Disability Inclusion: Lessons from Strictly Come Dancing

On 3 December, the world marked the UN’s International Day of People with Disabilities. According to the UN, an estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. This represents 16% of the world’s population, or 1 in 6 of us. I have been reflecting on which factors build disability inclusion and which ones can get in the way. As an employer of disabled people, it’s important to have a robust reasonable adjustments policy and to deliver on that in a timely and efficient way. However, I think we can also get stuck in a reactive response to disability inclusion and forget that fundamentally changing attitudes and expectations is a big part of the story. It’s also important to think about whose stories get told, who is prepared to listen to them and what we learn as a result.

Strictly Come Dancing, a celebrity dancing competition, has been running for 20 years on the BBC in the UK and has had its share of ups and downs recently in terms of the quality of care for contestants. What has struck me and many people in the UK this year, has been the inclusion of its first blind contestant, comedian Chris McCausland (spoiler alert coming if you haven’t watch the series yet!). Strictly has included disabled contestants in several series, including in 2021, when actress Rose Ayling-Ellis was the first deaf contestant to win the competition. Her routine in which she and her dance partner danced in silence as a tribute to the deaf community won a British Academy Television Award for must-see moment in 2022. Through the programme, she brought British Sign Language to a new audience. Following on from her, this year reality TV star Tasha Gouri took part as a cochlear implant wearer and there was little question about her potential as a deaf contestant to dance to an outstanding level. Expectations had been raised, perhaps due to the visibility and success of the previous deaf contestant and Tasha also got to the final through her absolutely standout dancing.

Chris McCausland was registered blind after losing his sight to retinitis pigmentosa in his 20s and 30s. He turned down appearing in the Strictly show more than once but took the plunge into the competition this year, as the series’ first blind contestant. From the start, he challenged expectations of what a blind person can achieve in dance. The judges were vocal about how little they had thought would be possible for him. He rarely received the very top marks each episode, but as his professional dance partner and teacher Diane Buswell pointed out, he couldn’t watch what his competitors were doing, learn the moves from a video or practice in front of a mirror (although he did quip at one point that this was part of his practice routine). Expectations were low and Chris consistently exceeded them. The public vote is a huge factor in the programme and he was saved a couple of times from being in an elimination dance off due to the high level of support for him.

As a story, it’s perhaps not surprising how it ended. Chris sped through to the final, featuring one dance with a ‘black out’ sequence when the whole auditorium was plunged into darkness, echoing Rose Ayling-Ellis’s emotional stand out moment of silence. When it came to who was going to lift the ‘glitterball’ trophy after the public vote, not many were too surprised – Chris and Diane were the worthy winners. Tears and jubilations all round!

However, what were our expectations at the start of the series and would reasonable adjustments have helped to adjust those as well? Chris turned down the chance to dance with a silent audience so he could better hear instructions from Diane – he wanted to be buoyed up by the electric studio atmosphere, just like the other contestants. He’s made the point in interviews since, that it’s not blind people that need inspiring. According to him, the biggest benefit to everybody is to change people’s attitudes to disability. He achieved what he did because he worked extremely hard, had innate musicality and courage and was blessed with a talented teacher. Most of all, he was given the chance to participate in the first place. He made the point that disabled people can of course defy expectations but, importantly, with opportunity and the right support in place. Reasonable adjustments can provide the right support – but the opportunity has to be there. In 2025, I would like to see this at the top of every employer’s agenda to create more of those opportunities. The results may well defy your expectations.

IGPP Race Inclusion Event, May 2022

In May 2022, I joined the IGPP Race Inclusion Event.

According to IGPP, a BITC Report showed under-representation of minority ethnic groups in employment still remains an issue, and minority groups only take 6% of high-level positions in the public sector. Increasingly, more organisations have reported ethnicity pay gaps, with the majority of ethnic minority employees still earning less than their white counterparts overall. Furthermore, according to a Route2 study (2020), 37% percent of minority ethnic workers have been bullied, abused, or experienced racial discrimination at the hands of their employer. 19% have experienced discrimination in the form of being denied training or promotion.

