Employers failing on disability inclusion, survey shows

Disabled employees are struggling to get adjustments they need with most having to initiate the process themselves. That is the headline from the Business Disability Forum’s Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey 2023 which has just been published and reports on the experiences of nearly 1,500 disabled employees and 400 managers around workplace adjustments and inclusion.

The findings are covered by HR Magazine and Personnel Today including the three central recommendations for employers which are: 1) To simplify their workplace adjustments process; (2) To provide more support for managers and the role they play in workplace inclusion; and (3) To develop a wider workplace approach to understanding the experience of having a disability and to removing disability-related barriers beyond focusing on workplace adjustments. 

Angela Matthews, BDF head of policy and research, told HR Magazine that the biggest obstacle to getting appropriate adjustments was fragmented processes. She said: “What we find is organisations have accrued a lot of different types of support and the processes to acquire that support are very disparate and require communication with different departments.” She said HR teams need to become a central touchpoint for any queries about workplace adjustments to streamline the process for managers. 

A section of the report looks in some detail at ‘Working life during and since the COVID-19 pandemic’ and highlights the shift to new ways of working and communicating and a greater focus by businesses on the technology. The conclusion is that managers and employees report somewhat different experiences. The managers, on the whole, reported few problems but that contrasted sharply with employees’ experience. Employees said they struggled to get what they needed to continue working as everyone else had been able to. Many said that they had to sort out getting their own adjustments from within the office themselves and bring home with them.

So, let’s get a view on this. Earlier I spoke on the phone to lawyer Amy Hextell who is advising a number of her clients on the issues of disability inclusion and the duty to make reasonable adjustments: 

Amy Hextell: “We've seen a lot of talk about disability inclusion over the course of the pandemic and with the launch of the National Disability Strategy from the government there's a real focus on digital inclusion, which is including things like assistive and accessible technology, but also looking at ways in which we can support employees with disabilities to engage in a new world of working. I know it's not the case for everybody, but lots of people now are working in a different way where technology is a much greater part of their day-to-day experience and for those with disabilities this can be a real benefit because it does mean that they are able to engage in the world of work in a much more straightforward manner. It's not a panacea, absolutely. It's not a substitute for making changes to the physical world of work which are necessary. There is also a word of warning around the use of technology with those that have particular needs because it needs to be appropriate for their individual needs. So, for example, the use of captioning, or transcripts, on certain software platforms is great but actually for those that perhaps use British sign language, or those with neurodiverse conditions who struggle to process information in that way, it probably isn't removing the disadvantage that they suffer. So, there's lots of scope for technology and digital transformation to support disabled employees in the world of work but there is a word of caution around making sure that it's appropriately in place for their needs and I think that is where employers need to be putting a bit of time and effort into exploring that.”

Joe Glavina: “In the last few months this subject has been getting a lot of press attention – a lot of talk about home and hybrid working and new technologies. What’s the legal imperative here for employers?”

Amy Hextell: “The reason this is particularly important at the moment for employers is because there very firmly is still a duty to make reasonable adjustments which is placed very firmly on employers. It's not incumbent on employees to be raising these issues with employers, it's a duty that the employer has to discharge when they're aware that an employee has a disability, and they are placed at a disadvantage. So, I think now is a really good opportunity now that things are perhaps settling down slightly in respect of the pandemic and we're all well versed in the use of technology. It's an opportunity now for employers to be meeting on an individual basis with disabled employees to understand how they're working, whether that's working well for them, whether the adjustments that are already in place are still appropriate, or whether there might be other adjustments that are necessary. Those other adjustments might be, for example, things that are associated with the use of technology. I think things have moved on so much in that space over the course of the last couple of years that there are probably things employers could, and should, be doing now to meet that legal duty to make adjustments in respect to providing software and technology solutions that perhaps wouldn't have been reasonable pre-pandemic. So, it's a really important thing to be looking at and it's something we're talking to clients a lot about.”

Joe Glavina: “So what’s your message to employers, Amy? What should they be doing?”

Amy Hextell: “I think one of the things that employers can be doing, and part of that, is having conversations with individuals, but it's carrying out adjustment audits which are where an employer will sit down with an employee, as I said, explaining and looking at adjustments that are in place and the way that the employee is working but, perhaps, in a more methodical way, looking at what tasks the employee does, how they may disadvantage that particular disabled employee, and how they may overcome that disadvantage and what adjustments might be reasonable, or not, in the circumstances. I think another area within adjustment audits and something that employers can be doing is looking at their recruitment practices because there's lots of data and survey response out there to suggest that particularly those with neurodiverse conditions are put at a disadvantage by traditional recruitment practices and part of an audit that an employer needs to do around adjustments - because, of course, the legal duty applies not only to employees but also to potential applicants, and to potential employees - is to audit those recruitment practices to see whether there are ways in which they could be adapted to remove disadvantage that disabled people may face. So that might, for example, be forgoing the need for a formal interview, or certainly an interview in person, and instead using technology to assess whether somebody is the best person for the role.”

That report by the Business Disability Forum is called ‘The Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey 2023’ and was published on 20 June. Running at over 100 pages it is very detailed and packed with a lot of useful recommendations for employers. We’ve put a link to it in the transcript of this programme for you.

LINKS
- Link to The Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey 2023