Employers fear that disabled people will be an expensive burden – they see the disability rather than the ability. For employees, the fear is that companies won’t hire them or they hide their disability and worry about being found out.
Kamran Mallick, Chief Executive of Disability Rights UK, shares his experience of workplace discrimination with inclusivity best practice firm Diversity Q.
“There’s a lot of data that shows that employing a disabled person doesn’t cost more. There are government support schemes such as the Access to Work scheme. Disabled people tend to stay loyal to their employer longer than everybody else and take less sick leave. But the main positive for me about employing disabled people is the diversity of experience that they bring to a business.”
Throughout most of his career, Kamran feels that disability has been on the wrong corporate agenda. It’s been linked to CSR (corporate social responsibility) rather than a main company objective.
“Disability has been the poor relation of everything else,” he argues. “However, in the last few years, I’ve seen a bit of a shift through things like The Valuable 500. So, we’re starting to get it on the agenda, but there’s a long way to go." Read the full interview here: https://diversityq.com/disabled-employees-are-an-asset-not-a-cost-1508278/