Employers Underestimate Number of Workers With Disabilities

Most companies underestimate how many of their workers have disabilities, according to a new global report.

A quarter of employees worldwide have disability or health condition that limits a major life activity, according to a new study carried out by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Yet, most companies believe that their workforce includes relatively few employees with disabilities: just 4% to 7% on average.

The survey of nearly 28,000 employees in 16 countries (across all regions and various industries), found that people with disabilities report lower levels of inclusion in the workplace relative to their colleagues without disabilities; and lower levels relative to other employee groups that are often the focus of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts: women, the LGBTQ+ community, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour. These findings matter because lower feelings of inclusion are correlated with higher attrition, noted the report.

FEAR OF DISCLOSURE

The disparity between the prevalence rates that employers report and the self-identification rates that employees shared with BCG in the report, Your Workforce Includes People with Disabilities. Does Your People Strategy? reveals three troubling workplace realities:

• Employees with disabilities significantly underdisclose to their employers, perhaps fearing stigma or a negative impact on their job security or promotion prospects.
• Employers are missing a large-scale opportunity to enable a quarter of their workforce to bring their full selves to work.
• Employers making decisions and investments regarding their workforce are relying on inaccurate information. If management doesn’t understand the true number of people with disabilities, it’s hard to make a case for developing tailored support systems that could have significant performance and engagement benefits.

“No organisation can afford to ignore or misunderstand around a quarter of their workforce. Employers should recognise that their current disclosure data is most likely incomplete, and that the true number of people with disabilities in their workplace is much higher than they realise,” said Brad Loftus,  Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG and co-author of the report. “Our data shows that organisations can take practical steps to get high-impact results, making it possible for employees with disabilities to be happier, more productive and motivated at work, and more likely to stay on the job.”

BIAS-FREE INCLUSION

The report’s findings are based on survey results, interviews with employees with disabilities and experts on disability inclusion, and analysis using BCG’s BLISS Index (BLISS = Bias-Free, Leadership, Inclusion, Safety, and Support), which measures employees’ feelings of inclusion and provides a quantitative window to understand the workplace experience of employees with disabilities today. It provides a single, comprehensive score that reflects feelings of inclusion. Scores range from one to 100 and are based on rigorous statistical modelling.

On average, the BLISS Index scores for people with disabilities are three points lower than the average score for those without a disability or health condition. These findings hold true across the 16 countries from around the world included in BCG’s research.

Beyond differences in BLISS Index scores, BCG also found that people with disabilities have a more negative work experience. People with disabilities are 6 percentage points less likely than nondisabled employees to indicate they are happy at work. They are nearly 15 percentage points more likely to say that work negatively impacts their mental and physical wellbeing and their relationships with friends and family. And they are 1.5 times more likely to have experienced discrimination at their organisation than those without a disability or health condition.

HOW TO CREATE A MORE INCLUSIVE CULTURE

Given the disconnect between perceived prevalence and self-disclosure rates and given the worse experiences of people with disabilities in the workplace, it’s clear that organisations need to create a more inclusive culture. BCG’s data shows that organisations can dramatically foster greater feelings of inclusion for people with disabilities by effectively executing on the following levers, and in the process improve the workplace experience of all employees:

Employee-Centric Policies and Programmes

• Among employees with disabilities whose organizations invest heavily in employee-centric policies, average BLISS Index scores rose to within approximately 1 point of the score for employees without disabilities in similarly inclusive environments.
• Among those working for organizations that did not invest significantly in employee-centric policies, the divide between those with and without disabilities was much greater: BLISS Index scores for those with disabilities were 4.5 points lower.

Mentorship

• Having a mentor improves feelings of inclusion for employees with disabilities. The average BLISS Index score for people with disabilities with a mentor is nearly 8 points higher than that for disabled employees without one.
• Mentorship improves happiness at work: 77% of people with disabilities with a mentor say they are happy versus 57% of those without a mentor.
• PwD with a mentor report less than half the attrition risk: 4% with mentors say they are likely to leave within a year, but 10% without a mentor are likely to leave within that time frame.

Reasonable Accommodations

• When people with disabilities request reasonable accommodations—such as particular equipment or software, flexible working arrangements, or adjustments to their physical environment—and those requests are approved, BLISS Index outcomes improve significantly: a 17-point increase over the scores of people with disabilities whose requests for accommodations were denied.
• With approvals, the average BLISS Index score for employees with disabilities nears that of employees without disabilities; the difference narrows to just over 1 point.
• In cases where requests for accommodations are denied, the impact is profoundly negative: BLISS Index scores plummet, falling 15 points below the baseline scores for people with disabilities who do not request accommodations and 18 points below those of nondisabled employees. Attrition risk increases, too, when requests for reasonable accommodations are denied.

Download the full report here. 

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