By Nicole Seymour, Executive Director – Corporate Services
The eve of Disability History Month (16 November – 16 December) is a good time to talk about why disability inclusion is of core importance to Sanctuary.
Why disability inclusion matters
It matters to us as an employer
At the moment, just over six percent of our workforce have told us that they self-identify as disabled. We know the true figure is higher than this and are working to get to a place where more of our colleagues feel comfortable sharing this information with us. As part of our HR2 programme, we are also making it easier for you to share your information with us when you feel confident to do so. The more we know about you, the more we’re able to tailor how you work to suit you.
It’s important to us that every one of you has an equal chance to fulfil your potential and we’re keen to learn from the many different lived experiences we’re lucky to have across Sanctuary. For the last decade, I have been privileged to work closely with my Executive colleague Nathan Warren, who is also the Chair of our Disability Network. Listening to Nathan’s lived experience as a wheelchair user has opened my eyes to the structural barriers that society has put in the way of so many people with disabilities or long-term health conditions.
Learning from the experience of our colleagues, including our Disability Network, has redoubled our commitment to ensuring that inclusion for all. As part of our commitment to colleagues and customers, we are shifting our focus from equality, to equity. This means recognising we will need to treat people differently, according to their individual circumstances, to deliver fair outcomes for all.
It matters to us as a service provider
Having a diverse and inclusive workforce means we're better able to understand our customers with disabilities and, in turn, tailor our service to their needs.
As well as learning more about our colleagues, we also want to make sure that we have better data and insight into our customers. This will help us to design our services to be responsive to individual requirements. In practice this may mean adapting our standard processes or tailoring our communication so everyone is able to access our services.
As part of our core values, we want to provide homes that help our residents thrive. This means ensuring inclusion by design and considering the individual needs of customers with disabilities and long-term health conditions. It is far simpler – and better value for money - to ensure services and homes are accessible at the at the outset of new projects and programmes, than it is to retrofit our homes in the future.
It matters to us as an organisation committed to high performance
Disability inclusion, like all forms of inclusion, enables Sanctuary to attract talent from a far bigger pool of people and makes it more likely good colleagues will choose to stay with Sanctuary. This makes everyone’s work more interesting and enjoyable and positively impacts our performance as an organisation. An inclusive culture can also spark fresh ideas, improve decision-making and reduce the risk of people’s needs being overlooked. Across so many levels, it pays for employers to be inclusive.
We want to make best use of the strengths that already exist across our Group to enhance our understanding of best practice. There is deep expertise that exists within our Supported Living and Care businesses of supporting people with lived experience of disability or a long-term health condition. We will be building further on this insight to deliver our strategic goals of delivering accessible and inclusive environments for colleagues and customers alike.
Sanctuary’s next steps
This year nearly 1,500 disabled employees and 400 managers responded to the Business Disability Forum’s (BDF) Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey. The survey’s findings give precious insight into the experience of disabled employees, managers, and senior leaders of requesting, making, and reviewing workplace adjustments for disabled employees.
We’re about to review how we, as an organisation, support our disabled colleagues. We’ll use the BDF’s research to help guide us on the things we feel we should focus on.
Some of the questions we’re keen to know the answer to include:
- How easy is it to get a workplace adjustment at Sanctuary? Almost six in every ten (58%) of the BDF’s respondents said it 'depended on being assertive and self-confident'.
- How confident are our managers when discussing adjustments with our employees? Nearly two in every three (64%) managers who responded to the BDF were ‘very confident’ to have a conversation with an employee who tells them they have a disability or a condition.
- How easy do our managers find it to get adjustments put in place for their disabled team members? Nearly one in five (19%) BDF respondents said it was 'very easy'.
We will look to find out how we’re doing and identify where we need to improve. Our Disability Network, a key partner, will be central to this work and help us hear the lived experiences of some of our disabled Sanctuary colleagues. We’ll also be working with our Housing and Supported Living customers over the coming months to improve the coverage and quality of the data we hold. This will enable us to understand the needs of our residents even better and to personalise our services more effectively.
How is Sanctuary marking Disability History Month / International Day of Persons with Disabilities?
- Register for ‘Let’s Discuss Disability’, our hour-long webinar to mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Wednesday 6 December. Colleagues, including our Chief Executive Craig Moule, will discuss how their health conditions impact them: Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams
- For the full range of activities, please visit the Disability Network’s Solis page: Solis | Disability History Month