Are you Disability Confident?

In this episode of Accessible Finance, we are honoured to host Cressida Stephenson, a leading inclusive talent specialist and DEI educator with a strong focus on disability inclusion. Cressida shares her personal journey from a three-decade career in recruitment to becoming a champion for disability inclusion after her own life-changing diagnosis. She now helps organisations embrace the Disability Confident Scheme and implement strategies to recruit and retain disabled talent. This episode offers powerful insights on overcoming the barriers to disability inclusion and the impact of accessible recruitment practices. Cressida’s story is not only inspiring but also a call to action for businesses to create truly inclusive workplaces that empower all individuals, including those with disabilities. Tune in to learn how these changes are vital for both social impact and business success.

Transcript

Prerna

Today on Accessible Finance, we are thrilled to welcome Cressida Stephenson. Cressida is a disabled inclusive talent specialist and DEI educator who is deeply committed to enhancing disability inclusion within the workplace. She excels at guiding clients through the Disability Confident scheme, helping organizations open their doors to disabled workers. Cressida also crafts strategies to attract and retain disabled talent, facilitates career placements for disabled graduates and school leavers and conducts workshops on inclusive hiring and awareness.

Additionally, she assesses recruitment processes to identify gaps and opportunities for positive change. Welcome to Accessible Finance Cressida, and thank you for joining us today.

Cressida

Thank you very much for having me. It's lovely to meet you both. Thank you so much.

Prerna

So to start, can you share your personal journey into the field of disability inclusion and DEI? What was it that initially motivated you to focus on this particular area?

Cressida 

So I had about, just under three decades experience in recruitment and search. And about ten years ago, I had an epiphany and I set up my company, Eden Chase Associates, to really focus in on gender diversity. Because I was recruiting white men, for white men and surrounded by white men. And I knew that there had to be a shift, and I had to be that change that I wanted to see otherwise things would never change. So my focus at that point was very much on gender diversity and through learning, education certificates, etc., I really leaned in towards other diversity areas, etc. And then five years ago, out of the blue, I just had my life literally did a 360, and out of nowhere I had a life changing diagnosis.

I am now disabled. I was ill for about a year, very, very poorly. And my husband was my full-time carer. If I’m being really frank, disability had never really been in my focus. And I never would have thought that the person then, and I'm coming up to my five year anniversary of my diagnosis, I never thought then that I would be the person I am now, walking in the shoes that I am now.

And that's been a huge challenge and a huge challenge in terms of accepting myself and seeing what my disability has, the effect it's had on my children and my family particularly. But also it's been a blessing because it's given me this purpose and it lit this fire inside me that just opened my eyes. But I thought, if this is me, and it is now for the rest of my life, then I need to anchor some purpose and some passion to this and really make the change that I was born to do.

So it sounds super cheesy, but that really was the catalyst of me really then through the eyes of disabled candidates, you don't know what you don't know, but when you're suddenly thrown into that situation, it's frightening and it's eye opening and you think, you know, I can actually make a real difference here. And so that was the catalyst, if you like, of now as a disabled person, helping organizations become much more inclusive employers and understanding the disabled candidate journey, understanding the fears and the discrimination that they've been through that they go through, it's life changing. 

On top of that. 18 months ago, my son was diagnosed with autism. So for me, I'm on a real mission now to just close the opportunity gap for underrepresented groups, all underrepresented groups, but specifically disability and neurodiversity. And I want to ensure that when my son eventually gets into the workplace, the organizations, their recruitment processes, their understanding, their awareness of disability and neurodiversity is fit for purpose to set him up for success, so that when he goes into an organization and has an interview, he's going to absolutely smash it, but they're not going to judge him or other individuals based on neurotypical interview standards and assessments, which is what currently happens. But actually have really pre-defined, designed neurodiverse interview practices. So that's really my whole journey into it. That's why I do what I do, and I love it.

Whitney

So I just want to say thank you for being so open and transparent about your journey, about your son's diagnosis. I resonate with that in that, I don't, I don't think that disability was in my kind of awareness until I became associated with Project Nemo, and really starting to understand just how much of an oversight it has been historically, and why it's so important that if we're truly talking about DE&I, we need to be talking about the disability community and how we can support them.

