What is the Disability Smart Self-Assessment?
Our Disability Smart Self-Assessment tool (sponsored by Unilever) gives our Members and Partners the opportunity to assess how your organisation is doing against each of the ten areas in the framework; Leadership, Learning and development, Workplace adjustments, Recruitment, Retention, Customers and service users, Procurement, Communication, Built environment and Technology.
On completing each section of the Self-Assessment, you will receive a score. If you complete the whole Self-Assessment you will be able to download a report which you can use as a guide to show where you are in your disability smart journey and to identify priorities for action and further resources for support.
You’ll be asked just over 130 questions in total across the 10 sections. These questions have been reviewed and refreshed recently to reflect changing working practices. You don’t have to complete all the questions at once, you can complete them section by section.
Please note only superusers will be able to access the Self-Assessment. Please email enquiries@businessdidabilityforum.org.uk if you are unsure about your organisation’s superuser. If you are a superuser, please find and start our Self-Assessment after you log into your Knowledge Hub account.
Read what some of our Members and Partners had to say:
“We found colleagues at BDF extremely helpful and responsive to answering practical queries around completing the assessment itself. The advice service provided some useful examples of best practice and a really in-depth response to a query regarding some of the recommendations made in the report. It is so helpful to have tangible suggestions on the steps we can take to become a more disability smart organisation.” Rose Fieber – Administration Officer for EDI, Nursing and Midwifery Council
“At Bank of Ireland, our purpose is to enable our customers, colleagues and communities to thrive. At the heart of this purpose is our commitment to Inclusion and Diversity.
The Business Disability Forum’s Disability Smart Self-Assessment and Benchmark aligned with our company’s purpose and provided us with the tools and clear structure to critically review, measure and improve disability and accessibility performance across every facet of our company.
We were delighted to use The Disability Smart Self-Assessment to measure our progress and gain Bronze status ‘Disability Standard’ accreditation.” Alan Wright – Accessibility Optimisation Lead, Bank of Ireland
“At HSBC, we aspire to be a disability confident business which benefits our colleagues, our customers and wider society. To understand what stage we were on our journey, we required an independent best practice method of assessment capable of providing a holistic overview of disability in our business. The BDF self-assessment provided this and the resulting action plan allowed effort and resource to be positioned on both short and long term goals to help progress towards being a truly ability confident bank.” Coral Taylor – Head of Diversity & Inclusion, HSBC Global Services (UK) Ltd
Some Members and Partners will repeat the Self-Assessment numerous times in order to create a baseline and track progress over time. At some point, Members and Partners might want to undertake the Disability Smart Audit (previously known as the Disability Standard) which is an exercise where evidence is required and validated.
The Audit gives a deeper dive and richer analysis of how organisations are doing and to help them set their future strategy. Find more information about the Disability Smart Audit and how it enables you to understand how disability smart you are across the whole of your business.
