Transforming approaches to disability

Dis­abil­i­ty is still a “dirty word”. So says dis­abil­i­ty advo­cate Mar­i­anne Waite, who believes many peo­ple are uncom­fort­able with even the idea of dis­abil­i­ty.

Waite, who suf­fers from sev­er­al “hid­den con­di­tions” and found­ed her own brand inclu­siv­i­ty con­sul­tan­cy, has just com­plet­ed a two-year sec­ond­ment at cam­paign organ­i­sa­tion The Valu­able 500 to head up inclu­sive design at adver­tis­ing agency Inter­brand.

Launched in 2019, The Valu­able 500’s aim is to com­pel 500 chief exec­u­tives to make three crit­i­cal pledges on dis­abil­i­ty inclu­sion. These are to make at least one firm com­mit­ment to action, share it inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly, and ensure dis­abil­i­ty is on the board agen­da. 

With 439 chief exec­u­tives’ sig­na­tures, includ­ing CEOs at Inter­brand, Vir­gin Media, EY, Unilever and WPP, it is just short of its goal, although 200 live con­ver­sa­tions remain in play. 

Japan­ese tech­nol­o­gy con­glom­er­ate Hitachi is the lat­est to join, announc­ing its intent to “build more acces­si­ble work­place envi­ron­ments” and pro­vide “employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties where each indi­vid­ual can ful­ly demon­strate their own abil­i­ties in keep­ing with their unique cir­cum­stances”. 

The likes of Unilever and Vir­gin Media have even set tar­gets. By 2025 Unilever aims to have peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties rep­re­sent­ing 5 per cent of its work­force. As part of Vir­gin Media’s Mean­ing­ful Con­nec­tions Plan, it has a goal “to cre­ate hun­dreds more employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple from under-rep­re­sent­ed com­mu­ni­ties”. 

Vir­gin Media has also devel­oped the #Work­WithMe pledge com­pa­nies can join to receive prac­ti­cal advice on how to improve work­place poli­cies, prac­tices and cul­ture for dis­abled peo­ple.

Making real change

While just one of The Valu­able 500’s chief exec­u­tives actu­al­ly has a dis­abil­i­ty, Waite believes it’s impor­tant for the oth­er 438 “to work to break down that echo cham­ber so we all feel com­fort­able talk­ing about this”, mov­ing away from “the same peo­ple talk­ing to the same peo­ple about the same things”. 

“It’s about get­ting CEOs to invest resources, time and atten­tion to break through this bar­ri­er that has meant dis­abled peo­ple were con­stant­ly being left behind and off dif­fer­ent agen­das,” says Waite.

One big bar­ri­er she and The Valu­able 500 team iden­ti­fied was get­ting on a chief executive’s radar. Not enough, she believes, are “lean­ing in” to dis­abil­i­ty. “For CEOs who have so many dif­fer­ent things vying for their atten­tion, we want­ed the pur­pose to be sim­ple and free,” she says.

“But the steps to join demand action, which means it’s been instru­men­tal in organ­i­sa­tions active­ly work­ing to remove bar­ri­ers. There’s this beau­ti­ful sense of account­abil­i­ty peo­ple are deliv­er­ing against.”

Impact of flexible working

The increas­ing adop­tion of remote and flex­i­ble work­ing has pro­vid­ed some grat­i­fi­ca­tion for dis­abil­i­ty pro­po­nents.

As Jane Hat­ton, direc­tor at spe­cial­ist dis­abil­i­ty recruiter Even­break, elab­o­rates: “Dis­abled peo­ple have been told for decades that most roles can’t be done from home and of course we now know that’s not the case. We have noticed much more inter­est in the recruit­ment of dis­abled peo­ple in the last few months through a com­bi­na­tion of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment, a grow­ing under­stand­ing of soci­etal inequal­i­ties and the wide­spread move to remote work­ing.”

