Action on healthier working lives must begin with accessible and inclusive workplaces

Beth Kume-Holland, CEO and founder of Patchwork Hub, was a Commissioner for Healthier Working Lives. Following the government’s consultation on health and disability welfare and support, she argues that we need to make workplace inclusivity the norm. 

Across my career, I’ve had to give up so many opportunities that I loved because of accessibility barriers in work. 

And unfortunately, I’m just one of millions of disabled people having to navigate workplaces and a society not built with us in mind. Through my work with employers, policymakers and disabled people, I’ve come to appreciate the extent to which these barriers hold back and exclude a wealth of talent – which is bad for individuals, businesses, and ultimately our whole society and economy.

These barriers can be physical, like inaccessible buildings, or digital, like poorly designed websites. But they can also be entrenched in processes and procedures across workplaces, or in attitudes to difference, like making assumptions about our skills, our lives and our potential.

This all contributes to a disability employment gap in the UK that remains stubbornly wide. The employment rate for disabled people is just 53% compared with 82% for non-disabled people. In fact, the government’s Pathways to Work green paper highlights that if the disability employment rate rose to just 65%, this would take them halfway to their overall 80% employment rate target. 

Sadly, the policy debate has focused more on cutting benefits than removing barriers and early intervention. These cuts risk undermining people’s ability to enter or remain in work, and increasing UK poverty levels – the impact of which is well documented. 

Instead, we need to focus on why people struggle to enter and remain in work in the first place. Workplaces must embed accessibility into business-as-usual processes, and prioritise making the necessary adjustments to break down barriers people face. Our Action for healthier working lives report highlighted the importance of getting adjustments right as part of an early support offer that ensures that people with work-limiting health conditions can join and remain in the workforce.

Workplace adjustments and mainstreaming accessibility

Under the Equality Act, it is an employer’s responsibility to pay for and implement ‘reasonable adjustments’. And for anything beyond employers’ legal obligations, there’s support through the government’s Access to Work scheme.

I’ve seen how even small adjustments can have a huge impact for individuals – things that should be so easy to implement, like putting in place clear written follow-ups to confirm verbal discussions, or a quiet place to go if your symptoms are flaring, or ensuring individuals can adjust display settings on their computer monitors without having to go through a long multi-stage process with the IT team every time they move desks. However, far too often adjustments aren’t provided, and half of disabled employees leaving employment cite problems with getting the adjustments they need.  

Feedback from employers suggests they worry about fairness for other staff, alongside cost (even though the average cost of reasonable adjustments is just £75 per individual), and lack knowledge to effectively support employees. But this isn’t good enough: barriers exist for some and not for others; where’s the fairness in that? And there are so many adjustments that are free but too rarely implemented – for example, flexibility around communication formats, working hours, or simply turning on captioning on video calls.

In fact, mainstreaming accessible practices and flexibility would reduce the number of barriers we need to address at the individual level. And this would benefit everyone – from unpaid carers, to parents of young children, to those with short-term illnesses, and ultimately all of us who thrive with different communication or working styles.

Making Access to Work fit for the future

The government is looking to reform the Access to Work scheme. When it works correctly and people get the support they need, it can be transformational. But currently, it supports only around 1% of working disabled people. And the scheme is beset by backlogs, delaying decisions for applicants and payments for employers, support workers and suppliers. 

The short timeframes of many awards keep some people in an almost constant cycle of award renewal, causing uncertainty and affecting personal and professional decisions. The disabled community is increasingly vocal on these issues, through initiatives like the Access to Work Collective – no wonder, given the impact on our daily lives.

In the short term, one simple way to reduce the backlog would be to give people longer awards, with lighter touch renewals when there’s no change of circumstances. This would reduce DWP staffing requirements, and support claimants’ needs and dignity at the same time. But this should be coupled with a proper evaluation, in collaboration with disabled users of the scheme – to reflect the wider benefits of the scheme. 

At the moment, government is too focused on the top line spend of the scheme, but this is a mistake. Retaining someone in work saves the government an average of £19,000 per year elsewhere, and that’s before considering a range of benefits that being properly supported in work could bring – to employees, employers and the sub-economy in accessibility expertise that the scheme supports.

Better employer accountability

Accessible workplaces make business sense. But sometimes a cultural shift needs a bit of a nudge, and holding employers to account on this agenda could lead to measurable progress.

One area where this could clearly be improved is the government’s Disability Confident Scheme. More than 19,000 employers are signed up, but evidence suggests that employment outcomes at workplaces signed up to this scheme are no better than at those which aren’t. The accreditation lacks robustness, with little external incentive to take more than a tick-box approach. That’s why we recommend a full review of the scheme.

We also suggest that the government should extend its proposal of mandatory disability pay gap reporting for large organisations to include reporting on the proportion of their workforce who are disabled. Transparent reporting would give a clearer picture of employer action, highlight areas for improvement and increase accountability. 

So how do we get started? Listen to lived experience

In the current debate around disability and employment, disabled people are so often spoken about rather than to. But to break down the barriers in workplaces across the UK, disabled people need to be active participants – both in deciding the way forward, and in implementing the changes we need to see.

Disabled people know better than anyone what must be improved, because we live it every day. If we want truly inclusive workplaces, we have to start listening to and acting on that lived experience.

Accessibility and inclusive work practices need to become the norm. This is vital for disabled workers but creates healthier working lives for us all.