HRC Corporate Equality Index (CEI) and Healthcare Equality Index (HEI) Consulting

A perfect score is possible. We’ll make it easy.

The HRC Corporate Equality Index is one of the most recognized external benchmarks for LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion. Organizations pursue it for a lot of reasons: to attract and retain talent, to signal their values publicly, to satisfy employee or board expectations, or simply because they want to know how their policies and practices actually stack up. The Healthcare Equality Index serves a parallel purpose for healthcare organizations, with criteria calibrated to the specific demands of clinical and patient-facing environments.

Both indices are rigorous. The criteria span a wide range of organizational functions, from HR policy and benefits administration to supplier diversity, training requirements, and public commitment standards. A single gap in vendor procurement policy or a missing line in the employee handbook can cost meaningful points. And because the criteria shift from cycle to cycle, organizations that scored well last time sometimes find themselves scrambling to keep up this time around.

The good news is that the process is learnable. It's not magic. It's project management, stakeholder coordination, gap analysis, and clear writing, applied to a specific external framework. And that's exactly what this engagement provides.

What the work looks like:

Every CEI engagement starts with a gap analysis: a clear-eyed look at where your organization currently stands against the scoring criteria and what it would take to close the distance. From there, the work is as varied as the index itself.

Some of it is document and policy work: drafting or revising handbook language, building out a gender transition guide, clarifying benefits language so that LGBTQ+ employees can actually understand what they're entitled to, and creating the written artifacts the index requires as evidence of commitment. Some of it is training: making sure the right people across the organization have completed the right learning, and that those completions are documented in the right way. Some of it is stakeholder coordination: working with HR, DEI staff, ERG leadership, vendor procurement teams, warehouse and operations training leadership, and anyone else whose piece of the organization touches a scoring criterion.

Collaborate Consulting has led organizations through both the CEI and the Healthcare Equality Index, never receiving a score below 95. He knows where organizations typically lose points, which gaps are quick to close and which require longer lead time, and how to keep a complex, multi-stakeholder process moving without losing anyone along the way.

What makes this work different:

Most organizations approach the CEI as a compliance exercise. Fill in the form, submit, wait for the score. The problem with that approach is that it produces documentation without culture change. You can earn a high score and still have LGBTQ+ employees who don't feel seen, managers who don't know how to support a transitioning colleague, and benefits that exist on paper but are never actually used.

This engagement is designed to do both. The score matters and the infrastructure matters. When the submission is done, your organization should have policies, documents, and trained staff that reflect a genuine commitment, not just a completed checklist.

Who this is for:

This is a fit if your organization is pursuing the CEI or HEI for the first time and doesn't know where to start. If you've submitted before and want to improve your score. If you earned a strong score last year and need help staying current with updated criteria. If your HR or DEI team has the will but not the bandwidth to manage a process this complex across this many stakeholders.

It's also a fit if you're in healthcare and navigating the specific demands of the Healthcare Equality Index, including criteria around patient care, clinical training, and visitor policies that don't appear in the corporate version.

This work connects closely to LGBTQ+ toolkit and transition guide development. If those documents don't yet exist in your organization, building them is often part of the CEI process. (You can read more about that work here.)