Barriers to Employment for Disabled Candidates: How to be more than ‘diverse-ish’

On 23 January, I joined a breakfast briefing at the Wellcome Trust focused on helping talented disabled candidates and inclusive employers to find each other. Social enterprise, EvenBreak, launched their report “Barriers to Employment”, which summarises what disabled candidates have to say about their recruitment experiences.

Jane Hatton, founder of EvenBreak, reminded us of the compelling reasons to employ disabled people. First of all, there is a huge range of talent available which employers risk missing out on. Disabled staff are often more loyal to their employer, stay in post longer and have higher productivity. For employers, disabled people help them to represent their customer base more fully and employing a diverse workforce creates a more inclusive ethos for all.

However, before joining an organisation, a candidate has to grapple with their recruitment processes. The main barrier that disabled candidates identified was finding a disability-friendly employer in the first place. The vast majority of candidates wanted to be confident that they would be taken seriously as a potential employee before even applying.

The second hurdle was the recruitment process itself, with issues ranging from lack of information in job adverts on adjustments available, to a real or perceived lack of paid work experience in their CVs. Career gaps due to ill health are not well understood by employers, who also do not appreciate that disabled candidates may have been undervalued in previous roles, despite having good qualifications. Employers tend to frown on short-term periods of employment, but this could be as much due to the previous employer’s failure to make adjustments, as to the member of staff.  Half said they felt that in-person interviews presented the greatest barrier, due to difficulties with hearing, speech or social communication, such as for autistic candidates.

Finally, lack of self-confidence presented a significant barrier for around half of respondents, with many worrying about how employers will perceive them.

Will van Zwanenberg, a candidate with autism, spoke eloquently on the challenges he has faced in his career. “A face-to-face interview requires things from me that even at the best of times I’m very bad at,” he said. Understanding what is expected during an interview, dealing with sensory issues around clothing, noise and lighting and making eye contact for the appropriate amount of time all add to the stress of the experience. “To me, it feels like an interview is about convincing the employer you’re a decent person, not that you can do the job. After all, who would apply for a job they couldn’t do?” suggested Will. Will has been most successful in finding roles through bypassing the interview stage completely, going straight to a senior programmer with a working prototype to demonstrate that he has the skills required.

Toby Mildon runs a diversity and inclusion consultancy and is an expert on inclusive growth. He has identified 3 stages towards running an inclusive business. Firstly, you should develop a culture of respect and inclusion. Employees must feel they are a culture fit and do not stand out. Leaders should demonstrate inclusive behaviours themselves, and not be afraid to talk about disability. This is amply demonstrated by the Valuable500 film, “Diverseish” which calls out companies that just pay lip service to disability inclusion.

The second stage is to take a listening approach. So many organisations focus on fixing the individual, for example through training and mentoring, rather than listening to employees about what would actually fix a system that is biased against them. The third stage is to celebrate the achievements of your employees, and to empower them to tell their stories online, as demonstrated by employer EY. “It’s no good having a website full of awards, if this does not match the lived experience of your employees,” warned Mildon.

Adam Hyland is Campaigns and Equalities Director at recruitment agency D&A. He flagged the importance of where you advertise, such as on EvenBreak’s job boards, and how. “Having to request other formats of job descriptions, such as audio files or Braille, is pants,” he said frankly. “It also immediately identifies you as a candidate with a disability. Have alternative application routes available routinely.” Other adjustments are simple to put in place, such as providing interview questions in advance to all candidates, offering a range of time slots and describing examples of adjustments used in the past. “You could even change the location of your interview – a walk along the beach was my favourite interview location, it completely changed the dynamic,” said Hyland.

“In my view, an interview is all about getting the best out of talented people, creating an opportunity to see them at their very best. It’s not rocket science. Why aren’t we being bold enough? Employers should just state from the outset that they want to support you to thrive,” advised Hyland.

