Oslo Pride aims to assess the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in Norwegian workplaces. The goal is to produce a report that offers unique insights into this topic, which Oslo Pride plans to publish in conjunction with Pride 2024.

The data is gathered and processed by Equality Check, a company specialized in working with workplace DEI.

The report will significantly increase awareness regarding the working conditions of LGBTQ+ individuals, and this will contribute to specifying what employers can and should do to improve working conditions for LGBTQ+ individuals.

To achieve this, we need both companies and employees to participate and share their experiences with us. It is essential that this process is conducted properly, with a focus on privacy, anonymity, and data quality. Therefore, Oslo Pride partnered with Equality Check, an organization with extensive experience and a robust solution for this purpose.

In order to assess experience at the workplace, we need to hear from you. Your participation contributes to establishing the statistical basis required for developing a report that offers unique insights into this topic.

Oslo Pride plans to publish this report in conjunction with Pride 2024.

Please be aware that this condition applies exclusively if your employer has a subscription with Equality Check. For many of the companies participating in the Pride campaign, this may not be the case, and in such instances, the data will be utilized solely for statistical analysis across all participating organizations.

Below you can see an example of how the employer sees the information. The employer does not see individual data (data of a single employee). We collect the data and present it as useful insights that the employer can act on. It's a win-win for everyone: you as an employee don't have to worry about the employer knowing what you have answered, and the employer doesn't have to worry about holding sensitive data, and they don't have to spend time analyzing data and acquiring domain expertise. 

As you can see below, we collect the data and present the representation in the company in this way to the employer:

• Gender: percentage of men, women, and others
• Ethnicity/skin color: percentage of ethnic underrepresented and percentage of ethnic majorities
• Sexual orientation: percentage of heterosexuals and percentage of LGBTQI+
• Functional level: percentage of people with disabilities and percentage of people without disabilities
• Children under 12: whether or not you have children under the age of 12
• Age: divided into four age brackets 

To display these graphs, there must be a minimum of five in each subgroup (i.e. "LGBTQI+" is a subgroup of the group "sexual orientation" and "men" is a subgroup of  the group "gender") .

If there are less than five in a subgroup, these will be combined with other subgroups in the same group that have less than five - thus creating a new subgroup named "Grouped".  For example, if there are only 3 people in the age bracket "45-64", and 4 in the age bracket "29-44", they will be combined into "Grouped" under age. In order for us to display "Grouped", it must contain five or more people. 

Furthermore, we present the different responses from the culture and inclusion survey divided into the demographic parameters above (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, functional level, children under 12 and age), and distributed by job category. 

This means that we for example display the average score for the experience of future potential divided into women, men and other. Every answer will be included. If "Grouped" contains less then 5 people, the responses of these people will be randomly distributed across the other demographic groups, thus potentially slightly altering their score. We chose this approach in order to keep their answers as contributions to the whole, while maintaining anonymity. 

The same applies when we display culture and inclusion questions divided by job category. 

Are you one of the few employees with your characteristics? See the question "There are only a few 'like me' in the company, am I still anonymous?" to read more about our restrictive data presentation to ensure that no one can know who you are.

The information will be compiled and utilized for statistical purposes. The most compelling discoveries will be featured in a public report produced jointly by Oslo Pride and Equality Check.

If your employer is an Equality Check customer:
Above, you have seen how employers are presented with data in the form of insights that they can use to improve the workplace for all employees.

Researchers:
We are very interested in obtaining as much research as possible on which groups of employees are consciously or unconsciously discriminated against, why it happens, what measures work, and so on. There is a great lack of knowledge, and we believe that knowledge and research are the best way to help organizations improve.
Therefore, we collect the data in large datasets. In these datasets, we remove all information that can identify individuals (such as names, email addresses, employer names). So much information is removed that no one who sees the datasets has any possibility of identifying individuals. We have lawyers who review the dataset to ensure that it is anonymized correctly, and make sure to have consent and legal basis for data processing in place.
We can provide such datasets to researchers so that they can conduct more research on equal opportunities in the workplace. We only collaborate with reputable researchers who are associated with serious research environments.

Here you can see an updated list of research environments we collaborate with:

• Core, Institute for Social Research.

When researchers have finished their analyses, their access to the dataset is deleted. Since researchers cannot identify individuals, they cannot publish the research in a way that identifies individuals (of course).

Others: We use the same aggregated and anonymized datasets to showcase more information about various demographic backgrounds. Connections to companies and industries are removed, to eliminate the risk for indirect identification.

