All business issues are disability issues

When ensuring that disabled employees have an equal chance in engaging with you, the best advice to follow is to remember Susan Scott-Parker's (CEO Employers' Forum on Disability) mantra of “if it’s a business issue, it’s a disability issue”.

Employee surveys are helpful

Most large employers conduct employee attitude surveys as a routine way of collecting information. The results will often show what employees feel about their work on a range of issues – e.g. pay and benefits, communication and messaging, learning and development, line management and work-life balance. Such data is often used to identify areas in need of improvement to support performance management.

• research into employee attitudes often finds that the main drivers of employee engagement are:
• having opportunities to feed views upwards
• feeling well-informed about what is happening in the organisation
• believing that your manager is committed to your organisation

Feeling valued and involved

They also found that perceived managerial fairness in dealing with problems also impacts significantly on individual performance although it is not significantly related to engagement.

And at the Institute of Employment Studies (IES) it has been found that the main driver of engagement is a sense of feeling valued and involved – the main criteria suggested were:

• involvement in decision-making
• freedom to voice ideas, to which managers listen
• feeling enabled to perform well
• having opportunities to develop the job
• feeling the organisation is concerned for employees’ health and well-being

All of these things are just as important to get right for disabled employees.