The disability employment crisis must end – it’s time for businesses to step up
It may be 2019, but for a million disabled people across the UK, it feels like 2009. A generation of educated, motivated and ambitious individuals have been sidelined because of mistaken, outdated attitudes about what disabled people can achieve.
The harsh reality for disabled people is that time has stood still – it’s as difficult for them to find employment today as it was a decade ago, as businesses continue to struggle with knowing how to support them.
There are a million disabled people right now who want to work, but are being denied the opportunity because too many businesses can’t see past their impairment or condition.
New research reveals that the professionals tasked with tackling this – senior HR decision-makers – are sleepwalking into another decade of failed progress.
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Nearly half of businesses aren’t focused on creating inclusive workplaces for disabled people, and 50 per cent of businesses say that it’s easier not to recruit a disabled person. Shockingly, a quarter of businesses claim that they have never had a disabled candidate for a job interview, despite there being 7.6m disabled people of working age in the UK.
More than four in 10 businesses report that their board of directors never or rarely discuss disability, and almost a third believe that there is nothing they could do to better meet the needs of disabled employees, so the situation isn’t set to change anytime soon.
Enough is enough. Companies large and small need to come together to end the disability employment crisis. Things need to change fast.
That’s why Virgin Media and Scope are launching the #WorkWithMe pledge, calling on businesses to become better employers of disabled people and commit to creating more inclusive workplaces.
Businesses that sign the pledge will accelerate social change by unlocking the social and economic value of disabled people.
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The pledge is about following five simple, concrete steps. These include appointing a senior leader to take accountability for disability, looking under the bonnet to understand how the business measures up, and putting a plan in place to create a positive culture around disability, as well as collaborating with others to share good practice. This is a free programme, created for business, by business.
This isn’t about finger pointing. Nor is it about patting ourselves on the back: Virgin Media has spent the past two years working to become a better employer of disabled people, but we still have lots more work to do. We want other businesses to benefit from what we’ve learned as they work to create more inclusive workplaces.
I’ve seen first-hand the benefits of working with disabled people, and it’s time for other businesses to experience that too. Simply, we need to change the way that these individuals are valued.
The initiative is gaining momentum, with Philips and JCB among the raft of forward-thinking companies that have already signed the pledge, committing to making disability their business.
It’s time for other business leaders to take conscious action to change business for good. Sign the #WorkWithMe pledge, and help end the disability employment crisis today.