Why business needs to get serious about disability inclusion

In the UK alone, 14.6 mil­lion peo­ple are dis­abled, includ­ing 21% of work­ing-age adults, accord­ing to the fig­ures from the gov­ern­ment. Yet when it comes to dis­abil­i­ty inclu­sion in the work­place, there is still a long way to go, accord­ing to a Racon­teur pan­el of experts speak­ing in hon­our of Dis­abil­i­ty Pride month. 

“We are the largest minor­i­ty group,” says Mark Esho, founder of social enter­prise The Cir­cle Foun­da­tion. “But, to a cer­tain extent, we’ve got the least pow­er.”

Part of this, he says, is down to the atti­tude of many lead­ers when it comes to bring­ing dis­abled peo­ple into their organ­i­sa­tions. A study con­duct­ed by recruit­ment com­pa­ny Page­Group in Decem­ber 2021 found that almost a quar­ter (22%) of busi­ness lead­ers say they are unlike­ly to hire can­di­dates with known dis­abil­i­ties. 

It should come as lit­tle sur­prise, then, that bare­ly half of dis­abled peo­ple are in work.

Barriers to disability recruitment

PageGroup’s research uncov­ered a num­ber of rea­sons why busi­ness­es are fail­ing to hire dis­abled peo­ple. These include not hav­ing the right sup­port in place, the costs of mod­i­fy­ing tech and equip­ment, and the fear of lit­i­ga­tion if employ­ment is unsuc­cess­ful.

“Busi­ness­es are scared of doing the wrong thing,” says Ollie Thorn, senior man­ag­er of DE&I client solu­tions at Michael Page, a branch of Page­Group. “Dis­abil­i­ty affects peo­ple in so many dif­fer­ent ways and, because of that, the rea­son­able adjust­ments peo­ple need can be so var­ied. That cre­ates an ele­ment of fear.”

The upshot of this, he explains, is that the issue of dis­abil­i­ty inclu­sion slips down hir­ing man­agers’ pri­or­i­ties. “As soon as there’s some­thing on someone’s to-do list that they’re a lit­tle bit scared of doing, inevitably that gets ratch­eted down.” 

Anoth­er major bar­ri­er comes as a result of the way many employ­ers think of equi­ty, diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, says Esho. “A lot of employ­ers pay lip ser­vice to inclu­sion. They have all these EDI poli­cies, but they only cov­er cer­tain groups, and often not dis­abled peo­ple. They think they’re fill­ing their quo­ta by hir­ing all the oth­er minori­ties.” 

But giv­ing into fear and uncer­tain­ty, or tak­ing a lazy box-check­ing approach to diver­si­ty, will harm busi­ness­es in the long run, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the great res­ig­na­tion con­tin­ues.

“Busi­ness­es are real­ly strug­gling to hire peo­ple at the moment,” says Thorn. “Yet there are so many peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties look­ing for work. The busi­ness­es that can be inno­v­a­tive and move in this space have a seri­ous com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, because they are going to be able to tap into this incred­i­ble tal­ent pool.”

How to improve hiring processes

Tak­ing the first step to improve recruit­ment process­es does not need to be cost­ly. Work­ing to improve the resources a busi­ness already has is a good start. Page­Group, for exam­ple, has just relaunched its UK web­site to make it more acces­si­ble to those with dis­abil­i­ties.

“The major­i­ty of busi­ness­es don’t have acces­si­ble tools with­in the recruit­ment process, which stops peo­ple from even find­ing the job ads,” says Thorn.

The Cir­cle Foun­da­tion has worked to make its inter­view­ing process by mak­ing it more flex­i­ble and indi­vid­u­alised. This can mean some­thing as sim­ple as paus­ing the for­mal inter­view to have a cup of tea and a chat when a can­di­date arrives look­ing vis­i­bly ner­vous, giv­ing them time to accli­ma­tise. The organ­i­sa­tion has also allowed remote work­ing since 2012.

“The rea­son we intro­duced remote work­ing is sim­ply because we want­ed to get more dis­abled peo­ple into our com­pa­ny,” says Esho. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” 

This will is, per­haps, the most impor­tant first step on the road to dis­abil­i­ty inclu­sion, says Bur­cu Borysik, head of pol­i­cy and cam­paigns at Crohn’s & Col­i­tis UK. “If there is a com­mit­ment made in the recruit­ment process that any­one with a dis­abil­i­ty, vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble, will be sup­port­ed through their employ­ment, that recog­ni­tion has been shown to have a pos­i­tive impact on people’s will­ing­ness to apply for those roles.” 

