Corporate Strategy
Building Your Understanding of Disability Confidence
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Who is this for?
High priority:
HR professionals
Executives and senior management
Practical Information:
Cross-departmental managers
Useful to know:
Frontline staff
What guidance does it provide?
Understanding the best corporate practice of disability confidence
Take home points
- A disability confident employer recognizes the talents that people with disabilities bring to the workplace. They feel confident in their ability to hire, support, and retain workers with disabilities, and work to drive lasting change in attitudes, behaviours, and cultures within their own businesses to become fully inclusive of people with disabilities.
- The medical model of disability has underpinned peoples’ perceptions and understanding of disability for a long time. It suggests that disability exists because of a person’s impairments and must be ‘fixed’ or treated by medicine or healthcare professionals.
- The social model of disability examines disability from a broader perspective. It suggests that disability exists because of the way that society is organized, rather than a medical condition an individual may have. Based on this model, if society was set up in a way that was accessible, persons with disabilities would not be prevented from fully participating.
- Understanding your company’s core strategy and culture can help you evolve. Think about different business contexts – depending on who you partner with, the adversities you face, the markets you are targeting, and many other important factors.
Identifying the Rationale for Change
Who is this for?
High priority:
- Executives and senior management
- Cross-departmental managers
What guidance does it provide?
Understanding the business and ethical rationale for disability confidence
Take home points
When investing in disability confidence, a company positions itself as a preeminent leader at the intersection of business, diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.
- The strategic business benefits: Adopting disability confidence enables access to an untapped pool of talented workers who will help drive innovation, economic growth, and business success.
- Supporting the disability community: Disability confident leaders understand that the cross-disability movement includes and impacts all of us. Employers have the platform to instigate positive change, and that starts with learning with and from people with disabilities.
- Fair and ethical treatment: Treating people fairly is the right thing to do. By adopting the best corporate practice of disability confidence, a company can enhance its reputation as a fair, equitable, and ethical employer.
Amplify the impact of your organization’s disability confidence by joining a business disability network and kickstarts business-to-business (B2B) conversation to collaborate with link-minded companies and share best practices for accessibility and inclusivity
Starting your journey towards disability confidence
Who is this for?
High priority:
- Executives and senior management
- Cross-departmental managers
What guidance does it provide?
How to navigate the preliminary stages of your journey towards disability confidence
Take home points
- No two businesses are the same, your starting point, as well as the practices, policies, and procedures you undertake to become more inclusive may look different than your neighbour’s.
- If you or your staff feel uneasy about interacting with or accommodating a person with disability, a focus on education is needed.
- Although accessibility and disability confidence are two different terms, they are closely intertwined. A disability confident employer recognizes the value in accessibility and implements solutions to ensure that the needs of all people, including people with disabilities, are met.
- Lead a culture movement by framing the issue and positioning a rationale, recognize and reward collective action, enable employees to contribute to your disability strategy, carve out spaces for innovation and enhance solidarity with the use of symbolism
- A topic as expansive as disability confidence touches all aspects of your business, and it can be tempting to jump back and forth between stages in the employee life cycle or focus on too many initiatives all at once. If you are not sure where to start in your journey towards disability confidence, review the tool once more for practical suggestions.