Nicky Ivory Chapman from Channel 4 reminded us that equal representation was built into the broadcaster’s DNA when they were founded in 1993. In 2016, C4 launched their “Year of Disability” with the campaign “We’re the Superhumans”, to celebrate their broadcast of the Paralympics in Rio. “We should routinely ask candidates whether they have any access requirements, as we do for dietary requirements. It opens the door a little bit to give candidates the confidence to ask.” C4 has found that their staff disclosure rates have increased from 2.5 to 11% by taking measures such as these. “We should play to people’s strengths, and remind them their talents are hugely valued.”

Maria Grazia-Zedda of HS2 spoke about some of the techniques they have used to recruit in a challenging area, where engineers are in short supply. “Our driver is that one third of our engineering workforce is set to retire in the next few years. We have to expand and diversify our candidate pool to survive,” she explained. HS2 have used a number of techniques, such as plain, concise job descriptions, task-based recruitment, blind auditioning, and an Access to Work funding scheme. “We have worked to remove subjective selection criteria, such as asking for ‘strong interpersonal skills’. What does this actually mean in practice? It tends to vary from hiring manager to manager, so we have got rid of it,” she said. HS2 found that while only 2% of staff reported having a disability, 17% actually asked for adjustments. “You can ask for adjustments from HR, without having to disclose these to your manager if you choose not to,” she reminded us.

HS2 also takes a listening approach, offering reverse mentoring between senior staff and disabled staff and an employee network. “We identified that our senior leadership team is not very inclusive. We have found that a highly competitive process leads to a disproportionate drop-out rate by women, returners and disabled people. We plan to start offering confidential coaching to these groups, which would not be revealed at interview stage.”

In summary, employers should aim for disability inclusion because it is genuinely beneficial to their business, not to tick a box or put a badge on their website. Simple measures can be highly effective, such as encouraging suitably qualified disabled candidates to take up the offer of a guaranteed interview if that is available. Ask every candidate what they need to be successful in the recruitment process, whether that is the right time of day, interviewing using instant messaging rather than face-to-face or using captioning for video materials. Listen carefully to your disabled staff who have been through the recruitment process recently and ask what would have improved things for them.

“Don’t wait until you’re ‘ready’ to employ disabled people,” urged Jane Hatton. “No one is ever ready, so involve disabled people in the discussions as you progress. Any step you take is a step in the right direction. Just work from there!”

Running the London Marathon 2020 to raise money for the National Autistic Society: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/CGater 

All donations very welcome!!

Gender Summit 2019: Science culture – moving away from hyper-competitiveness and tackling harassment

In Amsterdam at the Gender Summit 2019, transforming science culture has been a major theme. Hanneke Takkenberg, Chair of Dutch Network of Women Professors gave us a great twist on a familiar thought. “Diversity is being invited to the party,” she said. “Inclusion is being able to choose the music to dance to.”

Implicit bias in science culture

Naomi Ellemers from Utrecht University confronted the tendency to disbelieve studies on implicit bias in science culture head-on. “Some people want to dismiss these studies – they blame the methodology or differences in region or disciplines. That’s why I like to quote study after study that all show the same effect.” She continued, “Benefiting from diversity is bloody hard work but the benefits are real.”

Ellemers set out research that showed how gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands (PNAS, 2015). “Selection criteria were coded towards male stereotypes and bias towards men emerged, especially when the quality of the researcher rather than the work was assessed,” she explained. In fields where more women are present, for example social sciences, you can become blinded to bias – in fact, even wider gender gaps in funding exist in these fields. Women are also less likely to be invited to speak at conferences, or even to be introduced with their professional titles.

“Senior women fit themselves into the stereotype of being masculine, report making more sacrifices and getting less institutional support as they climb the ladder. Role models seem to show you can be a successful scientist or a woman but you can’t be both,” she sighed. “Younger women don’t see this as a positive choice and may drop out as a result.”

By perpetuating stereotypes of masculine behaviour in science culture, we are not getting the true benefits of diversity. “We need to allow women to be different and to value that. Numbers don’t make a difference by themselves if everyone just conforms to the same stereotypes and culture,” she warned. Deep level differences and a climate for inclusion are better indicators of the success that should come with increased diversity, such as better well-being, lower levels of stress and less staff turnover.

