Junior iListers tell leaders: do this one thing now

Set disability recruitment targets

To implement real change, I would ask agency leaders to deliberately focus recruitment efforts toward the disabled community across all areas of their business.

This is because the accessible working conditions that we gained during the COVID-19 pandemic have proved that agencies can accommodate a plethora of talent they were previously missing out on.

Approximately 15% of the global population have a disability, which works out to well over a billion people.

While this group has always faced challenges, we are learning that disability is more complicated than just a health condition. Disabilities occur due to a mismatch between an individual’s body/mind and how their environment has been designed.

This applies to our working environments too and is why the turnover of disabled employees is much higher than the industry average (22% vs 12%).

Traditionally, the working world has overlooked this group of people because of damaging ideas that disabled employees may be more of a burden than an asset, and because businesses have not known how to effectively communicate with and include this community. Thankfully, the COVID-19 pandemic has educated all of us in the ways of accessible working, and there has never been more efforts taken to tackle misconceptions and bias.

As an eternal optimist, I believe it is important to try to see the good in every situation. The pandemic was a testing time for everyone, but both in agencies and beyond, we mustn’t lose the things we gained.

Widespread adoption of accessible working conditions is an essential first step, but we must build on these stronger foundations with even more accessibility initiatives, more accessible hiring processes, truly accessible communications and ultimately, a better understanding of people who are different to ourselves.