Becoming a Disability Confident Employer

In Teamspirit’s annual DE&I survey last year, it became clear that disability should be a strategic priority for 2023. With a significant proportion of our team being neurodiverse, the majority of survey respondents wanted more training on how to interact with disabled colleagues, clients, and other third parties. Working with our disability network, Unbound, we created three key goals related to disability:

• To ensure our recruitment process was accessible and inclusive
• To run a bespoke neurodiversity training day for all, led by an external expert
• To become a Disability Committed employer (Level 1) under the Government’s scheme

We’re proud to have met, and surpassed, all three goals. Our hiring managers have been trained on the new recruitment process, and you can find out more about the excellent training from Great Minds Don’t in our blog here.

We have also now been recognised by the Government as a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer. The Government Scheme has three levels:

• Level 1 - Disability Confident Committed – which we achieved in January
• Level 2 - Disability Confident Employer – which we achieved in August
• Level 3 - Disability Confident Leader – which we hope to achieve in 2024

Becoming a Disability Confident Employer means playing a part in the movement for change, and ensuring our business champions disabled representation and inclusion. We have committed to a sweep of actions focused on getting the right people for our business, and keeping and developing those people.

It was encouraging to see how many of the core actions were already in train at Teamspirit, and have been for many years. For example, working with third parties to build a pipeline into the industry via mentoring; offering flexibility at job interview/ assessment stage, and offering active support to employees managing a disability (including health insurance, flexible working, and Access to Work).

But the process itself has been extremely helpful when it came to creating a future plan. The wealth of recommendations within the process has inspired us for our 2024 DE&I strategy, including: running a stress-test on our recruitment process; posting job ads at specific disability job fairs and websites building out accessibility and neurodiversity toolkits, and ensuring we’re using the data we collect in the most effective way possible.

In taking these actions, we hope to become a Disability Confident Leader in due course.