How to change the culture

For those of us working in equality and diversity, there can be a strong focus on achieving visible diversity at a numbers level. Differences in age, culture and gender are the focus of many measures, but diversity of approach and values is what we should be looking for.

For Ellemers, the take home message is simple. “Move beyond numbers and send the message that you can be yourself and still belong.”

Marcel Wubbolts of Corbion agreed from an industrial research and development perspective. “Put inclusion first because you can do that from day one, diversity takes longer to achieve through new hires.”

Using examples from Imperial College, Stephen Curry told a similar story of working to reduce bias, particularly in the recruitment process. “We start with a proactive search, check whether the language in adverts is overly masculine or feminine and keep applicants anonymous at triage stage. We offer bias training for panels, try to achieve diverse panels, including EDI observers. We make sure all interviews and visits take place during core hours.”

“We want our interviews to be an explorative value-driven discussion, not an aggressive interview,” he summarised.

Curry went further. “We will integrate EDI into all our management processes – easier said than done, but it’s a start. We need competition without hyper-competition. We should reward researchers for collaboration and not just output.”

Peter Mollgaard of the University of Maastricht used to think that if you increase the numbers of a particular gender or background, say to a third, people start to feel at home and the rest follows. “Now I think we should start by creating an inclusive culture to achieve the numbers. As Peter Drucker supposedly said, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’.”

For Naomi Ellesmers, implicit bias is like a seven-headed beast. “You cut off one, another grows in its place. The function of culture is to preserve the status quo. Culture is not a separate beast and will not adapt with new people – they will adapt to the culture. To change culture, you need to embed EDI in strategies and processes.”

Harassment, policy and funding

It’s tough to change culture for the better if harassment is part of the mix. Marijke Naezer, an independent expert, has examined harassment extensively in the academic sector and has found it can appear in many forms. “It is seldom a one-off,” she explained. “It mostly takes place over the long term, sometimes for years.”

Harassment can include scientific sabotage, such as removing funding or resources and sexual harassment through jokes, banter and pressing for dates, as well as actual violence. Physical and verbal harassment can include shouting, banging on tables and threats to kick someone off their PhD. Harassers may denigrate and undermine people by attacking their bodies, culture or skills and exclude them by refusing to make eye contact or cutting them out of social events. “Problematising ‘special needs’ such a pregnancy, miscarriages, illness, disability or bereavement can all form part of harassment,” said Naezer.

For Naezer, facilitators of harassment include strong hierarchies, a competitive culture and inadequate responses to complaints. The effects on individuals can be severe, including physical and mental harm, stifling career creativity and can ripple wider into families, peer groups and the output of the research group itself. “We need to see raised awareness, independent review and support structures and a culture of care,” she insisted.

Frederik Bondestam from the University of Gothenburg agreed. “There’s currently no evidence that policy has an impact on levels of harassment or that training courses have more than short term effects,” he outlined. “Bystanders have a much stronger effect. Individual complaints don’t change things by themselves, we need to address caring structures and leadership actions.”

Over in the US, Rhonda J Davis explained how the National Science Foundation has seen a strong focus on funding and harassment. In October 2018, the NSF introduced a requirement to report to them if PIs or co-PIs funded by the NSF are involved in sexual and other harassment or sexual violence. “In a survey, half said the NSF had gone too far with this requirement and half said we had not gone far enough,” she told us. “We seem to have found a sweet spot where no one is happy!”

“We can substitute or remove the PI, or if we are not satisfied with the institute’s measures we can reduce, remove or suspend the award. However, 90% of the time the NSF is happy with the measures already taken by the university, or taken once the case is discussed with them,” reassured Davis. “We are very clear. The NSF Will Not Tolerate Harassment,” she stressed.

The discussions around culture at the Gender Summit have led to many ideas on how to diversify, improve and expand science culture. However, we should all beware of the knowledge-action gap. Increased knowledge is of no benefit if that doesn’t then lead to action.

What can you do today to enhance the culture where you work or study?

Race in Higher Education – Why does it matter?

