and launched in London by Michael and Wes Johnson-Ellis from the UK, active LGBTQ+ bloggers and campaigners for the community. They are also dads to their children, Talulah and Duke, born via gestational surrogacy. They know only all too well how difficult it can be navigating all the options and pathways for LGBTQ+ people, so they set out to change this by creating an education-first event, providing a safe space for all the attendees to network and discuss the varied options available to them.
A leading inclusive national UK charity that supports single-parent families.
For LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, there are now more options than ever for growing your family. However, navigating these choices can be complex, and knowing where to begin may feel overwhelming.
To support you in this journey, we’ve outlined the basics, as parenting is already a challenging endeavor without adding further confusion. Click below to read our LGBTQ+ Parenting: How to Start Your Family guide: