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!!

How to be a better LGBT ally

I recently discovered a comment article in Nature about the issues faced by LGBTQ scientists. Written by Jon Freeman, it draws on research that shows LGBTQ people are under-represented in Science Technology Engineering and Medicine, and drop out of science at a higher rate than straight colleagues. And yet, because many STEM workers do not feel comfortable being ‘out’ at work (or are actively encouraged not to be), this risks being a hidden issue in science.

Dr Paul Coxon from Cambridge University recently visited the Wellcome Genome Campus as part of our series of LGBTQ Network events, to give us his personal view of the landscape for LGBTQ scientists. Once I’d got over my excitement at hearing from a fellow Materials Scientist (there aren’t many of us!), it was a fairly sobering discussion. Research shows that one in three US physicists have been advised to remain in the closet and 50% of trans / gender non conforming people were harassed in their department in the past 12 months (“LGBT Climate in Physics”, APS March 2018).

Dr Coxon explained that LGBTQ early career scientists can be particularly vulnerable to discrimination from their peers and supervisors. He also identified the lack of consistent legal protection worldwide as an issue, together with under-resourcing and a chronic shortage of role models, especially those in senior roles.

It’s a common trope that science is science, whoever you are, and that everyone is equal once they’ve stepped through the lab door. For Dr Coxon, this is unhelpful – and actually not true. “Scientists are people!” he pointed out. “Scientists’ work is often related to their personal experiences, and these include their sexuality. Science is not done in a vacuum. Unless you’re a vacuum scientist,” he added helpfully.

He spoke powerfully of the emotional labour caused by trying to leave your personal life at the lab door (especially when heterosexual peers might be entirely open about their own home life). “It creates an extra pressure and burden being guarded all the time.” Frankly, a research career is challenging enough.

However, he did have some advice on how to be a better ally, starting with not expecting everyone to be a mirror image of yourself. “Don’t assume that LGBT colleagues are experts on the whole rainbow community, or ask intrusive questions that you wouldn’t answer yourself,” he urged. “Don’t assume that an LGBT person doesn’t have a family to consider and be careful not to out people without their consent.”

In contrast, do pay people the courtesy of using their preferred pronouns and make an effort to use inclusive language, such as spouse or partner, they/them. Make sure you use inclusive examples (but avoid stereotypes).

“Basically, it all comes down to being nice and not putting people down!” he explained. “Allies can help by being better informed. We want to create an environment that means everyone can bring their whole self to work, the lab bench or the computer.”

Is he optimistic for the future, given some of the recent setbacks in equality and diversity in parts of the world? “Cautiously, yes,” he ventured. “Rights can go backwards as well as forwards, so here we rely on key individuals.”

And this is where everyone can play their part, by doing their best to be a better ally.

Confessions and Cyberbullying: Day two at the STEMM Equality Event, Amsterdam

The second day of the STEMM Equality Event in Amsterdam started with a confession. Not about overindulgence on the stroopwafels or jeneva the day before, but from Prof Curt Rice of Norway’s Committee on Gender Balance and Diversity and Research (KIF) with his talk: ‘Confessions of a sexist man – a review of research and evidence based arguments’.

“Evidence shows that we are incapable of ignoring the perceived sex of the person in front of us for interview,” said Rice. “Without research into what appears to be ‘best practice’, we don’t know why it works or doesn’t. We need evidence to build policy from practice.”

We can build evidence by analysing real life data or by doing simulations, for example the Hays study in 2015. Hays sent out identical mock CVs to hiring managers at real companies, but the CVs with male names were judged to be more technically competent than the identical CVs with a female name at the top. “Evidence also shows that quotas can raise the quality of hires,” asserted Rice. The 2012 study by Balafoutas and Sutter showed that affirmative action attracts high quality women applicants. “Quotas change the quality of the application pool for both women and men,” explained Rice. “You’re not hiring someone who wouldn’t otherwise have got the job, you are hiring someone who wouldn’t have applied in the first place. Mediocre men are less likely to apply if there are stated quotas.”

