We need to talk about the disability employment gap

Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell is CEO of The 10,000 Interns Foundation.

The lack of access to employment opportunities and continued underrepresentation of disabled people in the workforce is holding us all back.

The Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 was the first piece of legislation in the UK aimed at protecting disabled people against various forms of discrimination, including in the workplace. But more than 25 years later, this regulation has been nowhere near effective enough: the latest report from the Office for National Statistics found that the disability employment rate was 52.7% in Q2 2021, compared to 81.0% for non-disabled people - a grossly unacceptable inequality gap.

One of the main barriers to closing this gap is the false perception many employers have of hiring disabled people and the advantages versus disadvantages they think this will pose.

Research by Accenture in 2018 found that companies keen on hiring disabled people outperformed others on many levels. Profit margins were roughly 30% higher, net income was 200% higher, revenues were 28% higher, and they enjoyed four times higher shareholder returns. Those are not minor differences - it’s clear that disability-confident employers are winning the diversity and inclusion race, outperforming their competitors who are doing themselves more harm than good.

Despite these incredible benefits to employers, a report by The Valuable 500 and Tortoise Media, which looked at the 2020 annual reports of FTSE 100 companies, found that just 5% of them issued board-level statements on disability as part of their leadership agenda. Furthermore, not a single one had an executive or a senior manager who disclosed that they had a disability (although some did say they prefer not to say or otherwise chose not to disclose).

This year, our Foundation launched the 10,000 Able Interns programme, backed by the Disability Charities Consortium, which offers any disabled student or recent graduate a six-week paid summer internship from 2023.

Our applicants will be some of the most highly educated and brightest minds in the country, but our society is currently holding them back, just because they are disabled. According to the same report, employment outcomes are worse for disabled students than for non-disabled students - even after other factors such as prior attainment, gender, age and ethnicity are taken into account. 

The social model of disability helps us to understand that it is not that disabled people have impairments that holds them back, but rather, the way we have built the world - we’ve created the physical and social barriers which create unfair access to building and opportunities. We must adapt the systems, processes and structures we put in place if we want to harness this pool of untapped talent - which is becoming increasingly easier with vast improvements in technology.

For example, barely three years ago, we proved how quickly we could adapt to a global pandemic. In some cases, we transitioned traditional working practices from in-person to virtual literally overnight - such as court sessions, parliamentary debates, board meetings and job interviews. We’ve since demonstrated that home working can be just as efficient as office working at times, if not more, for both employee and employer. What’s stopping us doing the same for the disabled community? Our 10,000 Able Interns programme holds up a mirror to an employer’s ability to be disability-confident, opening up the door to some extraordinary talent that is currently greatly underutilised, improving representation of views, voices and experiences, and our understanding of the world.

Another study by McKinsey in 2019 found that with regard to ethnic and cultural diversity, the greater the representation, the greater the likelihood of outperformance, and companies with more diversity continue to outperform those with less. This is another example which demonstrates that discrimination results in more downsides than benefits, not only for the candidates, but also for the employers. Our flagship programme aimed to address this: we launched the 10,000 Black Interns programme in 2020, which has opened up the doors to thousands of underrepresented talented individuals in the Black community across the UK. In 2022 alone, we placed 2,006 internships across 562 firms, with a third of our interns going on to land permanent jobs.

We believe that internships should be about access, and opportunity. At the 10,000 Interns Foundation, we want to provide access to those furthest away from opportunity, focusing on the transition from university to the workplace. We are on a mission to harness the spectrum of underrepresented talent in the UK, starting with the Black community and those with disabilities. Over the next few years, we will add more programmes aimed at other groups of underrepresented students and graduates, hoping to change the face of British business for the better.

We believe that internships can change the trajectory of someone’s working life. And the business case for diversity is not just compelling, it’s crystal clear - with the moral case being clearer still. Employers will hands down learn more about themselves and their business by signing up to our programmes. Employers: act now – if you don’t, you will surely be left behind.