UK – Only one in five employers set targets for the number of disabled employees Business Disability Forum finds

With expenditure on staff turnover in just 5 sectors costing UK business more than £4 billion each year and the average cost of replacing individual employees estimated at £30,000, Business Disability Forum (BDF) is thrilled to release the first ever report about the skills, confidence and practices that help retain and develop employees with disabilities and long term health conditions across private, public and third sector employers in the UK.

KEY FINDINGS

Key aids and barriers to retaining and developing employees with
disabilities

1. Across all organisation types, the biggest aids to an organisation retaining and developing employees with disabilities and long term health conditions are:

a. For half of all private, public and third sector employers, organisational values that prioritise improving disability performance was rated most important.

b. Close to half of all employers identified that good quality workplace or ‘reasonable’ adjustment processes was important.

c. Ensuring consistency in policies so that individual line managers were not left to operationalise policies such as disability related absence or workplace adjustments are also seen as key by more than two in five employers including more than half of all public sector employers.

2. The biggest barriers to retaining and developing employees with disabilities and long term health conditions are:

a. For more than half of all private and public employers, a lack of skilled and confident line managers, with 13 in 20 public sector employers identifying this as one of the three biggest barriers.

b. For two in five of all employers, not knowing or knowing too few disabled people within the organisation was a key barrier, with half of all private sector employers identifying this as a primary barrier.

c. One in three employers cite a lack of targeted development of employees with disabilities and long term health conditions as a major barrier. This concern about the lack of development was cited as a key barrier for two in five third sector employers.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  State of the Nation report: Retaining and developing employees with disabilities – Business Disability Forum.