LGBT workforce data has a dependency chain most employers never think about. Reporting depends on self-declaration. Self-declaration depends on trust. And trust is formed early, often before a candidate applies, by what your recruitment visibly does rather than what your policy quietly says.

Most organisations sit at the end of that chain wondering why their monitoring data is patchy. Declaration rates stay low, the "prefer not to say" column stays tall, and the annual report notes it as a data quality issue. It is not a data quality issue. It is an evidence issue, one link further back. Candidates declare when they have seen a reason to believe it is safe and worthwhile. A rainbow logo in June is not that reason. Where a vacancy actually appeared, and in front of which communities, is.

Run the uncomfortable test. Take your current live vacancies and ask what an LGBT candidate would have seen that told them this employer had thought about them at all. For most roles the honest answer is nothing, because nothing was done and nothing was recorded. The inclusion statement exists at organisation level. The vacancy travelled through the same channels as every other vacancy.

Some employers close that gap by giving each role a visible, documented presence in front of LGBT audiences, through channels such as LGBT Equality or through their own community outreach. The method is a choice. The record is not, because in five years the only credible workforce data will belong to organisations building it now.