Kicking off Pride Month, Steve Collinson, chief HR and sustainability officer at Zurich, speaks to Health & Protection about tackling preconceived notions about his personal life, why open attitudes to LGBTQ+ communities are not necessarily mirrored across society, the importance of ‘out and proud’ role models at senior level and why education is the key to tackling homophobia.
What have been your own experiences with regard to attitudes towards LGBT communities in the sector?
Like every member of the LGBTQ+ community, I’ve experienced assumptions about who I am, who my partner is and what my views might be on a whole range of topics.
But on the whole, I’ve had positive experiences in my time as a proudly out gay man in our sector and where I’ve experienced anything other than openness it’s usually been a result of clumsy word choice by others, or, frankly, simple ignorance.
I try to take everything as an opportunity for education in these kinds of instances, and I’ve never experienced open hostility or direct homophobia.
How have attitudes evolved in the sector?
Our sector is, in my view, significantly more open and accepting than it was in the past – across a whole range of diversity characteristics. More and more, I see diverse teams doing amazing things for customers and their organisations, and the stereotypes of who can be successful in which parts of our industry are broken down.
A lot of that is down to the work of things like diversity networks, but more so, it’s down to the open attitudes of people outside the LGBTQ+ community and to trailblazers of the past who wanted to do things differently.
But the world continues to be a volatile place, and homophobia, bi-phobia and transphobia still exist in society and there’s no point in pretending that they don’t exist in our sector too.
We employ humans with all of their amazing and all of their not-so-amazing traits. The work isn’t done, and Pride remains such an important part of showing the world who we are.
One of my biggest fears is that if organisations row back on inclusivity work we’ll slide backwards and lose our progress – maybe not to the bad old days, but backwards nonetheless.
To my queer colleagues and our awesome allies I’d encourage you to celebrate Pride harder than ever in 2026 to show the world that our sector is a great place to be.
What is the sector doing well and where does it need to up its game?
The sector is definitely more diverse than it ever has been. At Zurich, for example, we employ an equal number of men and women in senior leadership positions, and more of our colleagues than ever before tell us they are members of the LGBTQ+ community.
More and more organisations continue to take concrete steps – beyond Pride-washing their logo and doing little-else – to prove, not just say, their firm is a safe, inclusive place to work.
But the sector isn’t perfect, and in my opinion too-few senior people are prepared to be openly out – let alone out and proud.
That sends a conflicting message to people in our firms or talented people outside our sector who we’d love to hire – that if you don’t feel safe to be out when you’re in a senior position, surely it’s not safe to be out at any point in your career.
I just don’t think that’s representative of our sector and would love to see more fellow-LGBTQ+ leaders telling us who they are and what they stand for.
Do you feel encouraged and enabled to bring your whole self to work?
I feel completely safe to be my own self at work – in fact, I come out at both internal and external meetings and events regularly so that people know there are others from the community in our sector who will stand alongside them if they need us to.
However, I’m really conscious that my experience, perhaps due to ‘seniority’, is potentially different to that of others and it’s why I listen really carefully, and at every opportunity, to my LGBTQ+ colleagues – I want to hear their experience, not just experience my own.