How the Global Assessment aligns with laws and other frameworks

Introduction

Business Disability Forum’s Global Assessment is a valuable tool for identifying strengths and weaknesses in your global organisation’s approaches to disability inclusion to help you prioritise where you need to focus.

There are also other benefits – completing BDF’s Global Assessment can help your organisation meet regulatory, reporting and compliance requirements. Completing this assessment gives your organisation:

• A detailed overview of how you are performing in each country in which you operate – identifying where you are doing well and where potential risks might be,
• A framework to help you plan your global disability inclusion strategy and actions,
• Recommendations of where to focus and prioritise actions in a tailored report based on your answers,
• A starting point to help you plan how you will communicate your global disability inclusion strategy to internal stakeholders – and external stakeholders too if you choose the verified (audit) option,
• External validation of information to include in your ESG and other reporting (if you choose the verified [audit] option – helping you meet your CSRD/ESRS and other requirements.

Using the framework can help you to comply with local laws and regulations, meet reporting requirements, and participate in other frameworks relating to your organisation’s disability inclusion activities.

Below, we outline some reporting requirements and frameworks that your organisation will find easier to engage with after completing BDF’s Global Assessment.

BDF’s Global Assessment – Legal and regulatory compliance

Completing the BDF’s Global Assessment will help your organisation meet its legal and regulatory requirements in the jurisdictions in which it operates. Equally, understanding your organisation’s global disability inclusion activities can help you develop more sophisticated global and local disability inclusion strategies that conform to best practice in different countries.

Laws and regulations vary widely between jurisdictions. Global organisations will benefit from assessing how their activities conform to these requirements, allowing you to adopt policies and procedures that will maximise the outcomes of your activities. Our Global Assessment will let you look at what is working and highlight what could be improved, both on a global level and on a country-by-country basis.

Our directory of country profiles, Disability Around The World, has more detail on specific countries’ laws, cultural norms, language, and more. This directory is available to our Partners and Global Taskforce members.

The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive

On 5 January 2023, the European Union (EU)’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) came into force.

This Directive updated existing rules that required some organisations (details of which are listed below) to report on environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters. Organisations now must report according to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).

Which organisations are covered by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive?

The CSRD applies to any business based in the EU that meets two of the following thresholds:

• at least €50 million net turnover,
• at least €25 million balance sheet total,
• at least 250 employees.

It also applies to:

• some listed small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),
• non-EU based businesses that generate over €150 million in the EU market.

What must organisations report under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive?

The CSRD requires qualifying organisations to report on 12 standards. The two standards that explicitly mention disability are:

• ESRS S1 – own workforce (employment and inclusion of workers with disabilities),
• ESRS S2 – workers in the value chain (employment and inclusion of workers with disabilities).

As well as these, organisations could report on disability inclusion under ESRS S4 – consumers and end users. This requires reporting on:

• consumers’ access to quality information,
• health and safety,
• non-discrimination.

How does BDF’s Global Assessment align with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive?

Large amounts of the information and evidence organisations gather while completing BDF’s Global Assessment relate directly to the business areas and activities considered in the CSRD, including:

• Pillar 4 (Retention) and Pillar 6 (Workplace adjustments) relate to ESRS S1 – Own workforce. The knowledge and evidence you gather completing these pillars can be repurposed for reporting under the ESRS.
• Pillar 8 (Procurement) relates to ESRS S2 – Workers in the value chain. The knowledge and evidence you gather completing these pillars can be repurposed for reporting under the ESRS.
• Pillar 5 (Marketing communications) and Pillar 7 (Customers) relate to ESRS S4 – Consumers and end users. The knowledge and evidence you gather completing these pillars can be repurposed for reporting under the ESRS.

How BDF’s Global Assessment fits in with other frameworks

The International Labor Organization’s Self-Assessment

The International Labor Organization (ILO) is the only tripartite United Nations agency, which since 1919 brings together governments, employers and workers of 187 Member States, to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all. In 2010, the ILO launched its Global Business and Disability Network (GBDN) as a dedicated initiative to promote decent work for persons with disabilities in the private for-profit sector. The ILO GBDN comprises more than 40 multinational enterprises and more than 45 National Business and Disability Networks.

Business Disability Forum is pleased to have a strong working relationship with the ILO through the ILO GBDN, and our CEO, Diane Lightfoot, is proud to represent Business Disability Forum as one of the twelve members of the ILO GBDN steering committee.

