Could mandatory disability workforce reporting help to tackle pay disparity?

A dis­abled per­son work­ing in the UK was paid 13.8% less on aver­age than their non-dis­abled coun­ter­part last year, accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics (ONS).

Giv­en that this coun­try is home to 14.6 mil­lion dis­abled peo­ple – of whom rough­ly a third are in work – it’s clear that dis­abil­i­ty dis­crim­i­na­tion in employ­ment remains a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem. Yet, while there have been con­cert­ed efforts to close the gen­der pay gap, the dif­fer­ence in remu­ner­a­tion between dis­abled and non-dis­abled employ­ees has tend­ed to go under the radar.

Car­o­line Casey is the founder of The Valu­able 500, a coali­tion of CEOs who have pledged to improve dis­abil­i­ty inclu­sion. She says: “For far too long, dis­abil­i­ty has been invis­i­ble in com­par­i­son with oth­er minor­i­ty con­cerns. Over and over again, the sta­tis­tics show how dis­abled work­ers are con­sis­tent­ly being over­looked and under­served.”

In an attempt to address this prob­lem, the gov­ern­ment has held a con­sul­ta­tion to col­lect views on vol­un­tary and manda­to­ry dis­abil­i­ty work­force report­ing. Its full find­ings were sched­uled to be pub­lished in June, but the results have yet to be for­mal­ly announced. 

Speak­ing before the con­sul­ta­tion began in Decem­ber 2021, the min­is­ter for dis­abled peo­ple, health and work, Chloe Smith, out­lined the government’s aims. “We want to sup­port employ­ers to have the right infor­ma­tion, so they can take the steps need­ed to make their organ­i­sa­tions inclu­sive for all,” she said.

Despite Westminster’s belief that greater trans­paren­cy could help to reduce the dis­abil­i­ty pay gap, views among employ­ers and dis­abled peo­ple are mixed when it comes to whether manda­to­ry dis­clo­sures would have the desired impact.

Casey says: “Report­ing is not a mag­ic wand. It would catch only the num­ber of dis­abled peo­ple who are employed, not those who may have lost employ­ment or be look­ing for work.”

Issues con­cern­ing report­ing and indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty fur­ther com­pli­cate mat­ters. More than half of employ­ers (52%) have report­ed prob­lems col­lect­ing data on dis­abil­i­ty. The fact that 80% of dis­abil­i­ties are invis­i­ble – and that many dis­abled peo­ple choose to hide their con­di­tion – is one rea­son for this.

“There is also a lack of con­sen­sus world­wide regard­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of dis­abil­i­ty,” Casey notes. “But we shouldn’t under­es­ti­mate the need for employ­ees to self-iden­ti­fy with­out fear of neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions, of course.”

Holding companies accountable

Oth­er experts are more con­fi­dent about the like­ly effec­tive­ness of com­pul­so­ry dis­clo­sures. Steve Ing­ham, CEO of Page­Group, is a wheel­chair user and an advo­cate for manda­to­ry report­ing on dis­abil­i­ty. He believes that it would “ensure inclu­sion of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in the work­place”. 

Ing­ham adds: “The only way to dri­ve change is to hold com­pa­nies account­able. Mea­sure­ment is cru­cial when it comes to clos­ing the gap, but this will pro­vide truth­ful data and action­able insights only once the work envi­ron­ment feels inclu­sive and employ­ees are com­fort­able express­ing their dis­abil­i­ty.”

Acknowl­edg­ing that report­ing is not the only solu­tion, Ing­ham observes that the trans­paren­cy and open cul­ture at Page­Group has helped to empow­er more of its employ­ees to talk about their dis­abil­i­ties at work.

The Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel and Devel­op­ment sup­ports the pro­posed move towards com­pul­so­ry dis­clo­sures as part of the wider need to “dri­ve gen­uine change” in how employ­ers treat dis­abled peo­ple. 