With the recent announcement of the first female winner of the Nobel Physics Prize for 55 years, Rice also mentioned the gender skew in academic prizes. “Committees often search for nominees among previous prize winners. Once the under-representation of women in the prize lists starts, it snowballs right up to the Nobels.” He feels that younger researchers may be less engaged in gender equality because they want to be judged purely on their merits. “Unfortunately, the system is still biased,” he states wryly. Women sometimes feel that they cannot accept women-only prizes – but the prize money attached comes with prestige and universities should recognise that. Any prize may lead to recognition in the future, because that’s how the system currently works.

Bias against women doesn’t just lead to missed prize opportunities of course. Saniye Gulser Corat, Director of the Division for Gender Equality at UNESCO explained that 250 million fewer women are online worldwide, with only 1 in 7 women in low or medium income countries having internet access. “This is the third most serious issue for women after poverty and violence,” she warned. “Women are denied access to knowledge and knowledge is power.” For her, the problems with under-representation of women go beyond how the technology is used, to include the development of the technology itself. With technology increasingly shaping the world around us, women are alarmingly absent from this process. For example, some of the female voices used for AI devices perpetuate myths of servile, tolerant women who don’t answer back, even to sexual or abusive comments from AI users. “We need more women in tech developing AI,” urged Gulser Corat. “Stereotypes are so important – 97% of girls don’t think computing is for them. Cyber violence is pervasive across social media, including threats, bullying and incitement to suicide. Impunity and anonymity encourage violence and it spreads as fast as the technology itself spreads.”

So how do we move forwards to continue to reduce the under-representation of women in STEMM careers? Andrew Woodward of Edith Cowan University updated us on the impact that Athena SWAN is having in Australia, encouraging universities to face up to their challenges. “We need white males to be part of the solution, because they benefit substantially from inequality, directly or indirectly. Privilege is taken for granted,” said Woodward.

He explained that some colleagues are afraid to speak out because of what other colleagues may say. He argues that finding good male advocates is less about whether they are in favour or not of addressing bias, because even men with positive attitudes are less likely to participate in gender equality initiatives than women. His suggested solution is to actively invite men to participate and communicate how it affects them, to get over the self perception that they are not qualified to speak on this issue. “At the end of the day, gender equality is a business issue, not a women’s issue. You need to actually make changes and educate on leading that change,” he asserts. The Diversity Council of Australia published a list of 10 principles for effectively engaging men on gender equality. In practice, you need to engage with men at all levels, not just at the top. Get males to talk to males on why gender equality is important to them, to the community and to the organisation. “It’s true that men and women get different responses when they speak up for inequality – men can be seen as heroic, while women may be seen as nagging or disruptive.”

Claudine Hermann from the European Platform of Women Scientists (EPWS) looked at the impact of culture on women scientists across Europe. There can be huge variations between European countries in the cultural expectations of women when it comes to balancing family and the workplace. The availability of creches and kindergardens can fluctuate from country to country, as do the expectations of researchers to move after their PhD. “Not every European country actually expects a new PhD to move abroad as a matter of course,” said Hermann. There is no fixed point in the career path where intervention would be completely effective at fixing the ‘leaky pipeline’. Improvements are needed for female scientists at every career stage. The focus of EC funding programmes designed to deliver these necessary improvements has changed over the years – from raising awareness of gender inequality, to ‘fixing’ the women, to the current focus on ‘fixing’ the system.

One such EC-funded project is EQUAL-IST. Maria Sangiuliano explained that ICT is not so much a leaky pipeline when it comes to gender balance, but a dry pipeline. “There are no scissor diagrams for ICT, we just have 2 parallel lines with women stuck at the bottom!” she said. In the best traditions of ICT, EQUAL-IST decided to crowdsource some ideas, which you can find at crowdequality.eu, as well as a toolkit at www.equalist.dais.unive.it. “The big weak point for ICT is that the gender dimension in research is rarely addressed – ICT is traditionally seen as ‘gender neutral’,” opined Sangiuliano. And yet, as we heard from Saniye Gulser Corat, the absence of women from tech teams can lead to consequences ranging from the ridiculous (voice activated garage doors that only respond to the male voice) to the tragic, with cyber bullying and violence rife and the effective exclusion of women from online spaces.

