Global Conference 2024 highlights: How inclusive is disability inclusion across the globe?

Lara Davis, our Director of Communications and Marketing, shares highlights from the ‘How inclusive is disability inclusion across the globe?’ session at our Global Conference on 21 November (sponsored by HSBC).

Disability workforce and pay gap data reporting is a hot topic, but not just in the UK. It’s also a particular challenge for organisations working in multiple regions across the world.  

In this session, Angela Matthews, BDF’s Director of Public Policy and Research looked at why collecting this data for global organisations can be so difficult and also whether asking people to identify as disabled is actually the right question to be asking in the first place.  

Not surprisingly, equity and inclusion and cultural approaches to ‘data collection’ differ across cultures and can even be seen as a very ‘Western agenda’. Definitions of disability vary globally, answering questions about health or disability may be seen as culturally inappropriate and even asking the questions at all can be unlawful. Angela urged D&I leads to: 

“Make sure connections with employees around the world are not just about ‘data bargaining’ and relationships with global colleagues are not just compliance or task based ‘requests’ but are about identifying what makes lives better for all our employees.”  

In research carried out by BDF among our membership (due for release in early 2025), global diversity leaders told us that the UK appears to be “obsessed” with single numerical percentage data in a way that is not always immediately understandable in other regions across the world.  

But Angela was clear that there is a much wider issue here. Does collecting data in any country actually change things for the better for disabled employees?  

Current approaches to disability workforce data values the prevalence of disability in a workplace rather than the experience of having a disability in a workplace. Are we simply measuring the wrong thing? 

In terms of disability pay gap reporting, the equality and equity issue is not what employees earn; the issue that an effective inclusive strategy would want to address is why they earn what they earn. But current reporting requirements do not ask that. This pushes employers into a never-ending cyclical routine of collecting and reporting data without having time or resources to pause and think about if this the right data and what is changed – for the better – as a result of the data. And one of the unintended consequences here can mean that employees feel pressurised to share their disability to help disability pay gap reporting.  

So, if disability data is not a real measure of workplace inclusion, then what is? How can we truly measure inclusion? 

In our data monitoring research, disabled employees (working in the UK) were asked what they think the right questions to ask are. And they go way beyond data:  

• Does everyone have the adjustments they need?   

• Do disabled employees feel supported by their employer at the very time they need it most?   

• Are disabled employees’ experiences of harassment and bullying decreasing and dealt with?   

• Does their employer proactively identify disability related barriers and then remove them in a timely way at organisation and individual level.  

Angela left the audience with some key things to consider in their organisations: 

• Challenge the assumption that a high percentage of employees with a disabilities and narrow(ing) the Disability Pay Gap is a proxy for a disability inclusive organisation.  

• Ensure any reporting – workforce or pay gap – allows employers to submit a narrative or additional information to inform the numbers.  

• Understand the burden that these policies put on workers with disabilities to share about it.  

• Be realistic about the effectiveness of this approach alongside other measures – increased flexible working and job carving while also saying ‘we believe in the disability pay gap figures’. 

In concluding the session, Angela was clear that data about the number of disabled employees and what they earn gives a basic picture of diversity, but on its own it really doesn’t help organisations – wherever they are in the world – to measure the experience of inclusion for their disabled employees.   

Members and Partners can watch the sessions from our Global Conference on the Knowledge Hub.