In this month’s Working Well series, I’m taking a look at disability inclusivity in the workplace. Thursday 3 December is International Day of Persons With Disabilities (IDPWD), with this year’s theme “Not all disabilities are visible”. 

Non-visible disabilities or disabilities that are not immediately apparent include diabetes, learning differences, mental illness, chronic pain, fatigue, and brain injuries to name but a few.

What can you do in the workplace for employees, potential employees or customers with non-visible disabilities?

One thing that I am always conscious of working in communication is making sure that important information that we people to know about is delivered in different formats to make sure all employees are included. Using different communication channels from face to face and written, to audio and visual. It can take time to create, but it’s worth doing to ensure employees are engaged and feel included in the business. This will have wider positive impacts on the business, including less sickness absences, lower employee turnover and increased productivity. 

If you have line manager responsibilities you also need to be aware of each of your team member’s individual needs when it comes to communicating. When I worked at a council, we had an employee who had suffered a brain injury in a road accident. This meant that he found it difficult to retain information in his short term memory. His line manager was proactive, and would make sure that important messages were repeated to him several times over the next few shifts to help him retain the information. 

The lesson here is the more you take the time to get to know your team members, the more comfortable they will be with you to open up and talk about any potential non-visible disabilities they may have. Remember, it can be very scary for people to open up about their personal situations, so give them space and time to do so. 

Organisations have a responsibility to their employees to make them feel safe in their workplace and to be able to feedback if they are struggling, without fear of reprisals. Make sure that you regularly communicate to your employees about inclusivity – but you have to mean it. Make sure there are policies in place with regards to inclusivity and you need to bring the policy to life –there is no point in having a great policy that isn’t living and breathing throughout the organisation.  

How can you bring your inclusivity policy to life? 

• Educate your line managers – providing training for all managers on how to manage employees that may have visible and invisible disabilities. By understanding different challenges they may face in the workplace, managers can better cater for the needs of their team members.  

• Educate your teams – team members should also receive information about different disabilities and who they can contact if they themselves need assistance in the workplace. This should be about making those employees feel comfortable in the workplace and it may be that your organisation wants to appoint disability champions amongst the workforce as go-to people to help others. 

• Mark awareness days throughout the year – Awareness days such as IDPWD are great, but should not just become a tick-box marker for organisations. These days help us to refresh what we need to be focusing on, but inclusivity needs to be something and organisation thinks about and acts upon all year round. 

• Set up an inclusivity action group – Does your organisation have an inclusivity group? If not, why not? A group that meets on a regular basis and is made up of staff from across the organisation at all levels can really help to drive inclusivity activities. It is always good to appoint one of your senior leaders as the chairperson of this group – it will show that your organisation takes inclusivity seriously. Actions that come out of this group need to be followed through, and the senior leader needs to take responsibility for helping this to happen.

Covid-19 may have made persons with disabilities feel more isolated, especially if they are in a high-risk group. Make sure you make time to talk to these colleagues about how they are coping and what additional support you can offer to them. Sometimes just knowing that someone is there to help if you need it can be a big step in feeling included and cared about.