The free-of-charge, multilingual ILO GBDN Self-Assessment Tool is aligned with the Ten Principles of the ILO GBDN Charter, and the universal principles that shape the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It enables local businesses in any country and jurisdiction to identify disability performance gaps and set priorities for action to address such gaps.

It comprises 47 questions across four domains and provides scores for each domain as well as an overall score:

• The Fundamentals: Ensuring respect, fairness, equality, accessibility.
• Promoting a disability confident best practice culture.
• Enabling dignified and equal access for customers with disabilities.
• Allyship and reporting.

How does the ILO GBDN Self-Assessment relate to BDF’s Global Assessment?

BDF’s Global Assessment and ILO GBDN’s Self-Assessment use similar metrics and share the same underlying approach to disability inclusion. However, completing each one provides different benefits.

• The ILO GBDN Self-Assessment Tool provides a scorecard that rates an organisation’s maturity based on its score. It is designed as an internal management tool to help you assess where you are and to prioritise where you need to focus to improve your disability inclusion performance.
• Business Disability Forum’s Global Assessment provides a report that identifies areas of strength and risks relating to best practice disability inclusion to help you assess where you are and prioritise where you need to focus. It is externally validated with an evidence requirement that means you can use the results for external reporting.

Completing either of these assessments would make it easier for an organisation to complete the other, as many of the questions address similar topics. They are complementary in asking similar questions and sharing similar values but provide different benefits – both of which organisations can use to enhance their global disability inclusion strategy. The details of each are:

The ILO GBDN Self-Assessment is a useful tool for assessing an organisation’s performance against the GBDN Charter and the UN CRPD. These are vital frameworks that organisations operating in any country in the world should seek to meet. The UN CRPD forms the basis of many national laws on disability inclusion and non-discrimination. The ILO GBDN Self-Assessment Tool is available as spreadsheet file and web-based interactive version, which asks 47 questions in 4 domains. It is self-scoring and does not have an audit or verification element so does not require evidence to be submitted. At the end, the tool gives you a score to show how you are doing against each domain as well as an overall score. The tool is available in several languages, including English, French, Spanish, Arabic and German.

Business Disability Forum’s Global Assessment focuses on good practice in business disability inclusion with a verified assessment that is externally validated and can therefore be used externally to evidence reporting and other requirements. It is intended to motivate global organisations to assess their performance on disability inclusion across the board, with 10 pillars covering all aspects of its operations and activities. It is intended to challenge organisations to identify where they could be doing more to remove barriers and include disabled employees, customers, and service users. Additionally, it requires evidence to be submitted to verify answers for approximately half of the questions, which a disability-inclusion expert will then assess to give you a score, report and recommendations of where to prioritise. You can additionally have a feedback session with your assessor to go through your assessment in detail to ensure you get the most out of completing it. If you are not yet ready to complete a verified assessment with evidence, you can use the questions as a self-assessment for a “practice run” to prepare for doing the verified assessment in future, to see where you might need to focus to get to the level and evidence we require.

Valuable 500’s Key Performance Indicators

The Valuable 500 is a global organisation that works with external partners and companies to improve disability inclusion. Business Disability Forum is pleased to be working with the Valuable 500 as one of its SYNC25 partners.

Valuable 500 has created a set of 5 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that encourage organisations to investigate and report on their performance. The KPIs are:

• Workforce representation – What percentage of the company’s workforce identifies as disabled / living with a disability?
• Goals – Which goals has the company defined specific to disability inclusion and how are business leaders measured against these goals?
• Training – Does your company provide disability inclusion training for its managers and employees?
• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) – Does your company have a disability-specific Employee Resource Group (ERG) in place with an executive sponsor?
• Digital accessibility – Has your company undertaken a review of the accessibility of its digital platforms and content? If not, does the company have a plan to undertake a review over the next calendar year?

How do the Valuable 500’s KPIs align with the BDF’s Global Assessment?

The Valuable 500 does have its own framework to measure how you meet its KPIs and these questions are all thoroughly answered by completing BDF’s Global Assessment. After you have answered our questions, you will have everything you need to answer the Valuable 500’s KPIs, and the evidence base to report on the detail and progress you have made as below:

• Digital accessibility – This question is covered by Pillar 10 (Technology) of BDF’s Global Assessment.
• Workforce representation – This question is answered in Pillar 1 (Leadership) of BDF’s Global Assessment.
• Goals – This question is addressed in Pillar 1 (Leadership) of BDF’s Global Assessment.
• Training – This question is answered in Pillar 3 (Learning and Development) of BDF’s Global Assessment.
• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) – This question falls under Pillar 4 (Representation) of BDF’s Global Assessment.