Britons who have a diagnosed disability (41%) are almost twice as likely than non-disabled Britons (22%) to agree that having a disability makes it impossible to find a job.
The data, collected YouGov Profiles, reveals that people diagnosed with mental health or emotional disabilities like mood disorders (41%) and unseen disabilities like diabetes (39%) find it easier to get a job compared to other disabled Britons.
On the other hand, more than three-fifths of Britons with developmental disabilities like Down’s Syndrome (69%) and speech or language disabilities (67%) say that disabilities make it impossible to find a job. 57% of Britons with learning disabilities like dyslexia share the same opinion.
Simply recognising the difficulties faced by disabled Britons as they look for employment is unlikely to solve the issue for these groups. It is also important to ask if employers across industries and sectors are doing enough to integrate people with a disability into the workforce.
And, possibly unsurprisingly, nearly three-quarters of Britons diagnosed with a disability (72%) say that employers don’t do enough to ensure people with a disability are fully integrated into work life compared to slightly more than half of our non-disabled respondents (54%).
Nearly four out of five Britons with a disability employed in the education (79%), medical and health services (79%) and media, marketing and PR (77%) sectors say that employers don’t do enough to integrate people with a disability into work life, compared to those workers without a disability (60%, 60%, and 61%, respectively).
The accountancy sector registers the widest gap between disabled workers (76%) and non-disabled workers (49%) who think employers aren’t doing enough to fully integrate people with disabilities.
Sectors like retail (non-disabled Britons, 53% vs. Britons with a disability, 74%), transportation (non-disabled Britons, 53% vs. Britons with a disability, 74%), IT & telecoms (non-disabled Britons, 54% vs. Britons with a disability, 71%) and construction (non-disabled Britons, 51% vs. Britons with a disability, 70%) register similarly wide gaps.
Workplace Wellbeing Professional is an online magazine featuring news and analysis on a broad range of employee wellbeing topics, focused on a UK based audience.