So, thank you. And I, it's just really great to just see the passion. These are the folks that we need in these spaces to really make it so that it's not just a “oh, let me just put that in the back of my mind”, but that people are focusing on this because it's incredibly important. 
 
 So, with your impressive three decades of experience, what are the common themes and patterns that you've observed in the disability inclusion space?
 
 

Cressida

So historically, disability hasn't been, and tends not to be, on anybody's agenda. I think that's the first thing. And it's lucky if it's actually on anyone's agenda. And that's just because we're moving, DE&I is moving at a pace that we have like three steps forward and then two steps back. And it's kind of this back and forth, isn't it?

Gender’s up there. And then organizations move to LGBTQ and they're starting to tackle race, a lot of organizations now, but this kind of white elephant in the room that just sits at the back of the classroom is always disability. Organizations want to do more, are aware of disability now, but I, because I think there's been a lot of press media about it in the last couple of years.

But I think organizations are really fearful of getting it wrong, and it's quite an awkward subject to talk about. So rather than have that conversation, rather than have the kind of like the awkward chat, let's not actually do anything about it at all, and let's just withdraw and not talk about it. And I think that's what's happening at the moment.

The disability, and this is what's staggering. We talk about, you know, skills, talent shortage, popping talk, banging on about that for the last 30 years, for goodness sake. Disability is the biggest minority group that isn't actually targeted by employers. That's staggering to me. So 16% of the global population is disabled. And actually, that's a trend that's only going to ever increase because as a global population, we're getting older, we're living longer, there are more conflicts in the world. As we get older, and our diets are worse. That triggers other autoimmune, other conditions that have other effects in our bodies that lead us towards disability. So this trend, it's not just a latest DE&I trend. This is something that's happening and just is going to progressively get worse.

The disability employment gap now is about 30%. Disabled employees now, it used to be 52.7% of working age people who are disabled. It's now 54.2%. So there's a slight increase. So the trend is that it's increasing, which is good. But it's still hovering around 29/30% of the disability employment gap. So I think awareness is growing but action is lagging behind it. And I think there's a lot of fear around, again, legislation, about disabled people are risky hires. You know, we don't want to set ourselves up for a lawsuit. You know, we can't get it wrong. And I think that whilst there is this fear, there’s this bit of inertia potentially, but there still is this willingness, and that's what keeps me going, because I know if I can tap into that. And it's about education, it's about awareness, and it's about supporting people and creating safe spaces for people to get it wrong. Because it's okay if you do and it's fine, and the world is not going to fall apart, you know, it's fine. So there is now a shift I've seen towards universal design. 

I think digital, accessibility is huge now.And actually so that's bringing along the disability awareness with it, which I like. So for fintech, that's absolutely massive. It's such an important piece because by making your products accessible, by making your user interface accessible and your user journey easier to use for disabled customers, you're accessing that purple pound, which is spending power of disabled candidates. And that's £247 billion in the UK. It's $13 trillion globally. So if the fintech sector really leans into accessibility and looks at their user journey and employs disabled candidates into their development squads, they can suddenly start to untap this £247 billion and I don't know any organization who wouldn't want to do that, quite frankly. 

So I think there's a lot of work to be done.I'm very hopeful. Awareness is growing, but we need more action. And that obviously needs to be supported with awareness. So we've got a long way to go, unfortunately.

Prerna

So Cressida, you mentioned a little bit about some of the barriers, specifically around this, this fear factor. Where people have a fear of getting it wrong or they don't fully understand it. What other barriers have you seen? So those who are willing to go on this journey, what are the barriers they face in terms of implementing a more inclusive workplace or building more accessible products and services?

Cressida

First of all, those who are really leaning into it and maybe want to or are in the disability confidence scheme or want to progress, or thinking about it, or just generally want to be more inclusive. It's about awareness. There’s a big barrier, about how do we access the know-how and the knowledge that we need just to start us on our journey.

There's, I think, disability awareness and neurodiversity awareness is absolutely vital, but it's more than that. And it's about how do disabled and neurodivergent candidates present themselves at interview, and educating interviewing managers and hiring managers and actually managers and team members in your team. So what we're eventually doing is setting individuals up for success. So we're not just hiring a disabled candidate who then six months later, feels totally unsupported and leaves your organization.

