Land O’Lakes, Inc., has earned a top score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's 2022 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), the nation's foremost benchmarking survey and report measuring corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ workplace equality.

The CEI, via the HRC, rates employers on how they are providing crucial protections to LGBTQ employees – an estimated population of 20 million U.S. workers and an additional 18 million abroad. Companies rated in the CEI include Fortune magazine's 500 largest publicly traded businesses and hundreds of publicly and privately held mid- to large-sized businesses. Land O'Lakes, Inc., has consistently scored at or near the top over the past several years.

"Each year, our benefits team reviews our benefit programs for competitiveness and enhancements we want to focus on – our continued commitment to offer a comprehensive, inclusive, and diverse benefits package that meet the needs of our workforce and community," says Pam Grove, senior director of HR and benefits.

One of the benefits enhancements we added for 2022 was to expand dependent eligibility to include both same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners and their children. This helped boost our HRC score and highlights the important partnership between our teams in HR, benefits, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

"Achieving a Best Places to Work designation from the HRC CEI is a fantastic win, not just for employee retention and recruiting, but it rewards everyone in the past and present who have built the foundation needed to achieve this," says Liz Lilly, IT services manager and co-lead of Pride Alliance ERG. "This rating is a signal to employees that the company invests in our LGBTQ people. For prospective employees, this signals to all prospects, not just the LGBTQ community, that we are an employee-focused company."