When we collect all the answers from all of Norway, we will eventually have large enough datasets to say something about:
What is often called "intersectionality" without identifying individuals. This means that we can layer multiple characteristics on top of each other and see how this affects inclusion and culture, and how representation is at different levels in organizations. For example, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.

More detailed background and how it affects inclusion. For example, which ethnicities are most susceptible to unconscious discrimination, not just whether ethnic minorities experience more unconscious discrimination.

When we share such insights, the principles of group size are the same as we always have when showing data, so that no one can be identified.

Most employers are genuinely interested in improving workplace conditions for employees. In our experience, this is the most common motivation for sending out our survey.

That being said, we are well aware that this is not the case in all organisations. Our founder, Marie Louise Sunde, is a doctor and has worked several years in a hospital. She chose to speak up about unsatisfactory working conditions at her former workplace, knowing that it would cost her her job. Several of us in Equality Check have experienced firsthand how difficult systematic reprimands from employers can be, and as a result we take this very seriously. You can be completely sure that we will not risk reprimands on your behalf.

In the question above, you can read and see more about how the employer sees the information. There you will find that the information will never be presented in a format that directly or indirectly exposes employees. That means that the employer will never be able to know what you have answered, or if you have answered at all. In other words, you do not need to be afraid of reprimands, even if you work somewhere where you suspect (or have experienced) that the employer may give reprimands for feedback they do not like.

This is a question we often receive, and we understand why. In the survey, we ask many questions about who you are, and if these are combined, it can be very easy to understand what you have answered even if your name is removed. You can be completely sure that we will not present the data in a way that makes the employer (or anyone else) able to identify you. Here we tell more about how we present the data so that you can be completely confident about it.

When we say that we anonymize your data for the employer, we have taken into account that if we combine all the data points you have answered, it is often very easy to understand who has answered what. This means that we do much more than just removing your name when we send the data to the employer. We do not send the data as you answer it, we send aggregated data insights. This means that we collect data from many employees and present it as a common value back to the employer. In the question of how the employer sees the data, you can see an example of how the data is presented to the employer.

How the data is displayed depends on how many with the specific characteristics have answered. For us to show a given data point or a group of data points, there must be a minimum of 5 with exactly this collection of characteristics who have answered.

Let's use a concrete example: Let's say you are a 35-year-old man who works as a developer in a workplace with 200 employees. You have brown skin and are Jewish. There are no other Jews in the workplace. There are only 5 others you can think of who are brown-skinned, and only 2 who are men and none of them are developers. In addition, you are the only one who has dared to say aloud that you have experienced negative comments based on your religious affiliation.

In this case, we will show aggregated data to the employer where we show the following information:

• We show how employees of ethnic minority and ethnic majority report the different culture & inclusion indicators as there are a total of 6 employees who are brown-skinned.
• We show how employees of different genders report the different culture & inclusion indicators.

We do not show the following information because it is less than 5 in these groups:

• We do not combine gender and ethnicity, as there are less than 5 women and less than 5 men who are brown-skinned in total.
• We do not link data on ethnicity and job title, as you are the only one who is brown-skinned and a developer.
• We do not show anything about religion because you are the only one who is Jewish.

This is not a complete comprehensive list of what we show or do not show in a given example, but is intended as a description to reassure you that we understand the situation.

The data is stored for as long as the survey is ongoing, which means for 1 or 2 weeks.

After that, the data is completely anonymized and no longer person identifiable. During the period the survey is ongoing, employers will not be able to see any information. We store the data during this period so that employees can withdraw their consent.

No problem, you can just choose not to answer.

If you want to answer some but not all questions, you can simply choose "skip" for the questions you do not want to answer.

In privacy legislation (GDPR), some personal data is called "special category". This is particularly sensitive data such as ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. This type of data has extra strict requirements for collection and storage.

This type of data can only be collected voluntarily, and requires separate consent (that's why you checked twice to answer the survey, both for regular data and data of special category).

Most lawyers believe that an employer cannot collect data of special category even if the employer says it's voluntary. The reason is that there is a power imbalance between employer and employee. Employees may therefore feel pressured to give up data even if the employer says it's voluntary, for fear of consequences for saying no.

We at Equality Check, not the employer, collect the data. Equality Check is an independent third party. This means that we have no employer responsibility towards you as an employee, and there is no risk that you will reply to the survey just because you are afraid of reprimands if you do not respond. We do not share raw data with the employer, which means that the employer will never know if you have answered or not. The employer will also never have access to individual data, so the employer can never know what you have personally answered.