On the morning of 23rd June, the top HR and recruitment minds will meet to discuss how to become confident about employing people with disabilities and how it benefits business. The event will be hosted by Hanson Search and The Work Crowd in partnership with Disability Confident at The Lansdowne Club, London.
Diversity of all kinds is good for business but it can be hard for employers to know how to incorporate specific diversity promoting policies. Disability Confident is a government campaign which encourages employers to recruit disabled people, tackle negative attitudes to hiring disabled people and help them fulfill their potential.
Why now?
The rate of unemployment is 30% higher among people with disabilities than it is for the general population. The term “disability” refers to a huge range of physical, mental and learning impairments that are faced by millions of people. It’s an issue that shouldn’t be ignored. Recent studies from PR Week show that 1 in 3 people in the communications industry have a mental health condition – twice the rate for the general population.
That makes disabilities our business.
It’s easy to think of disabilities as black and white, you either have one or you don’t, when the reality is that anybody could become disabled at any time. Hiring people with disabilities increases the diversity of a workforce, something which has been proven to have a positive impact on business. We want to share best practices, alleviate concerns when hiring and working with people with disabilities and demonstrate how it’s good for business.
David Cameron aims to “halve the disability employment gap and transform policy, practice and public attitudes, so that hundreds of thousands more disabled people who can and want to be in work find employment.” It’s up to us to support this effort. Among the speakers will be the Minister for Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson, MP, as well as representatives from diversity champions, TFL.