Getting Started – The Valuable 500

The building blocks of great disability performance.

By committing to the 10 ‘fundamentals’ or building blocks, below, you challenge your organisation to improve performance regarding the more than 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide. Your executive sponsor can monitor progress against this Charter and share learning and experience with the board, disability networks, and wider stakeholders.

This framework for strategic planning was co-produced by and endorsed at global executive level by Barclays Bank, GSK and Infosys as founders of Business Disability International. It provides a useful checklist for any board.

The 10 fundamentals of great disability performance

Leadership
Communicating your rationale for becoming disability confident
Learning directly from disabled people
Moving beyond the expectations of disabled customers
Creating a truly accessible built environment

Liberating the potential of technology
Building universal design and accessibility
Encouraging your key suppliers to become disability confident
Becoming an exemplary employer
Enabling citizenship, respect and economic inclusion

Learning directly from people with disabilities.

The only way to overcome the personal embarrassment, anxiety, even fear that many work colleagues experience at the prospect of working or socialising with people labelled as ‘disabled’, is for people with disabilities and their non-disabled colleagues to communicate.

Only people with disabilities can say what it actually ‘feels like’ to work in a business and what they need to be themselves at work and maximise their contribution. They face many attitudinal, physical and procedural obstacles that needlessly limit productivity and engagement but, by utilising the knowledge and experiences of disabled people, these barriers can be overcome.

What can we learn from the positive experience of companies that have enabled their colleagues with lived experience to share their video stories across the organisation?

Business Disability International’s publication, ‘Learning Directly From Disabled People’ is designed as an innovative and pragmatic approach to enabling a global business to improve its disability performance.

Download the BDI publication now

Why is this important and how can we make this a matter of routine?
How can we create frameworks to learn directly from people with disabilities?
How can we inspire colleagues with case studies from organisations that have benefitted?

Success Stories

Case studies from Valuable 500 companies leading the way.

Moving from Ad Hoc to Streamlined Efficiency: Lloyds Banking Group Case Study

Delivering business improvement by managing workplace adjustments as a core business process.

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2016: Channel 4’s Year of Disability

2016 was a defining moment for the industry. It was Channel 4’s Year of Disability – when the channel pledged to cast even more disabled people as actors, experts, presenters or contributors on-screen in its biggest shows.

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Barclays: Building disability and mental health confidence

Barclays document their journey to becoming an accessible and inclusive business.

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Lead The Way: Merck’s Inclusive Business Culture

Changing the way we think about mental health at work.

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