But its senior pol­i­cy advis­er on resourc­ing and inclu­sion, Claire McCart­ney, warns that employ­ers must be pre­pared to report effec­tive­ly. The risk is that it becomes a mere com­pli­ance exer­cise.

She says: “We’re con­cerned that a manda­to­ry approach could encour­age organ­i­sa­tions to adopt a super­fi­cial tick-box atti­tude rather than devel­op­ing prac­tices that lead to last­ing improve­ments. Many organ­i­sa­tions lack the sys­tems and infra­struc­ture to col­lect data effec­tive­ly on dis­abil­i­ty and long-term health con­di­tions. Such data is mean­ing­ful only if it is under­stood and act­ed upon to inform real, sus­tain­able change.”

Such crit­i­cism could be lev­elled at the Equal­i­ty Act 2010 (Gen­der Pay Gap Infor­ma­tion) Reg­u­la­tions 2017. Despite hav­ing sub­mit­ted manda­to­ry reports for five years, many busi­ness­es have made lit­tle progress in clos­ing their gen­der pay gaps. In some cas­es, these have even widened.

“Gen­der and racial inequal­i­ties remain rife in the work­place, despite the intro­duc­tion of report­ing,” Casey says. “Enforce­ment bod­ies sim­ply don’t have enough resources. Con­se­quent­ly, many firms do not report. We need to get to the root of the prob­lem to build bet­ter and faster.”

How can businesses close the disability pay gap?

One of the chal­lenges for employ­ers is to find a report­ing method that accounts for the wide range of dis­abled expe­ri­ences and iden­ti­ties. One of the issues aris­ing from the government’s con­sul­ta­tion is the fact that manda­to­ry report­ing would require min­is­ters to decide on a def­i­n­i­tion of dis­abil­i­ty and the cat­e­gori­sa­tions of types of dis­abil­i­ties and con­di­tions.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ti­nent giv­en that the dis­abil­i­ty pay gap varies depend­ing on the type of dis­abil­i­ty and the num­ber of con­di­tions an indi­vid­ual may have.

Xavier Lan­glois is chief legal and impact offi­cer at Beam­ery, a tal­ent man­age­ment plat­form. He says: “For the employ­er, the chal­lenge will be to report in a con­sis­tent, anonymised way and remain mind­ful that data-cap­ture requests could cause dis­clo­sure issues for those employ­ees who aren’t com­fort­able that their employ­er has access to their sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion.”

Some respon­dents to the con­sul­ta­tion have also expressed con­cern that mak­ing such mea­sure­ments manda­to­ry could con­tribute to “the impres­sion that dis­abil­i­ty is ‘hard work’ and a ‘has­sle’”. 

McCart­ney says: “For real progress to be made, employ­ers must take a sys­temic approach to ensure that their organ­i­sa­tions are inclu­sive to dis­abled peo­ple and those with long-term health con­di­tions. That involves look­ing crit­i­cal­ly at how they oper­ate, from their process­es and pro­ce­dures to their cul­ture and peo­ple man­age­ment prac­tices.”

Although the pre­lim­i­nary results from the con­sul­ta­tion sug­gest that there’s lit­tle evi­dence to sup­port a manda­to­ry approach to dis­abil­i­ty work­force report­ing. Lan­glois believes that such a mea­sure could draw more atten­tion to the prob­lem and “force some employ­ers to adjust their behav­iour”.

What many dis­abled employ­ees want to see are improve­ments to inclu­sion at work and a focus on their expe­ri­ences, rather than just the report­ing of fig­ures. Whether new rules are imposed in this area or not, Casey believes that clos­ing the dis­abil­i­ty pay gap requires a whole­sale change of atti­tude among UK employ­ers.

“I don’t think manda­to­ry dis­abil­i­ty work­force report­ing is the key to clos­ing the employ­ment gap,” she says. “We need to work close­ly with busi­ness­es to cre­ate more inclu­sive work­places and to cul­ti­vate cul­tures of trust.”