Food for thought indeed.

Gender in physics: using an analytical approach with GENERA

As you walk up to the Kings College building on the Strand in London, the first thing you spot is their wall of fame, a series of profiles of the great and good from their alumni contact list. Women certainly feature prominently, but how many universities could easily field a high level female physicist? Many would struggle.

Typically, only 20% of physics graduates are female. The SHE 2015 report says that men are over two times more likely than women to choose engineering degrees. In 2012, women accounted for just 28% of PhD graduates in engineering and only 21% of those graduating from computing. In science and engineering, women represented only 13% of top-level researchers. The GENERA project is funded by the European Commission to improve these figures across Europe. Representing 13 institutes in 10 countries, with a wide network of observer institutions, the project aims to find solutions “From physics, for physics,” based on data and evidence. As project leader, Thomas Berghoefer put it, “Physicists are trained in problem solving and like to measure!”

“The problem with gender initiatives can be that they are often led by motivated individuals,” explained Berghoefer. “When they leave, progress can stall.” GENERA aims to create a sustainable network to carry on the work beyond the project. Part of the plan includes building an online toolbox of over 100 proven measures and instruments. A structured roadmap then provides a step-by-step framework for developing and monitoring an equality plan.

Steven Watt from Manchester University outlined some of the equality measures that have worked for them. External awards such as the Institute of Physics’ Juno scheme was useful but they found the national scheme, Athena Swan, easier to apply. Like many organisations, they struggled to attract female applicants to senior roles, so reached out and proactively invited women to apply. Dual career couples were invited in together to interview for different roles. Manchester created a fellowship explicitly aimed at improving diversity, to encourage a wider range of applicants, who could specify their own preferred field of work. This measure alone vastly increased the number of female and BME applicants. “We also realised that the leaky pipeline starts at school. You lose 30% of girls from physics at 9, 10 years old, so our outreach has focused on schools by connecting them with undergraduates,” said Watt. “The difficulty is knowing whether it’s effective in the long term.” As John Wanamaker quipped, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half.” Tracking the impact of interventions at school age is highly challenging but potentially game-changing.

Nordforsk, the Nordic research funding agency has funded research into the ‘Nordic paradox’ where research seems stubbornly resistant to equality trends elsewhere in society. Nordforsk has found that they need to keep working constantly to maintain funding application rates by women.

Geneviève Guinot explained how part of the equality work at international physics lab, CERN, has been to broaden the definition of family to support researcher mobility, including unmarried and same sex partners. They have seen a surge in girls in early career programmes but this does not seem to feed through to applications for staff positions. “The reasons for this are not yet clear to us,” said Guinot. “We need exit interviews to understand what’s putting them off.”

Francesca Primas of the European Space Observatory pointed out that increasing the pool of candidates is just one element of the problem, as biosciences have a larger pool of graduates and post docs, but still see small numbers of women in senior management.

So what would be the one tip GENERA participants would give someone starting up a gender balance programme now?

“Find someone who has done it and find out how they did it!” Watt advised. For Guinot, the person leading the initiative needs to have credibility with the leadership. “Answer the ‘why?’ question and be robust about tackling bias,” she said. “Make sure you support the energy of grass roots initiatives and start small with achievable short term successes.”

After an intensive review of the Genera Toolkit, we were able to condense the various approaches into measures that were both high in impact and relatively easy to implement. These included the usual suspects such as childcare facilities, unconscious bias training and mentoring but also no cost extensions to contracts after parental leave and engagement with schools. A few gaps in the toolkit existed as well: being inclusive of LGBT+ when discussing gender, considering how gender inequality is affected by other factors, such as socioeconomic status and looking more deeply for the root causes of a lack of female applicants. One theme was very clear: change needs to be embedded into the organisational structure for everyone, not just those directly affected.