It’s very easy to promise that the government will get 1 million disabled people into work over the next 10 years. This is just really a re-working of their previous claim about bridging the disability employment gap.
We feel that there are a number of underlying issues with this, mostly are to do with attitudes in the workplace. Many companies claim to be inclusive, but what does that really mean? Being inclusive for one person with a specific impairment does not mean that you’ll be inclusive for someone else. There is not one easy fix, but the key here is to assess what needs to change in your organisation first, before thinking about encouraging more disabled people into your company. There are many ways you can look at inclusion, and we believe that the attitudes of staff is one of the key elements.
We have written a number of ‘How to’ guides on our website which give you some helpful hints and tips on how to be inclusive. In the first instance you should read this:
How to actively recruit disabled people which gives you an insight on how to make your employment process more inclusive. Along with that article this one on creating an accessible advert will also give you some helpful tips.
More of our FREE workplace guides can be found here:
https://enhancetheuk.org/enhance/free-resources/
So whilst we applaud the government for taking steps to acknowledge that more needs to be done to encourage disabled people into work, the first steps should be to make sure organisations are being inclusive. It’s not difficult to change the attitudes of your staff, but this is often overlooked for other more tangible aspects. So why not get in touch with us to find out how we can help your organisation become more inclusive, we offer a range of training that will give your staff the confidence to communicate and interact with disabled people.
https://enhancetheuk.org/enhance/training/disability-awareness-training/