Most members of the LGBTQ community believe the workplace has become more tolerant over the past few years; however some discrimination persists, a recent Angus Reid public survey has disclosed.

The good news is that the survey results indicate overt discrimination is low. As Jaideep Murkerji, Vice President of Angus Reid Public Opinion told me, "...overall, I was surprised to see the extent to which the respondents in the survey felt their workplace was tolerant. It’s a very high number. But when you dig a little deeper, you realize that quite a few people – especially when you start looking back over the course of their career – have had incidences of discrimination."

The actual numbers state 93% describe their employer’s overall attitude to be tolerant of LGBTQ people in the workplace. 72% feel attitudes towards our community have improved over the last five years.

However, 34% of gays and 40% of lesbians said they have experienced discrimination during their professional lives. Additionally, over a quarter of the respondents who have not come out at their workplace said they fear negative consequences.

As well, the survey indicated something many of us have suspected over the years – overt, blatant discrimination has been replaced by a softer, more nebulous type of discrimination which is harder to prove: social exclusion and ridicule. You may think you’re being excluded when most of the department goes down to Starbucks on a coffee break, but you can’t prove it. Or, you might notice occasionally a colleague making a joking remark about your sexuality, but you’re not sure if he’s serious or just kidding around.

The other fascinating data arising from the survey are the bisexual panellists’ responses. When asked about co-workers’ overall attitude towards LGBT people in the workplace, over 50% of Gays, Lesbians and Bisexual women said attitudes were "very tolerant". Bisexual men ranked that at 34%. Bisexual men and women tend not to be open with their sexuality at work. Bisexual men tend to maintain the "my private life is private" rationale more than the other 3 groups. Depressingly, in the few instances where a respondent admitted to having been gay bashed, 70% of Bisexual men would say nothing as their reaction.

The response from Bisexual panellists was something Angus Reid noticed, said Jaideep. "We had a lot of discussion about this internally. It is an interesting finding. At the end of all our surveys, we allow people to share their thoughts on the survey...anecdotally, we realized that there were quite a few of the bisexual men and women who filled out this survey who told us...they feel they would be ridiculed more being bisexual because people wouldn’t understand it or they would automatically assume they were just gay and not really fully out of the closet."  Consequently there’s a greater reluctance to come out at the office among bisexuals.

Also, for those who do study the survey closely, you might notice two obvious things missing. The first is how different age groups responded to the survey. While they didn’t include the age breakdown, Jaideep told me respondents over the age of 55 were more likely to say attitudes in the workplace have improved over the past 5-10 years. As for younger respondents, they were more likely to be open with their peers than those over the age of 55.

The second omission from the survey were results from Transgender respondents. The survey only had 4 respondent groups (gay, lesbian, bi-male, bi-female). Unfortunately, as Jaideep informed me, there simply weren’t enough transgender folk in their panel to get a real accurate read, and they had to work with the information they had.

Angus Reid would like to revisit this survey again in the future, and they hope at that time they will have more transgender respondents. This is a rare study, and they are hoping it is a precursor to more studies and surveys in a similar vein. They are looking to run a similar survey in the USA, so it will be interesting to see how Canada compares with our neighbours to the south.