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Disability reporting done well will drive inclusivity in the workplace

The CBI supports mandatory disability workforce reporting in Disability Unit consultation response.

08 Apr 2022, 2 min read

What was the consultation about?

The CBI recently responded to the Disability Unit’s consultation on disability workforce reporting.

The consultation was launched in December 2021 and sought to explore how government and employers can make workplaces more inclusive for disabled people by analysing the potential of mandatory disability workforce reporting and business experiences of voluntary disability workforce reporting.

What do members think about disability workforce reporting?

  1. Businesses want to attract and retain more people with disabilities because building an inclusive economy and a healthier nation makes moral and business sense.
  2. Businesses support the introduction of mandatory disability workforce reporting. If done well, they think that it could be a powerful mechanism to drive inclusion.
  3. Businesses think that they should be asked to report the percentage of individuals who identify as disabled within their workforce. Businesses think that this transparency mechanism will create accountability for employers who need to do more to support employees with disabilities.
  4. Employers firmly believe that employees should have the choice to identify as disabled to be consistent with the inclusive cultures businesses aspire to build. This is why employers emphasized the need for individuals to be able to self-identify as disabled, rather than being identified as disabled based on a set of criteria disclosed to their employer.

What did the CBI recommend in its consultation response?

The CBI made four recommendations to government in its consultation response to ensure that disability workforce reporting will drive action. These include:

  • Disability workforce information should be collected on a self-identification basis by employers.
  • To help drive action government should provide a society wide statistic using the same methodology as the voluntary reporting framework, to produce a figure that businesses can benchmark themselves to (at present this does not exist).
  • Government should require businesses to publish an accompanying narrative with their headline disability workforce reporting figure.
  • Government should produce guidance on what a good practice narrative could include.

Speak to Poppy to find out about our work in this area.

Read the CBI’s full response.