Why disability is not a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ scenario

Recruit­ment is only one piece of the puz­zle when it comes to dis­abil­i­ty inclu­sion, how­ev­er, and it is just as impor­tant to tear down bar­ri­ers and stig­ma in the work­place. Beyond bring­ing dis­abled tal­ent into an organ­i­sa­tion, lead­ers and man­agers must con­sid­er how to sup­port work­ers who may acquire a dis­abil­i­ty. 

“Some 80% of dis­abil­i­ty is acquired between the ages of 18 and 64, which is work­force age,” explains Car­o­line Casey, founder of glob­al busi­ness col­lec­tive The Valu­able 500. “So what do you do? Do you keep that employ­ee? Invest in that employ­ee? Sup­port that employ­ee?” 

Thorn points out that dis­abil­i­ty is the only minor­i­ty group that “any­one can be a part of tomor­row”. He speaks from expe­ri­ence hav­ing sus­tained an injury that led to a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty dur­ing his career in the mil­i­tary.

Borysik also acquired her dis­abil­i­ty while work­ing. When she first expe­ri­enced the sud­den onset of her con­di­tion, her work life didn’t change to accom­mo­date the shifts in her per­son­al life. “I had to go to the loo every 15 min­utes and I lost about two stone. At the time I was being asked to trav­el between cities and I sim­ply couldn’t do that unless I went against med­ical advice.” 

She was, she explains, ambi­tious and didn’t want to miss out on impor­tant meet­ings or be passed over for pro­mo­tion. A sim­ple adjust­ment, such as allow­ing her to join meet­ings vir­tu­al­ly, would have cost the busi­ness noth­ing and could well have brought ben­e­fits for peo­ple beyond Borysik her­self. 

“We’re all going to have a dis­abil­i­ty. I’m going to acquire more as I get old­er,” says Casey, who has ocu­lar albinism. “This isn’t about ‘them’ and ‘they’, this is about future-proof­ing our world for us through an inclu­sive busi­ness sys­tem.”

The benefits of disability inclusion

Cre­at­ing a cul­ture of diver­si­ty and inclu­sion is more than sim­ply a “good” thing to do, from an eth­i­cal stand­point, “it makes good busi­ness sense,” says Borysik. Crohn’s & Col­i­tis UK has recent­ly launched Are You IN?, a cam­paign to encour­age com­pa­nies to sign pledges show­ing their com­mit­ment to mak­ing the work­place more inclu­sive.

“Work­ing with organ­i­sa­tions on the cam­paign, we hear that mak­ing the accom­mo­da­tions and tak­ing the steps to cre­ate a cul­ture of inclu­sion can improve the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the work­force, reduce staff turnover, dri­ve bet­ter employ­ee well­be­ing and boost inno­va­tion,” says Borysik. 

Work­ing with peo­ple who have expe­ri­ence of dis­abil­i­ties can open up a range of oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es. As Casey points out, the dis­abil­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sents 54% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and is worth an esti­mat­ed £13tn.

Casey says: “You get the tal­ent into your busi­ness because that tal­ent, with lived expe­ri­ence of dis­abil­i­ty, brings insight and inno­va­tion and knows how to speak to that mar­ket.”

Better for some, better for all

If the pan­dem­ic has taught us any­thing, it is that we all need accom­mo­da­tions to some degree. Embrac­ing wide­spread work­ing from home ben­e­fit­ed thou­sands of peo­ple, not least many of the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty.

Casey points to the exam­ple of the remote con­trol, designed to help blind peo­ple watch tele­vi­sion and now used by TV own­ers every­where. Acces­si­bil­i­ty ramps may have been cre­at­ed with wheel­chairs in mind, but they are a life­line for par­ents with prams and peo­ple with a range of mobil­i­ty issues. 

“One of my favourite phras­es is ‘small change is nec­es­sary for some and ben­e­fi­cial for all’,” says Thorn. Lead­ers who under­stand this have a bet­ter chance of attract­ing the best tal­ent, access­ing new mar­kets and, per­haps, even improv­ing the busi­ness world for future work­ers.