The Second Annual Race Inclusion and Diversity in the Workplace 2022 event provided organisations with practical and actionable insights to determine the next steps in their race related inclusivity and diversity journey. Through a combination of policy updates and case study examples, delegates received a range of information on topics such as encouraging company-wide inclusive leadership, addressing ethnicity pay gaps, attracting, recruiting and maintaining ethnic minority talent, and developing new models of diversity practice.

Jason Ghaboos, Deputy Director of Civil Service Inclusion discussed how he wanted people from diverse backgrounds to thrive in public service. They have set up a new strategy to tackle bullying, harassment and discrimination and aim to recognise talent from wherever it comes. They also want to move away from siloed D&I to a mainstreaming approach which is evidence led and delivery focused.

The Civil service is focusing on key aspects of the employee lifecycle, using data and evidence from those areas. For example, they know that they have better representation of ethnic minority staff in lower grades than in higher grades. Their key priorities are recruitment, progression and lived experience and have found that talent programmes, sponsorship and mentoring are effective.

Embedding sponsorship for ethnic minority staff helps to remove barriers to progression, although so far this has worked best when it’s informal. They have learnt to establish clear expectations, set up good matches and track impact. Data dashboards help to understand recruitment gaps and sharing lived experience tackles myths and equips and empowers line managers.

They are keen to walk the walk, not talk the talk, and Jason Ghaboos feels that the horizon has much hope. To tackle the devastating effect of discrimination and work place culture, we must be proactive, constantly campaign and take action. They plan to embrace pay gap reporting and aim for measures that are successful and sustained.

Dr Darren Ralph, West Midlands Police, spoke about intersectionality and overlapping systems of oppression, such as class, gender and race. There is not always protection in law for intersectional identities and it’s hard to know where to start and stop with policies. That’s why we tend to put people in boxes when we formulate policy.

Shumailla Dar, Harrow Council, discussed wanting to provide a voice to ethnic minority staff – previously they had just one employee group that covered everyone. This has created a space for honest and constructive dialogue. Remote working allowed for more confidential discussions via Teams. Not all workers had devices, so they did do some face to face meetings, plus drop ins for front facing workers.

They commissioned an independent review and internal data collection exercise on workforce profile and gender and ethnicity pay gaps to identify trends, including a staff race survey plus 1:1 interviews and focus groups. The report and the response from the council was published. This has been a useful blueprint for future work on EDI to make sure the workforce represents the community it serves.

Raising the profile of black staff was very important for example by marking Black History Month with webinars, the Steven Lawrence Day and flying the Windrush flag. A listening exercise by the EDI team has led to putting new policies and interventions in place, such as a race equality action plan, guidance for managers, a zero tolerance statement and anti-racism training. They have set up a diversity talent programme to accelerate progression at all grades, especially to first leadership positions.

Bell Riberio-Addy, MP pointed out that while voluntary ethnicity pay gap data sharing is helpful, only 13 of the FTSE 100 revealed their figures. Overall, the ethnicity pay gap is about 2% but this is much wider for certain groups e.g. Pakistani/Bangladishi, black men. In his view, not providing mandatory pay gap information should result in fines.

Darrell Coker from Flair summarised where we are today in terms of race equity. He outlined some common mistakes in EDI practice and recommended four steps to racial equity. He sees a number of pitfalls that organisations fall in to when trying to address this.

Pitfalls:

• Grouping together EDI initiatives e.g. surveys
• Focusing on the wrong types of data (or no data at all) to measure progress and understand pain points. For example, diversity of representation is just one of the parts of racial equity. Some of the most diverse organisations still have issues with behaviours. How do we capture the views of those who don’t engage with focus groups?
• Poor prioritisation of solutions

For Flair, there are four key steps to addressing racial inequity.

• Discover where racial inequality exists e.g. by listening to lived experiences
• Understand what interventions are needed and how to apply them
• Demonstrate commitment by benchmarking and tracking progress over time
• Benchmark your progress year on year and how you compare to other organisations

The tools you can employ through Flair are:

• Question – using science backed surveys e.g. levels of racist behaviour
• Compare – using smart dashboards e.g. strengths and improvement areas
• Solve – drill down into the improvement areas using suggestions for actions taken by other organisations
• Repeat – track year on year

Discussing race equality at work

Equality data is not always something that people feel comfortable to share at work, particularly when it comes to mental health. Disability and faith or belief are particular areas where people feel their data might be used against them, especially if they have experienced harassment or discrimination in the past and don’t know where the data is going. Organisations need to build trust and provide strong stories around evidence based policy to support data sharing.

