Proudflare, Policy Review, and a Perfect Score

Cloudflare has been named a “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ Equality” by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) after receiving a perfect score of 100 percent on the HRC’s 2021 Corporate Equality Index (CEI). The CEI is a nationally recognized benchmarking tool used to evaluate how inclusive corporate policies, practices, and benefits are for LGBTQIA+ employees.

This marks the first year Cloudflare has been listed on the Index, but the groundwork was laid years earlier. In 2017, a handful of employees chartered Proudflare, the company’s first-ever Employee Resource Group (ERG). Proudflare functions as a community space for LGBTQIA+ employees and allies, hosting educational events, celebrating LGBTQIA+ individuals, and advocating for equality both in the workplace and in the broader community.

In 2019, around the time Cloudflare surpassed 500 full-time US-based employees—the threshold for CEI eligibility—a group of Proudflare members began examining how equitably LGBTQIA+ folks were represented across company policies, practices, and benefits.

Setting the Bar at 100

Rather than simply aiming for inclusion on the Index, Cloudflare set a deliberately ambitious goal: a perfect score. That target required a coordinated effort across multiple internal teams, including Proudflare, Benefits, Legal, Facilities, Recruiting, and People. The result was the creation of several new employee resources.

The CEI ranking evaluates a range of criteria, including:

  • Workforce protections for sexual orientation and gender identity
  • Inclusive benefits, such as equivalency for same-sex and different-sex spouses and domestic partners, and equal health coverage for transgender individuals
  • Internal training for new hires and managers covering nondiscrimination, gender identity, and sexual orientation
  • Best-practice policies such as gender transition guidelines
  • Recruiting and outreach efforts aimed at the broader LGBTQIA+ community

Maintaining the Standard

The full CEI report is available publicly and details the measures behind the perfect score. Going forward, Cloudflare says it intends to sustain that rating and continue pushing itself to become a more inclusive workplace.