Do you employ people with a disability?

Do you have a disability yourself?

How Disability Confident are you?

Back in 2016, the UK government launched a new scheme called Disability Confident.

The scheme had the express aim of encouraging employers to recruit and retain disabled people and those with health conditions, and also to encourage other businesses and organisations to do the same by promoting awareness of visible and hidden disabilities.

However, by no means everyone is aware of the scheme, even amongst the disabled community, let alone employers in the business community whom the scheme was also trying to reach.

Research showed that one in seven disabled adults (14%) had heard of the scheme, but more than four out of five (84%) hadn’t. Awareness of the scheme was a bit better in the cohort of younger respondents to the research questions, but even in that cohort only just under a quarter (24%) had heard of the programme, whereas three in four (75%) had not.

Awareness of the scheme is one thing, but what about any meaningful change or benefit for disabled people? Has it made any difference? 

Taking those who said that they had heard of the scheme into account, opinion was split on whether it had in fact been effective in promoting employment and employment rights for the disabled (37%) or not (36%) - a more or less even split. The remainder said that they didn’t know, or didn’t have a strong opinion either way.

Again, looking at those people who did say that they had been aware of the scheme, just under half of them said that their current employer was registered as Disability Confident (47%). Just over a quarter of them (26%) said that their employer wasn’t. And a further quarter (26%) weren’t sure either way. 

For the cohort of people not aware of the programme, 87% were unsure if their employer was a member or not.

What about when disabled people were in employment? How were they treated by their employers?

One of the core tenets of the Equality Act 2010 is all employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments. 

Reasonable adjustments are there to help disabled people to overcome any barriers they experience in employment. And to ensure that they can do their job to the same standard as a candidate without a disability. Practical reasonable adjustments help to enable them to do so.

However, as ACAS says, “It's not enough for employers to provide disabled people with exactly the same working conditions as non-disabled people. Employers must make reasonable adjustments by law”. But, “Some disabled people might not need or want adjustments, although this might change over time”.

According to research, just over half of disabled people, including those who are neurodiverse, have not asked their employer to make any changes (53%).

Just under half (45%) of working disabled adults have actually requested one or more reasonable adjustments from their employer.

Of those requests, some are met, and some are not.

The vast majority of disabled adults who did request that their employer made one or more reasonable adjustments (93%) said that either all (60%) or some (33%) of the changes had been made. Which is a small positive to take away.

But, there is a clear difference between females and males. Well over half (65%) of females said that all of their reasonable adjustment requests had been met, but that figure dropped to only half (50%) of males. 

Males were more likely to have had their requests partially met (44%), as opposed to just 27% of females. 

Not great, especially as far as the female cohort is concerned.

Of course, being able to work from home makes a massive difference, in an environment that is optimised for and suits disabled workers. 

Being given the option to work from home is considered to be a reasonable adjustment for disabled employees under the Equality Act 2010, as it can help remove barriers that prevent them from doing their job.

As Scope says, “Working from home can be good for work/life balance, especially if you find travelling difficult or you have good days and bad days with your health”.

Also that “You [as a person with a disability] have more rights to work from home under the Equality Act 2010”.

So, this can be a good solution.But not everyone has that option.

As ACAS says, what is deemed to be reasonable depends on each situation.

An employer doesn’t have to make adjustments that are considered to be unreasonable. 

However, they should still find other ways to support the disabled employee, including making other adjustments that are reasonable.

As far as neurodiversity and neurodivergence are concerned, some neurodivergent people don’t see themselves as disabled per se. However, strictly speaking, being neurodivergent often amounts to a disability as defined under the Equality Act 2010.

Some well-known types of neurodivergence are ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia.

When employers agree to requests for reasonable adjustments for neurodivergent employees, it's important to consider both:

- making the most of the employee's strengths

- supporting them with the things that they find more (or most) difficult

And the fact that, even if an employee doesn’t have a formal diagnosis, they might have neurodivergent characteristics - meaning that they need support at work and to do their job.

Again, as ACAS says, it's a good idea for your business or organisation to have a policy that covers reasonable adjustments, and wider DE&I (diversity, equality and inclusion) as part of the process of becoming Disability Confident.

Bnode can help with this.

As a business, Bnode is both Disability Confident Committed and holds Invisible Disability Employer Silver accreditation.

Chris Naylor, Bnode’s MD, is a Member of the Kirklees Council D&I Steering group and a lecturer in D&I at Kirklees College. His first-hand knowledge and experience of Diversity and Inclusion means he’s ideally suited to support your business or organisation with Diversity and Inclusivity Training and Workshops, including Disability Awareness.

Contact us to see how working together with leading Huddersfield-based training provider Bnode to deliver in-person or online training for your business or organisation makes a real difference to how Disability Confident you and your business are, helping you to best support your current and future disabled team members, employees, stakeholders or volunteers, and become an inclusive employer.