Gary Loke of Advance HE visited the Wellcome Genome Campus on 20 May to pose the question: Why does race matter in Higher Education? Gary Loke is the Director of Knowledge, Innovation and Delivery at Advance HE, a UK higher education sector organisation which aims to advance the professional practice of higher education, in the UK and globally. Advance HE operates the Athena SWAN charter which recognises the advancement of gender equality in academia in the UK, Ireland and Australia, as well as a Race Equality charter in the UK. Gary is currently a member of the gender equality commission of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

“Diversity is good for business and good for research,” he told us. “What you need is diversity of thinking.” This is borne out by research – Freeman and Huang’s Nature article described how they analysed 2.5 million research papers and found that greater ethnic homogeneity among author names is associated with publication in lower-impact journals.

There is unfortunately plenty of evidence of racism in society at large. “Universities may claim to be colour blind, but if racism exists in wider society, then universities are unlikely to be immune,” warned Loke.

Advance HE statistics from 2016-2017 showed that the BME population in higher education decreases from 23.9% of those studying for a first undergraduate degree to only 8.4% of professors. In 2016-2017, there were 90 black men among 19,000 professors in the UK and just 25 black women.

Chris Skidmore, UK Science Minister reported that 70% of postdocs in STEM are on fixed term contracts, which means that their employment is described as ‘precarious’. This precariousness seems to affect groups disproportionately. For example, 32% of BME post-doctoral researchers are on fixed term contracts, compared to 28% of white postdocs. This mismatch is also true for women, where a higher percentage are on fixed term contracts compared to their male colleagues.

The Race Equality Charter (REC), established in 2012, aims to support the higher education sector in improving these sorts of imbalances. So far, the REC has not seen as high a take-up rate as Athena SWAN, which targets gender inequality. The REC has 55 members and a few Bronze award holders, compared to over 160 Athena SWAN members holding 815 awards between them.

Universities often see variations in student attainment across different ethnic groups. There is a wider attainment gap between black and white students compared to Chinese or Asian groups. There is also an unexplained gap when you compare entry tariffs, where black students achieving top grades at school do not do as well at university as their white counterparts. This is a disparity that is clearly due to the system, not the individual. “Where does this differential outcome come from?” asks Loke.

Loke points to a number of possible causes. “Overt racism does happen in society,” he said, “but there is also plenty of covert racism as well in everyday situations and behaviours. Micro inequalities may be small, but they add up day to day.” Micro inequalities include actions such as checking emails or texting while someone is speaking, interrupting them, mispronouncing their name, passing over someone’s idea in a meeting, avoiding eye contact, taking more questions from some people than others and confusing people of the same ethnicity with each other. “These are actions that it can be difficult to complain about,” explained Loke.

Stereotypes may also have a part to play in fuelling unequal outcomes for different ethnic groups. Asian stereotypes can provide an uplift for those wanting to study STEM, for example, but pose a threat for black students. This is described in McGee’s article, “Black Genius, Asian Fail” from 2018. These unhelpful stereotypes can feed into existing unconscious biases about what a high achieving STEM student ‘looks like’ and can become a vicious circle of reinforced pre-expectations. “Higher education cannot reach its full potential until individuals from all ethnic backgrounds can benefit equally from the opportunities it affords,” asserted Loke.

Loke brought us back to what we can do as allies in research and STEM. He advised us to look at our own evidence, through data, of pay or achievement gaps or under-representation in senior management roles. We should also pay attention to the lived experiences of staff, especially when they may be in a very small minority and there is little concrete data to point to. Loke noted that events with high proportions of BME and female participants can be very empowering, as are employee networks and action groups.

‘No platforming’, where a person who has views regarded as unacceptable or offensive is prevented from contributing to a debate or meeting is a particularly challenging issue in higher education. “But if you routinely ‘no platform’ people, how do you change opinions or move the conversation on?” asked Loke.

“Have and start the right conversations. Find out what makes people feel culturally excluded,” he advised. “Be humble and open to learning about people’s experience – and don’t be afraid to say the wrong thing!”

We should certainly avoid casting someone who does speak up as a trouble maker – be prepared to listen, and most importantly, learn.

“Above all, please don’t give up trying! Being an ally is a verb, not a noun,” he urged. “If we give up trying to change things, that’s when we really fail.”

