Celebrating Pride Month 2022 at Diageo

Pride is a key part of our Society 2030: Spirit of Progress commitments to Champion Inclusion & Diversity. Celebrating Pride is not just the right thing to do, it’s a way to ensure our employees feel they can bring their whole selves to the workplace, every day.  However, we need society to go further. There is still a long way to go for this community to be accepted in parts of the world.  Our work here will not be done until acceptance is everywhere.

Throughout the next month, our Rainbow Network resource group will host a number of activities around the world:

• Our global flag raising event, where over 80 sites will raise their Progress Pride flags.
• The North America Rainbow Network in partnership with the Smirnoff Brand Team will be joined by Alyssa Edwards, star of Ru Paul’s Drag Race for a fabulous virtual Drag Bingo.
• To mark the partnership with Queer Britain and opening of the new LGBTQIA+ Museum in London, a launch event will take place on 9th June at Diageo 1HQ with opening comments from Cristina Diezhandino, Rainbow Network’s Global Ally. The CÎROC team will host an Iconic Ball to honour 50 years of LGBTQIA+ UK history — past, present, and future.
• Our Supply Chain & Procurement Rainbow Network will host a series of educational events including a Learning 4 Life event based at Johnnie Walker Princes Street aimed at upskilling hospitality teams across LGBTQIA+ venues, a virtual webinar with the We Are All Able Employee Resource Group to highlight intersectionality of people living with a disability and a relaunch of the Rainbow Network Book club.
• In Brazil, continuing from last year’s success, The Bar will collaborate with Casa 1, a local charity to support LGBTQIA+ homelessness, donating a sizable % of sales to help improve the livelihood of individuals, particularly those within the Trans community.

As part of our celebrations, we’re proud to have announced a new 2-year partnership with Queer Britain in London, the UK’s first national LGBTQIA+ museum. As part of the partnership, archivists for our brands such as Guinness and Johnnie Walker, will work with Queer Britain to upskill volunteers and create archive best practices that will enable the museum to preserve LGBTQIA+ history.

At Diageo we’re committed to championing inclusion. We’ve launched Gender Identity and Expression Guidelines in over 20 countries to ensure that we have support in place for employees who are transitioning, have transitioned, who recognise themselves to be a different gender from the gender assigned to them at birth, are gender-fluid or non-binary. We’re proud members of ‘Open for Business’, an alliance of leading companies committed to supporting LGBTQIA+ inclusion and are signatories of the UN Global LGBTI Standards of Conduct for Business. For the 14th time, we were awarded full marks on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index.

At Diageo, the conversation continues beyond the month of June, and we’ll keep celebrating our people Every day, Everywhere.