Diane Lightfoot: Five steps for creating a disability inclusive workplace in 2025

January is a time for taking stock and thinking about goals for the year ahead.  But considering our goals and achieving them are two very different things.

We can quickly drift away from our good intentions if they are not backed up by purposeful actions. Just getting started can be the biggest barrier, particularly if the task ahead of us seems daunting and outside our comfort zones.

This can be the case with disability inclusion goals. Disability inclusion brings real benefits to the workplace and business – increasing productivity, innovation, and profitability, as well as improving staff retention. However, knowing where to focus can be difficult and may feel overwhelming. But making progress on disability inclusion does not have to be difficult.

Here are five steps to help you achieve a more disability inclusive workplace in 2025.

Step 1: Get senior buy-in

Achieving change on your own can be very difficult. Getting buy-in from senior leaders who can help champion the need for disability inclusion and sponsor your disability inclusion initiatives can make all the difference. Back in 2020, Business Disability Forum’s global research found that over 90 per cent of respondents agreed that identifying a senior global disability champion as early as possible was essential to the success of a global disability inclusion programme.

Such support will help to promote the work internally and encourage participation. Research respondents cited that visible engagement by senior leaders ensured wider engagement, traction and a stronger accountability at a local level. It is also vital for making sure the work is prioritised and properly resourced – for example if you need to set up a workplace adjustments programme or review your recruitment processes.

You may already have access to senior leadership (or be a senior leader yourself). If not, think about who or what could help you with this, such as introductions via your HR Director and any internal processes or forums that are available for making recommendations.

Having a senior champion who can share their experiences of disability can also help to make others feel comfortable sharing their stories. The champion does not have to be disabled, however. They may have disabled family members or friends or simply be passionate about inclusion and accessibility.

Champions who do have lived experience may lack confidence in sharing their condition or think perhaps it doesn’t “count” as a disability. Let them take their time and don’t ask them to share anything they are not ready to.

When you approach someone to be a champion, be ready with information to show why disability inclusion is important to your organisation as a business and an employer. Business Disability Forum has created a free resource, ‘Making the case for disability inclusion’, to help with this. Remember too that lots of senior leaders are nervous about getting it wrong so be ready to give them any support they need.

Step 2 : Find out how disability impacts your staff

The next step is to find out how disability impacts your employees. Whilst gathering disability data may already happen in your organisation that is not the end goal here. Statistics rarely tell the full story, and some people may not identify with the term “disabled”. Others may not even know they have a disability, have had it diagnosed or be willing to talk about it. Never force anyone to share personal information about their disability with you.

Instead, focus on the quality of the experience of your disabled employees at work, finding out about any barriers people are experiencing which make it harder for them to be as productive as possible in their roles. Think broadly. The difficulty a person faces may not be within the actual role. It may be related to traveling to the office, using communal spaces, accessing company tech or even inaccessible employee support services, intended to improve wellbeing.

Ask everyone to take part, not just the people who you ‘think’ have a disability. Remember that most disabilities are not immediately visible, and some people may be carers, and, therefore, are impacted by disability even though they themselves are not disabled.

Consult with any employee resource groups or disability networks that already exist within your organisation to get their views and to help promote the work you are doing. Also, if you don’t have a disability network, consider setting one up and invite all colleagues to take part.

Be clear about why you are asking people for this information and what you plan to do with it. You may not know exactly what the outputs will be at this stage, but you can make it clear that your goal is to improve workplace experience and how you do that will be informed by what people tell you.

As one example, professional services firm, PwC, won Business Disability Forum’s Disability Smart Inclusive Workplace Experience Award 2024, for their work to develop a bespoke innovative neurodiversity learning programme, after internal research showed a lack of staff knowledge in this area.

Their programme, Great Minds’ (Don’t Think Alike), was accessed by over 3,000 staff in just the first four months and was developed with the involvement of HR managers and leaders, their disability and neurodiversity network, an external neurodiversity SME and a creative agency.

Our annual Disability Smart Awards and winners’ stories are a great way to gain knowledge on what has worked for other organisations looking to improve disability inclusion.

Step 3: Review your workplace adjustments processes

Workplace adjustments are consistently one of the top topics in queries to our Advice Service at Business Disability Forum.

Adjustments are often small changes that are made to a person’s role to make it easier for them to be productive. Adjustments can include anything from flexible working to help someone manage their disability or condition to access to ergonomic equipment for someone with a manual dexterity issue. Workplace adjustments are often the difference between someone thriving or just surviving at work – or worse, falling out of the workplace altogether. Having a clear and responsive process for getting adjustments is key to creating an inclusive workplace.

But whilst adjustments can improve workplace experience for disabled people, many disabled employees experience barriers when trying to access the adjustments they need. Our Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey found that only 10 per cent of disabled employees said it was easy to get the adjustments they need with 1 in 8 having to wait over a year.

Make sure your adjustments process is straightforward for employees to access and use. Have a single-entry point and make sure all staff are aware of the sorts of adjustments that you can readily provide. Consider allowing line managers to approve requests for low cost, regularly requested adjustments to reduce the sign-off process and waiting times.

Better still, let employees who know what support they need “self-serve” these low cost adjustments. A central budget pot to resource adjustments also goes a long way in ensuring consistency and preventing a manager “postcode lottery”.

Step 4: Train up staff

To improve workplace inclusion, it is important that all employees have a good understanding of disability and how it can affect people at work. Remind people that most disabilities are acquired during our working lives rather than at birth and the prevalence of disability increases with age. It is part of the human condition.

Making sure line managers are ready and confident to talk about disability is vital. Our research shows that the way that a line manager responds to requests for adjustments and information shared by colleagues around disability can determine how staff feel about workplace inclusion. Trust is key. Staff are less likely to openly share about their needs if they are unsure of the response they will receive.

Draw on the knowledge of experts internally and externally to deliver training and remember to involve your senior champion and other leaders too. Our research shows that manager confidence around disability is growing

Step 5: Share your learnings and keep improving

By now, you know what your goals need to be, you have put in place plans, and you are beginning to see positive changes. Now is a good time to review what has been achieved so far. Ask staff what is and is not working for them and how things can be improved. Gather stories of people’s experiences and use these to continue to demonstrate the value of disability inclusion and to help you consider next steps and priority projects.

Sharing learning inside your organisation is important, but also consider sharing this with other organisations. All the advice we offer at BDF is based on evidence of what we have seen work across the organisations within our membership.

Our Disability Smart Awards are an ideal platform for sharing best practice. The Disability Smart Awards 2025 are now open for nominations across all areas of disability workplace inclusion. Look out for the stories that we will be sharing from this year’s finalists and winners over the coming months.