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Trusted employee data helps insurers build more inclusive, resilient workplaces.
Published on June 30, 2026
By Joanna Browning
Markel Chief People Officer
4-minute read
For an industry grounded in people and relationships, this Pride Month offers us the opportunity to reflect on a simple question: are we applying the same discipline to understanding our people as we do to understanding risk?
The sector relies on evidence, modelling and analysis to make informed decisions. Underwriters assess exposure. Teams identify trends. Risk is quantified, stress-tested and acted upon.
Yet when it comes to understanding the people in it, many organisations are still operating in the dark.
Recent industry figures illustrate the challenge. Across the firms participating in Lloyd's 2025 Market Policies and Practices return, covering some 63,000 employees, just 2% disclosed they are LGB+.
That figure has remained unchanged for four consecutive years.
The key issue is that this 2% does not reflect what we know about the general population.
ONS data puts LGB identification across the UK at 3.7%, and in London, where the Lloyd's market is based, that rises to 5.9%.
The gap between what the data shows and what we know about the population is too large to be explained by demographics alone.
Trust issue
It points to something more fundamental: trust.
Employees cannot be compelled to disclose information about their sexual orientation or gender identity. Participation is entirely voluntary.
To raise disclosure rates, organisations need to build trust. Low disclosure rates often say more about organisational culture than they do about workforce composition.
This is especially important in insurance, where relationships, trust and professional judgement shape how people experience the workplace.
For LGBTQ+ employees, choosing whether to disclose personal information is often a considered decision.
It involves a judgement about whether being open will affect how they are seen, and whether it might cost them opportunities. If the culture does not make that feel safe, most people will say nothing.
Count Me In
At Markel, our Count Me In data initiative gave us an opportunity to take a more deliberate, data-led approach to understanding our people. The initiative invited our people to voluntarily share personal information across a range of characteristics, including sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity and socioeconomic background.
For us, the objective was not to collect numbers for a report. It was to build a clearer picture of our people.
That information can help us make better decisions about the employee lifecycle, development, progression and support.
What it required first, however, was a willingness to hear the answer.
We approached the exercise not as a survey, but as a change management process.
Rather than asking a single question and hoping for responses, we consulted our internal networks and mapped different employee attitudes towards disclosure. That meant considering those employees who were comfortable sharing information, those who were uncertain, and those who were actively reluctant, then addressing the concerns each group might have directly.
For some, the issue was privacy. For others, it was uncertainty about how the data would be used.
Communications were built around those specific concerns, and our people were involved throughout, with inclusion networks and employee resource groups consulted before the initiative launched.
Understanding your people is not an inclusion initiative. It’s a business imperative.
Challenging expectations
For me, one of the most important findings was that our employees were willing to share, even against a difficult external backdrop.
Stonewall reports that hate crimes based on sexual orientation have risen 20% over the past five years, with more than 18,000 recorded in the year to March 2025.
Against that backdrop, organisations might reasonably have expected employees to be more guarded. Instead, the opposite was true.
Our people were willing to share and, more striking still, were often more comfortable disclosing their sexual orientation than information about their educational background or social upbringing.
For us, that was a powerful signal, not just about representation, but about culture.
Positive outcome
The lesson is simple: be deliberate.
Data collection of this kind requires clear purpose, strong governance, genuine employee involvement and a commitment to act on what the results reveal.
As leaders, it’s important to recognise that collecting information and doing nothing with it is not neutral. It actively erodes the trust it took to build. That’s why we’ve been clear from the outset that the data we collect will be used to build a more informed, accurate understanding of our people, and to translate that insight into meaningful action, shaping policies, strengthening support structures and ensuring our approach continues to evolve in line with what our people need.
We’ve also seen the value of looking beyond our own organisation. Markel has supported Link, the LGBTQ+ insurance network, since its inception, and partnerships like this allow organisations of all sizes to share insight, build community and contribute to a stronger, more inclusive market.
There’s also a direct business case. Research consistently shows that employees are more productive when they feel able to be themselves at work.
For me, this is ultimately about creating workplaces where people feel safe, respected and supported. When colleagues do not have to carry the added weight of managing how they’ll be perceived, they have more space for confidence, connection and wellbeing. That matters in its own right and also helps create the conditions for stronger performance. Inclusive workplaces are not simply fairer. They also help people perform better.
I see this as central to how we build stronger, more resilient organisations. If our industry prides itself on evidence-based decision-making, that same discipline should apply to people strategy as much as it does to underwriting.
The same principles hold: gather the best data available, exercise sound judgement and use both to drive better outcomes.
Understanding your people is not an inclusion initiative. It’s a business imperative.
Joanna Browning
Chief People Officer