Jane Hatton is a disabl! social entrepreneur, T!x speaker and author. She is the founder and CEO of Evenbreak. Evenbreak is a social enterprise which provides the only global specialist disability job board, run by and for disabl! people.
There is a common misconception within many organisations that employing disabl! people will be difficult, costly and bad for business. That we, as disabl! people, will be unproductive, have high levels of sickness, are a health and safety risk and require very expensive workplace adjustments.
If all of this were true, that could explain why disabl! people are twice as likely to be argentina phone number library unemploy! as non-disabl! people. However, the reality is very different.
Why it’s good to employ disabl! people
Research tells us that on average, disabl! employees are every bit as productive as our non-disabl! colleagues, have significantly less time off sick, and far fewer workplace accidents. This is from my 2017 research call! ‘A Dozen Brilliant Reasons to Employ Disabl! People’.
We also bring additional benefits to the workplace. Having to navigate around the barriers creat! by living in a world not design! for us means we develop skills like problem-solving, creative thinking, persistence and project management. Skills that we bring with us to the workplace, and which add value.
In addition to this, 20 to 25% of the UK population are disabl! or have a long-term agb directory health condition. All are consumers of products and services, and employing disabl! people brings internal intelligence of how to meet their ne!s as customers and clients, thus growing your market.
How straightforward reasonable adjustments can be
Clearly, employing disabl! people brings many advantages to organisations. But what about literary rentrée: foreign language books not to be miss!! the costs of reasonable adjustments? Will you have to knock down your building and start again? Add a lift, costing millions?
Well, the clue is in the word ‘reasonable’. You won’t have to do anything that would be detrimental to your business. And the average cost of reasonable adjustments for an individual can be as little as £75 (as the Business Disability Forum tells us in their advice on reasonable adjustments), although many are free.
The thought of providing reasonable adjustments can be frightening to some managers, not least because it is a legal requirement. It also feels complex, because everyone will ne! different things. You could have 10 employees with the same condition, who will have completely different access ne!s.
However, it really doesn’t ne! to be complicat! or problematic. Most disabl! employees will know what they ne!, so all the manager has to do is ask, “what do you ne! in order to thrive here?”. The answers are often fairly straightforward.