Disability Inclusion: “It’s not about charity, it’s not about CSR, this is a business imperative.”

Over 1 billion people worldwide – or 15% of the global population – have a disability. 与 80%的残疾 being invisible and most disabilities being acquired between the ages of 18-64, society should include people with disabilities in important conversations, 例如, 在设计产品时, 服务及楼宇. Diversity has become a popular term but how many people reference diversity and don’t consider disability? 与 解决不平等问题的商业委员会 (BCTI), we encourage businesses to do more to ensure they are serving the needs of this underserved community.  

价值500强 are using business to address the inequality and inequity of people with disabilities across society. 这是关于我们如何, 作为消费者, 作为员工, 作为相信商业的人, 谁从商家那里买东西，又为公司工作, 利用这种商业工具来改变世界. 如果我们能在业务范围内做到这一点, this will transfer into society bringing inclusion for all to the forefront. 

There is a multitude of things that can be improved to ensure disability inclusion is central to business practices. 企业应该更有效地收集数据, 留住残疾人才, 报告我们作为组织正在做的工作,  be more representative of people with disabilities in our communication and involve people with disabilities in the 研究 and innovation phases for customers before products are built and developed. 从本质上讲，将残疾融入业务. 

包容性招聘的重要性

Inclusive hiring is an ideal place to start as employers must dispel the myth that disabled talent is hard to find. There is a vast untapped pool of disabled talent looking to work and many people with disabilities are reliable and skilled individuals with the potential to belong fully to the world of work in all industries and types of positions. 今年早些时候，“价值500强”进行了一项调查， 有价值的真理, which revealed that 47% of employers believe that the barrier to the recruitment and retention of disabled employees is due to the lack of candidates. 然而, 研究 undertaken by Virgin Media and Scope found that in the UK alone, over 1 million disabled people with a desire to work are being denied the opportunity. 我们认为，这种差异在于缺乏透明度. 

此外, further insights from 有价值的真理 survey found that 63% of businesses did not know how many people within their organization identify as disabled. People with disabilities bring an immense contribution to business and society; they bring a diversity of lived experience and a wealth of talent, 这些都对企业的正规博彩十大网站排名议程至关重要. Cultivating environments in which employees feel seen, heard and valued enables requests  

在不担心偏见的情况下提供必要的便利. This empowers the workforce to feel more secure with access to the resources they need to execute their roles to the best of their ability rather than suffer in silence. 鼓励员工与工作场所进行开诚布公的对话, establishing employee resource groups (ERGs) with executive sponsorship allows employees to bring their whole selves to work. 

确保包容性文化

Ensuring an inclusive culture and measuring inclusivity are essential to driving action. Employers need to understand their organization’s diversity and demographic composition to ensure that their business reflects the communities and customers they serve. 商业案例很清楚 the disposable spend of people with disabilities and their families/carers is USD $13 trillion pa. There is also a huge risk and opportunity cost associated with not hiring candidates with different lived experiences. 

未来需要为每个人服务. Embedding inclusion into the business culture would significantly improve the lives of individuals and positively affect the business’s bottom line. 仅在英国， 紫色英镑估计价值2740亿英镑. 在商界的代表性正在缓慢增加. 去年，我们与Tortoise Media合作进行了一些调查 研究 and found that, across the FTSE 100, none of the C-Suite had disclosed having a disability. 另外, in a separate piece of 研究 with EY we discovered that 7% of CEOs have a direct link to disability, 但五分之四的人都藏起来了. This demonstrates that while we may have made a significant dent in the glass ceiling – we are far from shattering it entirely. 

现在是第二阶段, the Valuable 500 is galvanizing the power of the collective to cultivate an incubator for change. 跨越64个行业, having headquarters in 41 countries and consisting of over 22 million employees, the Valuable 500 are striving to eradicate the exclusion of people with a disability and enact systemic change from C-suite to junior level. 这将改变业务，包括1.全世界有30亿残疾人, 从而解锁他们的业务, 社会和经济潜力.  

Disability has remained on the fringes of the diversity and inclusion movement due to a lack of understanding about the wealth of expertise available and fear of doing ‘it’ wrong. Only by putting disabled staff and consumers at the heart of business strategies will companies rewrite the cultural narrative necessary to reverse the disability pay gap, embrace intersectionality and gauge the extent to which it is reflected within business. Disability inclusion is not charity, it is not a CSR exercise – it is a business imperative.