The fear of being impolite can get in the way of discussions, particularly about identities that you don’t share yourself. It helps to give managers a framework on how to do this so they can create psychological safety where difficult conversations can take place.

Others urge being realistic about target setting – only try to ‘eat the elephant’ in small chunks! Set up milestones on your way to the big targets. For managers, the top priority for recruitment is often speed and then they will then lament the resulting lack of diversity later. Be wholistic and strategic in your approach, rather than flip flopping between priorities from month to month.

The panellists recommended prioritising your actions based on evidence and don’t wait for platinum data before you start. Lead by example, be the change you want to see because this can lead to a ripple effect. Be brave!

Improving equality data disclosure – how, what and why

This week I joined enei and their Behavioural Insights Team for an overview on diversity monitoring and ways to improve the quality of organisational diversity data.

For many of us working in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), understanding the impact of equality action plans is key to honing new approaches to tackling underrepresentation and discrimination in the workplace. Equality data, such as information on the demographics of our staff, is essential for identifying gaps in areas such as recruitment, pay and progression and assessing the impact of the actions we take to address these. In many organisations, disclosure rates for protected characteristics such as race or ethnicity, sexuality or religion can be extremely low.

The enei Behavioural Insights Team explained the importance of data and diversity monitoring before going on to consider the steps that can be taken to help improve participation levels by staff. In their experience, when employees have not acted on invitations to provide their diversity data, in the vast majority of cases this is due to practicalities. For example, the process to provide details may be unclear or difficult to find, or the questions and categories may be confusing. Many internal campaigns to improve disclosure of personal data focus on changing attitudes towards data collection, rather than addressing the key pain points in providing the data. It is also important of course to give clear reasoning on why data is being gathered to address attitudes, but this can be a relatively small reason for data not being provided. The greater the atmosphere of trust within an organisation the better but it is important to also remember that employees have every right not to share their data if they choose.

ENEI’s recommendations for collecting data are:

• Communicate. Speak to staff to understand their concerns about data disclosure and how this blocks their behaviour
• Keep it simple. Prioritise and address concerns as succinctly as possible while remaining transparent, for example by emphasising that few people have access to the data. Communications should be as short and clearly written as possible, sent out by a person not a general account. You can provide additional information as links
• Make it direct. Make the ‘call to action’ very prominent, link the disclosure to a particular campaign if there is one and always give a deadline (even if this is not a real deadline)
• Remove frictions. Make the disclosure process as easy as possible, for example include the link in an email and try the process out yourself to test it.
• Send reminders. Most people will click on the link straight away, or not at all. Send some reminders at different times but allow people to unsubscribe so they are not overwhelmed or irritated
• Use standardised questions (or test them first). The Office of National Statistics questions and responses have been heavily user tested, so it is good practice to use these, especially for a more nuanced dataset on disability. For outside the UK, you should comply with local legislation and use question sets that reflect the local community.

Reminding staff to provide data is just one side of the equation. You should also give careful thought to processes for monitoring and analysing that data.

The enei’s recommendations on getting data monitoring right are:

• Consider frequency. Establish the appropriate frequency for meaningful insight on progress for your organisation. For example, you might want to carry out an annual deep dive analysis of all data, but take a light touch approach for more monitoring regular processes, such as recruitment
• Expertise. Ensure that the people analysing the data have the right quantitative analysis skills and understand the EDI challenges well enough to interpret the findings in a meaningful way. Analysis should take account of trends, significance and benchmarking.
• Accountability. Accountability and responsibility for moving the needle on equality data should run right through from senior leaders with overall responsibility, to managers implementing actions at local levels.
• Action planning. Use insights from the data to inform and revise your EDI action plan on a regular basis
• Feedback. If you run staff surveys or gather EDI data, make sure you feed back to your employees in a timely way on what you have discovered (in an anonymised way), including how you will respond to these findings and when.
• Evaluate. Use data to understand the impact and progress of your EDI initiatives. Make sure you give time for actions to take effect and cross check your data from more than one source, for example by gathering qualitative data such as from focus groups, as well as quantitative data.

