Supplier Inclusion & Diversity
East meets West as the LGBTIQ Business Chamber for CEE Region (Central & Eastern Europe) helps LGBTIQ business owners to tap on new business opportunities. Through our founding membership at the EGLCC, The European LGBTIQ Chamber of Commerce, we are proud offer registration for LGBTIQ business owners who want to benefit from Supplier Diversity & Inclusion offerings.
What is it?
Supplier Inclusion & Diversity is a positive action and a pro-active sourcing of products and services from previously under- used suppliers, which includes businesses owned by minorities, in order to reflect the demographics of the communities in which the business operates. The Self-registration provides a passport to proud LGBTIQ business owners to enter the scene of new, yet untapped business opportunities. A successful self-registration with the EGLCC represents the entry-level qualification to supplier diversity programs of our corporate members.
EGLCC’s corporate members can benefit from the one-stop access to the growing European network of LGBTIQ owned and operated businesses, as well the growing number of LGBTIQ Business Chambers. They can also benefit from the local, regional and international events organised by the EGLCC.
Why it matters?
Diversity & Inclusion in a Business environment covers many topics like the well known Workplace Inclusion, but also the way a business works with their suppliers is a crucial topic. If a company wants to be diverse and inclusive, it also should follow a divers and inclusive policy when engaging with external suppliers.
When we look closer at the part “minority owned businesses”, like LGBTIQ owned & managed businesses, as suppliers to larger companies, they are clearly heavily underrepresented in the general pool of suppliers. The same goes for e.g. women owned businesses or businesses owned and operated by ethnic minorities. Why is this so? Larger companies have so-called procurement teams that take care of the contacts with external product providers and to get in this list of usual providers is almost impossible for smaller companies. If we want to improve this, we need to convince the large companies as well as government and public organisations to be diverse in working with minority businesses and include these when selecting suppliers. But we also need to have the smaller LGBTIQ owned and managed businesses to register as candidates for cooperation with large businesses and public authorities.
LGBTIQ Chambers of Commerce and LGBTIQ Business Networks play an essential role in Supplier Diversity & Inclusion. They educate the wider public on Supplier Diversity & Inclusion, its rationales and benefits. By running a network of LGBTIQ owned and operated businesses they are their advocates and promoters and help discovering untapped business opportunities. Typically they offer registration and certifications.