Global Disability Inclusion in partnership with Mercer, have released “The State of Disability Employment Engagement,” a report that discusses findings from a 10-year study analyzing corporate survey data on the experiences of employees with disabilities compared to their non-disabled colleagues.
Employees with disabilities are significantly less engaged, and their employment experiences rank lower than all other diversity groups, the report suggests.
People with disabilities represent 15% of the global population and are often left out of diversity initiatives, programs, and basic conversations about workplace inclusion. This report on disability employee engagement collected more than 12 million global employee responses. Employees with disabilities score far lower than employees without disabilities when evaluating leadership, equity, and opportunity, a media release from Global Disability Inclusion explains.
Data Points
According to the report, the data demonstrates:
- Significant disconnect in equity, opportunity, and how valued employees with disabilities feel at work.
- Employees with disabilities do not feel their workplace offers the same opportunities or equitable professional development, fair pay, education, ability to speak up, and ultimately advancement.
- Employees with disabilities are also more fearful to come forward to raise concerns or issues at work.
“Engagement surveys influence a company’s strategy, leadership, teamwork, culture, and more. However, companies rarely include or segment disability data as part of their diversity segmentation. This means companies lack information on approximately 15-20% of their employee population.”
— Meg O’Connell, CEO, Global Disability Inclusion
The report suggests that the engagement gap of employees with disabilities shows a difference in some areas of up to 12% to 13%, and an overall difference across all categories of 6% lower than non-disabled colleagues.
“In our research investigating employment experience across diversity groups, people with disabilities have the least favorable experience by far; this includes differences by race, gender, age, and sexual orientation. Unfortunately, people with disabilities have largely been ignored by corporate engagement surveys.”
— Dr. Peter J. Rutigliano, Senior Principal, Mercer
As companies work to continue to advance diversity and inclusion efforts, they must do better to include and understand employees with disabilities in order to create truly inclusive and equitable workplaces, the release concludes.
[Source(s): Global Disability Inclusion, PR Newswire]
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