Data from Even­break reveals its year­ly can­di­date num­bers increased 43 per cent dur­ing 2020, with 17 per cent look­ing for com­plete­ly remote posi­tions. Yet remote and flex­i­ble work­ing is just the tip of the ice­berg for break­ing down the bar­ri­ers. 

As Hat­ton says: “More flex­i­ble work­ing has cer­tain­ly opened up more oppor­tu­ni­ties for some dis­abled peo­ple, but we need to make sure we don’t assume all dis­abled peo­ple are hap­py to work from home and that offices and trans­port don’t need to be acces­si­ble.”

Jus­tine Camp­bell, man­ag­ing part­ner for tal­ent at EY, UK and Ire­land, agrees remote work­ing has helped improve access to the work­place for some peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, but adds it has also high­light­ed invis­i­ble bar­ri­ers for those who iden­ti­fy as neu­ro­di­verse.

“Read­ing from com­put­er screens all day can be hard­er for those with dyslex­ia, while Zoom meet­ings can be chal­leng­ing when you have a stam­mer, or a hear­ing or visu­al impair­ments. We have made a com­mit­ment to sub­ti­tle every­thing and have screen read­ers, but we know there’s more we can do,” she acknowl­edges.

Including disabled colleagues

This “pos­i­tive atti­tude to imple­ment­ing adjust­ment” is wel­comed by Dom Hyams, head of dig­i­tal strat­e­gy at agency Pur­ple Goat, which works with brands to bet­ter rep­re­sent and reach the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty. Yet dis­abled col­leagues need to be “brought into the con­ver­sa­tion” to guide pol­i­cy and deci­sion-mak­ing, he advis­es.

“Com­pa­ny lead­ers shouldn’t be mak­ing all the deci­sions for that par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty; there needs to be the dia­logue,” says Hyams, who has osteo­ge­n­e­sis imper­fec­ta, which affects his stature and mobil­i­ty.

For exam­ple, EY’s Abil­i­tyEY Net­work helps inform deci­sion-mak­ing on issues such as work­place acces­si­bil­i­ty, poli­cies and sup­port for dis­abled employ­ees. Vir­gin Media’s Ultra­vi­o­let and Our Indi­go Mind net­works pro­vide wider com­pa­ny guid­ance, for instance, on how to present and deliv­er its lat­est TV advert fea­tur­ing a wheel­chair user. Unilever, mean­while, is using insights from a glob­al employ­ee sur­vey to help refine its pro­grammes, along­side input from its glob­al employ­ee resource group for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and their allies, Enable@Unilever.

Prioritising the right partnerships

Adver­tis­ing agency Ogilvy, a Valu­able 500 sig­na­to­ry through hold­ing group WPP, is pri­ori­tis­ing “find­ing the right part­ner­ships”, such as with Even­break and the Brix­ton Fin­ish­ing School, to open up more oppor­tu­ni­ties for dis­abled tal­ent. 

“We need part­ners who can give us their exper­tise in find­ing an engag­ing way of con­nect­ing with more emerg­ing tal­ent with a dis­abil­i­ty,” says Ogilvy UK’s chief peo­ple offi­cer Helen Matthews. “The part­ner­ship piece is the first mile­stone we have to achieve for the next cou­ple of months; get that set up, lean in, get them to lean on us and vice ver­sa.”

Recruit­ing more emerg­ing dis­abled tal­ent is one thing, but guid­ing them to the top of an organ­i­sa­tion is often over­looked, both Pur­ple Goat’s Hyam and Interbrand’s Waite point out. “Look­ing beyond just recruit­ment to pro­gres­sion of dis­abled tal­ent with­in an organ­i­sa­tion is real­ly impor­tant to tack­le,” says Waite.

For Vir­gin Media’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Jeff Dodds, dis­abil­i­ty as a key com­po­nent of its diver­si­ty and inclu­siv­i­ty efforts is “crit­i­cal” to the company’s growth. He pos­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion: “One in five peo­ple in the UK are dis­abled, so if you’re not employ­ing dis­abled peo­ple, how do you know you’re offer­ing them the right ser­vices?”