Sun Life Awarded Highest LGBT Sensitivity Rating for Third Straight Year

October is LGBT History Month across the US. Locally, there exists a Wellesley company who, according to a national business rating system, extols the virtues of the month with equitable and fair treatment of men and women who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

Sun Life Financial, whose US headquarters are in Wellesley, received a rating of 100 percent in the 2010 Corporate Equality Index, which checks into corporate LGBT workplace policies, and earned the distinction of one of the Best Places to Work for LGBT equality. The Index rated 590 companies in 2010.

Sun Life has earned the perfect score and distinction for its third year running, according to Tasha M. Morris, senior HR program consultant responsible for  talent acquisition and Management and Diversity for Sun Life.

She said Sun Life employs many in the Wellesley area, and that the perfect score can be attributed to the community feel of the large, multi-national corporation located in town.

"We definitely like to serve the communities where we live and work," she said in an interview. "It does make us more amenable as an employers."

In house, Sun Life has featured a gay "icon" daily throughout the month of October, designated LGBT history month. Icons have included Sharon Farmer, former White House photographer during the Clinton administration, Leslie Feinberg, activist an author, and fashion designer/film maker Tom Ford, who most recently directed and corwrote A Single Man, an Oscar nominated movie about a man grieving after his boyfriend was killed in an auto accident.

Along with this, Sun Life participates in community outreach, sensitivity training among other practical trainings toward the development of a friendly work environment, said Morris.

"We're really trying to foster a culture of inclusion," she said. "We're creating a culture of respect."