Every year, Pride Month drives campaigns, content, and brand initiatives around the LGBTQIAPN+ cause. It is an important moment for visibility, but the market itself has increasingly been asking: what comes after that? Recent research points to a clear signal: audiences want to see less one-off communication and more concrete structure. A global Ipsos survey found that support for brands that actively promote equality for LGBTQIAPN+ people fell from 49% to 41% over four years (IPSOS, 2025), a shift that reflects, among other factors, a certain fatigue with actions that do not translate into real change in the experience of those who live this cause every day.
This is the starting point of this article: to understand what truly makes a difference in the professional life of an LGBTQIAPN+ person, and how companies can turn intention into practice.
Why this matters: the scale of the challenge
International data helps us understand the scale of the problem. A Randstad survey conducted in 31 countries found that 41% of LGBTQIAPN+ people reported direct discrimination at work, and 33% believe their sexual orientation or gender identity has negatively affected their pay, career progression, or opportunities (RANDSTAD, 2024 apud LGBT-SPEAKERS, 2025). In Latin America, an Out & Equal survey conducted in four countries, including Brazil, showed that 35% of LGBTQIAPN+ people reported having experienced harassment, discrimination, or violence in the workplace, a figure that rises to 78% among trans people (OUT & EQUAL, 2025).
The impact goes beyond individual well-being: it also directly affects companies’ results. In a study in Chile, 73% of people who experienced discrimination reported a significant impact on their own professional performance (OUT & EQUAL, 2025), showing how non-inclusive environments also come at a high cost in terms of productivity and talent retention. In the United States, the Corporate Equality Index, which annually assesses LGBTQ+ inclusion policies at large companies, found that companies with high scores in the index have net income eight times higher than companies with lower scores (HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, 2026), a correlation that reinforces why this topic matters not only to HR, but to business strategy as a whole.
Given this scenario, the question that matters is not “what action should we take in June,” but “what structures keep working throughout the year.” And that is where the conversation needs to go.
Paths that make a difference in practice
If the data shows that most of the impact lies in everyday structures, the next question is worth asking: which structures, specifically? Here, we share some paths that have guided how we think about this at Artefact.
Career processes that assess the whole person
One of the most sensitive points in the professional journey of LGBTQIAPN+ people is the evaluation and promotion process. Standardized criteria, designed around an average professional profile, tend to carry heavy biases about how someone “should” communicate, lead, or behave, and they do not always capture the way diverse people build and express their competence.
At Artefact, we work with an ongoing mentorship process throughout the entire semester, in which each person has a structured space to be heard about their journey, challenges, and context. The mentor closely follows this path and is the person who presents and advocates for the mentee’s promotion, considering not only technical deliveries but also more human aspects: personality, way of working, and how they relate to the team. This combination of technical criteria and an individualized perspective helps make the process fairer because it recognizes that different people can achieve excellent results through different paths, and that this should not be penalized.
Mental health as part of the culture, not as a benefit item
Discrimination and exclusion are directly related to increased anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychological distress, a pattern observed across different countries and contexts. This makes mental health care an especially relevant point for any inclusion strategy that aims to be truly effective.
At Artefact, this translates into a culture of care that goes beyond the conventional: we actively encourage psychotherapy and other medical follow-ups among team members, with support that facilitates access to this care, and we maintain a constant focus on ensuring that asking for help is never a reason for embarrassment. In our operation in Brazil, for example, we offer a Health Plan also designed with strong reimbursement for psychotherapy as part of the teams’ well-being structure. This type of initiative is based on a simple understanding: people who feel emotionally safe perform better, stay longer, and contribute more fully to the team. Mental health care, in this sense, is not a separate benefit; it is part of how the company chooses to treat people.
Development tracks that recognize different starting points
Finally, a career plan is only fair if it is flexible enough to recognize that people do not all start from the same place. LGBTQIAPN+ people have often faced, in earlier stages of life, more obstacles to accessing education and stability because of discrimination experienced in other contexts. Recognizing this and offering real training and development tracks is a concrete and structural way to balance this difference over time, instead of treating it as an irrelevant detail in the professional growth process.
Why this strengthen the company as a whole
It is worth closing with a point that is often left in the background: diverse teams are not only fairer; they also tend to be more capable of innovating. When people with different experiences, perceptions, and ways of thinking participate equally in building solutions, the result tends to be more robust, because it incorporates angles that a more homogeneous team simply would not see. This is especially relevant for technology and consulting companies, whose main asset is precisely the ability to think through complex problems from multiple perspectives.
Inclusion, in this sense, does not compete with performance; it is part of what sustains performance in the long term. And that is also why looking at the LGBTQIAPN+ community with structure, and not only with a campaign, stops being a communication choice and becomes a business choice.
