Focus areas

Policy and research priorities in 2024 – 2025

We believe that disabled people’s experiences in the UK can be transformed by business practice, alongside Government policy which is co-produced with businesses and disabled people. We aim for practical, workable, and inclusive ways to improve employment opportunities, drive economic growth, and create a fairer society.

Working closely with our Members and Partners, we choose our focus areas and design research projects that provide solutions for businesses, Government and policy makers, as well as highlighting what needs to change. We believe that finding the right solution with everyone’s input – business, disabled people, and Government – results in the best outcomes for everyone.

Current projects

Research is integral to the policy work that we do. It’s how we find the evidence for what we discuss with Government and how we inform policy development. The main projects we are working on in 2024/25 include:

• Research into inclusive and meaningful disability workforce and pay gap reporting. We have been researching the effectiveness of workforce reporting, the challenges and barriers for employers to report disability data, and how far workforce reporting actually leads to better experiences for disabled employees. We will be publishing our research in early 2025. You can read our initial findings in our response to the Government’s consultation.
• A project looking at work and health, looking at what an effective workplace health and adjustment process looks like, the role of occupational and vocational rehabilitation, and how to improve the experience of sickness absences to ensure returning to work does not leading to further periods of absence.

Recent projects

We publish research papers and policy publications. In 2023 we published The Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey into the experiences of disabled employees.

If you require this content in a different format, contact enquiries@businessdisabilityforum.org.uk.