Leaders are the key decision-makers within business, and not enough diversity at this level creates a situation where people with disabilities are not properly included or represented whether that be in product and service design, advertising and marketing, or business employment strategies.
When leaders communicate that disability inclusion is meaningful to the business, it is a catalyst for involvement, creativity, and action across the entire organisation.
By ensuring disability inclusion is on board agendas and by providing tangible leadership solutions business can achieve inclusion for all.
The System Barrier
Not enough leaders are putting disability inclusion on the business agenda or sharing their lived experiences of disability. This perpetuates the idea that disability is a taboo and unimportant.
In partnership with Ernst & Young, we surveyed business leaders at the C-Suite level from a range of industries and across 17 countries worldwide exploring board level attitudes to disability inclusion in business. The results highlighted that 56% of global senior executives rarely or never discuss disability on their leadership agendas.
The Opportunity
For too long there has been silence at C-Suite level on the topic of disability. With the power of the 500 partners and companies, we now have the opportunity to break this silence and transform the narrative from the top – to inspire others to embrace their lived experience and ensure that disability inclusion is at the forefront of the business agenda.
There is also a huge opportunity to support disabled talent in becoming the leaders of tomorrow, creating diversity and inclusion in the boardroom.
Synchronised Collective Action
We’ve created the Generation Valuable programme to help tackle the lack of disabled leaders and disability inclusion discourse at leadership levels.
This programme provides rising disabled leaders with the opportunity to receive training from inclusion and leadership development experts, internal C-Suite mentorship, as well as offering networking opportunities with the other programme participants.
What Success Looks Like
All the Valuable 500 partners and companies participating in the future leaders programme, Generation Valuable, to put disability inclusion on the leadership agenda and foster disabled talent within the C-Suite of tomorrow.