Following these common sense approaches can give a significant boost to the quality and quantity of your organisational data as well contributing to the effectiveness and impact of your EDI initiatives.

Disability Inclusion in the Workplace

On 29 October, I joined IGPP for the Disability Inclusion in the Workplace event. According to Dr Ruth Owen OBE, CEO of Leonard Cheshire, disabled people are the fastest growing minority in the UK. Up to one fifth of adults will experience disability at some point in their life, leading to additional stress on their working lives.

Brian Lutchmiah, Higher Education Partnerships and Inclusion Lead, Diversity and Ability added that one quarter of adults will experience mental health issues in their life time. The costs of living with a disability or mental health condition can be significant, as can the time needed for attending appointments or managing chronic conditions. One NHS Trust provides staff with up to 10 additional days leave per year to manage these challenges. Complex work arrangements might be needed to support appointments, hospital stays, or Assisted Living and all of these can affect the continuum of work or education. Many students in particular are not aware of the financial support available, such as Access to work and the Disabled Students Allowance.

“It’s a challenge on top of a challenge to navigate the labyrinth,” explained Brian.

According to Brian, the benefits of a employers taking a proactive approach to inclusion include greater acceptance of diversity, normalisation of difference, increased confidence (for both employers and employees) and better wellbeing. Employers may also see increased productivity, lower absenteeism and higher retention levels.

“For me, it is about promoting a sense of authentic belonging,” summarised Brian.

Lucy Reynolds, Founder and Director of We Are All Disabled described how the pandemic lockdowns were a great leveller. “Suddenly everyone was working from home and not able to do the things they are used to,” she reminded us.

In the Lancashire police service, Rozila Kana described their experiences with adjusting sick leave policies. “One size fits all is not fit for purpose,” she advised. “You need to take time to put adjustments in place and make sure your communications strategy is right. There should be no ‘banter’ on this issue and flexible working is increasingly accepted.”

For Rozila, there is now a better awareness of conditions that might lead to disability and the wider impact this has on families. “It is the job of managers to do the learning on this,” she urged. “You need buy in from the top table to give equality and diversity initiatives credibility. This is not an add on, it is a business imperative.”

Esi Hardy is the Managing Director of Celebrating Disability and supports organisations to identify their pain points about disability inclusion and work towards addressing them.

“Medically, parents are told from day one that a child with a disability is something to be sorry about,” she said. “When we communicate about disability in the workplace, we need to think about what people will think, feel or do as a result. We need to be aware of the influence of tone of voice when we speak about disability.”

Typical pain points for employers are disabled people not disclosing their requirements or reasonable adjustments and attracting more disabled people to work for their organisation. Organisations want to know why managers do not use the processes they have in place to support disabled colleagues or job applicants. Often, employers know that they need to change, but are unsure how to do this.

To improve line managers’ knowledge about disability, employers often offer training. To make this effective, they should:

• Explain the relevance for the training i.e. to create an inclusive culture
• Create psychological safety
• Develop and enable confidence in speaking about disability
• Provide opportunities to practice conversations about disability

Eli’s recommendations for making improvements in the workplace to disability inclusion are:

• Make no assumptions to make sure you are open to understanding what others think and feel
• Give feedback on any surveys you carry out
• Co produce strategies e.g. you said x, we did y
• Ask others about how to improve and explain why you are asking e.g. we want to develop an inclusive culture because…

There could be two main reasons why staff do not disclose a disability to their employer. Firstly, they may not identify as disabled (although they may have an impairment). Secondly, they may be afraid of repercussions. Employers should articulate why they want to know this information and what will happen as a result, for example to improve accessibility and the inclusive culture of the organisation.

When recruiting, make sure that you articulate and demonstrate the inclusive values that you hold as an organisation, through the application process and during interviews. You can demonstrate your organisational values by role modelling inclusive behaviour towards all candidates, for example offering breaks during interviews and asking if people are comfortable. This helps to develop an environment of trust that should improve opportunities for dialogue and collaboration with new and existing disabled staff.

As described by many of the speakers, in order to provide the cohesive and inclusive societies of the future, leaders need to influence and collectively empower society today.