LGBT in STEM Day – celebrating inclusion

“How much do women really talk?” Cristian Magnus, @QueerCoach threw us this challenging question at EMBL’s keynote for the LGBT in STEM Day event on 5 July. Now in its second year, this international day of recognition gives individuals and organisations an opportunity to showcase and celebrate the work and the lives of LGBTQ+ people in science, technology, engineering and medicine.

Magnus wanted to explore the negative stereotype that women speak too much, and by implication take more than their fair share of airtime. Research by Anderson and Daniels on Oscar-winning films and other studies show that our perception of how much time women actually spend speaking, whether in films, meetings or conferences, can be seriously flawed. Generally, we significantly overestimate how much women actually get to say – when we think that women have spoken for about half of the time, it’s actually about a third. (Check out this handy online meeting timer tool to try this for yourself.)

Magnus used this example to shine a light on how unquestioned stereotypes and biases can be hidden within what we assume to be ‘normal’ life. This doesn’t just extend to the difference between the sexes, but also to our expectations of the different genders in society. “Is there actually a fundamental difference between the sexes, and if so, what is it?” asked Magnus. “Hormones don’t cause the gender pay gap!”

He holds that our social norms skew how we both observe and define nature, including what it means to be male or female. For example, women struggle with being seen as both likeable and competent and they are often perceived as being less competent in STEM. Sexism privileges one sex over another, in this case men over women. Heteronormativity privileges the existence of two distinct genders, with separate roles and behaviours, in relationships with the opposite, rather than the same sex. However, he points out that there is a connection, identified in ‘Society at a Glance’ OECD data, between higher levels of senior women in society and acceptance of LGBT people, implying that sexism and heteronormativity can go hand in hand.

“Heteronormativity tends to mean that you are assumed to be straight, so you either out yourself or try to pass,” said Magnus. “In STEM, there can be a feeling that sexuality should be left outside the lab. However, I see sexuality as being like a drop of ink in water. It’s only part of you, but it affects everything.”

What can allies do to help? According to Magnus, allies should call people out for discriminatory actions and make sure they include perspectives other than their own in their work. We should challenge unconscious hidden bias and be aware of other people’s boundaries i.e. don’t ask intrusive questions but do be interested in colleagues’ lives. If there is a code of conduct at work, read it, follow it and speak out when others do not.

The consequences for LGBT+ people at work when we don’t do this were made starkly apparent in the report ‘Exploring the workplace for LGBT+ physical scientists’ jointly published by the Institute of Physics, Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry in June 2019. They reported that 28% of LGBT+ respondents to their climate survey had considered leaving their workplace due to discrimination. Nearly half of trans people had considered leaving due to the hostile climate. Of all respondents, 30% had personally witnessed harassment or other exclusionary behaviour, with 16% experiencing it themselves. Trans and non-binary people experienced the highest levels of exclusionary behaviour. While the majority thought that their organisation’s policies and procedures were supportive, 17% felt they were lacking or even discriminatory – which is in direct contravention of the Equality Act 2010.

According to the report, LGBT+ identity is often hidden, but those who are out to everyone were more likely to report a comfortable working climate. “This means that visibility has great importance,” said the report. “While visible identifiers, such as the rainbow flag or lanyards, help to create a culture of inclusion, the day to day actions of individuals at every level, particularly senior figures, often gave cause for concern.” The report calls for visible support for LGBT+ staff. They would like to see senior leaders and managers speaking out proactively, backed up by polices that address poor or difficult behaviour. Training could be much more effective in nearly all work environments, such as transgender inclusion, correct pronoun usage and bystander training. “Management and senior leaders need to exemplify good practice, reinforcing messages from the training.”

It can still be a challenge to involve all groups and cultures at work, who may not see discrimination relating to gender identity or sexuality as being relevant to them. Magnus pointed out in his talk that everyone is actually restricted by these norms. “Try wearing a skirt to work if you are male in most industries!” He was keen to stress that inclusion is not about criticising people for who they are, whatever their gender or sexuality, but about ensuring that no-one behaves in an exclusionary or discriminatory way. A message for all of us to take home, on LGBT in STEM Day – and every day.