Did you know that there are over seven million people of working age with a disability in the UK but that less than half of them are in employment? And yet we operate in a business landscape characterised by increasing skills shortages, high costs of staff attrition and a rapidly ageing workforce leading to massive skills gaps and the need to tap into new and different pools of talent.

The more forward thinking employers are reviewing their processes and removing barriers to the recruitment and retention of disabled people.  Barriers such as inaccessible websites, application forms that time out and not visibly welcoming applications from disabled candidates. In fact recent research among disabled people shows that only 1 in 4 FTSE 100 companies appeared to have an interest in hiring people with disabilities.  That doesn’t of course mean that they weren’t interested – but that they weren’t visibly interested.

And this isn’t just a CSR tick box or ‘the right thing to do’ – there is an absolute business case for bringing more creativity into your talent engagement strategies in order to secure the best possible candidates from the deepest and widest pool.

You may well be one of those forward thinking organisations that believes you are doing everything right – but how confident are you that your partners and suppliers are also disability smart?  Recruiters, both in house and external are a front door for the talent that may want to work for you but is that front door welcoming…or revolving?

Last year, we produced a ‘Best Practice Guide to Disability Confidence for Recruitment Businesses’ in conjunction with Business Disability Forum (BDF).  The guide proved very popular with our members and many requested a similar guide that they could share with their clients to allow a common understanding of best practice.  Consequently we have now produced a best practice guide to working with recruitment suppliers and partners specifically for employers.

The guide, sponsored by EY provides practical tips and expert advice on how employers can work collaboratively with recruitment partners to tap into the rich and diverse talent pool of those seven million working age individuals classified as disabled.  It covers everything from the business needs analysis to the induction and on-boarding process and highlights possible issues such as website accessibility, sourcing methods that are inclusive and which target disabled talent and the importance of being clear and upfront about your willingness to make reasonable adjustments as part of the application process. It is interesting to note that in recent research 1 in 3 disabled respondents reported that the challenges of online assessments impacted their job hunt.

So what are you waiting for – get disability smart and download your free guide today