What we want to do is have this golden thread of consistency where we're actually creating a sustainable, disabled recruitment ecosystem, where we are supporting managers. We talk about health adjustment passports because there's a lot of unknown about what is a health adjustment passport? How do we access Access to Work? Is adjustments and accommodations, are they really expensive? Do we have to rebuild the building and put in a new lift? No, you don't. That’s a massive stereotype. And for most of it you can get grant funded for etc. And then the smallest adjustments make the biggest difference, sometimes. So there's a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions, that are barriers. There's a lack of training and awareness, which is barriers. And I'm not just talking about the workshops and tick the box and off we go. I'm talking about, setting up a legacy where we're setting everyone up for success, where your managers know how to run inclusive meetings. So when they've got neurodivergent people in their teams, they know when an individual presents with non neurotypical behavior, you know what that means. They're not being rude. They're not being blunt. It's just how they present.

And once we get over that, it's actually “oh my god, yeah that's amazing”. Adjustments and accommodations I think is a big barrier. I think organizations think yes, I'd love to recruit more, disabled employees. But the accommodation and adjustments piece ends up being this big barrier where if we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody else. And actually that's not the case. So adjustments and accommodations are there to, level the playing field. We're not treating everybody fairly. We're leveling the playing field to access opportunity for disabled people. But it's then how do you do that and navigate that. And I think that's a barrier for some. And understanding that. And that goes to policies and structure etc.

And I think at the very top it's lack of leadership buy-in as well. There needs to be leadership accountability. It needs to be driven from the top, its not just the domain of HR or DE&I, and many times it's plonked on, in HR’s lap or, your DEI team's lap. But if it's not being led by the senior leadership team, it's only got limited legs and it's not going to go very far.

So I think that they’re kind of some of the barriers, I think.

Whitney

Giving those insights on what are the common barriers or challenges that we see organizations face. Can you elaborate a bit more on, like the key factors that contribute to a successful disability inclusion strategy in a company.

Cressida

Leadership, commitment and accountability. Okay. It's it's got to come down from the top. And it's got to have that ripple effect. It's very difficult, as you know, to drive change when you don't have senior leadership buy in. You're trying to push a concrete boulder up a mountainside. And at some point the momentum is going to flatten you and it's going to roll back over you again.

And many, disability strategies, disability inclusion strategies, I should say rather, fail. And what we need to do then is it's not just, it needs to be genuine commitment. So let's look at what goals we can put in in terms of inclusive hiring for disabled candidates. And let's measure that and let's measure our progression and our journey. Some organizations, which I love, then put as part of the performance metrics for managers, they put in inclusive hiring characteristic performance, in, in that plan. So there's an accountability at a manager level for hiring and driving this change. Because very often what I see is organizations at senior leadership level say, yes, we're doing this, this is great. You filter down then to hiring manager level and it's just that we would, but we can't because we just don't get the candidates through on our shortlists. And I've heard this so many times, but actually, let's just then, we will empower you, we’ll make you accountable for that. So now what are you going to do? This is part of your role. This is part of, you know, you're creating this world within this big organization. What are you going to do to effectively make that change? So that's my number one. 

Number two is education and awareness, ss I've spoken about.  And number three really is inclusive recruitment practices. And what I mean by that is and I think this is a term it's quite loosely used all the time by a lot of people. When you want to genuinely recruit neurodivergent and disabled candidates, you need to adopt a completely different strategy to how you would typically recruit non-disabled and neurotypical candidates. You need to understand that neurodivergent and disabled candidates have all been discriminated against in their life. I'm one of them. And once you've had that discrimination and it sticks to your lungs and there's nothing you can do about it, and it doesn't matter how brilliant you are at your job. All they see is your disability. So the way their motivations, their emotions that drive them to apply for jobs are totally different to non-disabled candidates. So if you look at the recruitment lifecycle for disabled and neurodivergent candidates, there are 15 points of failure in the recruitment lifecycle. For non-disabled candidates there are three. And that is the location’s wrong, the job titles wrong, the money's wrong. But other than that, I'll just apply willy nilly. And a non-disabled candidate won't research an employer until they get a first interview request. Whereas that's the very first thing that a disabled candidate will do. They will investigate and research your website, etc. and look at the authenticity and are you acting with integrity? Are you really backing up what you're saying? Because I'm not going to waste my time applying for another job like all the others that I've applied for, and I've been discriminated against and told at the very last minute that, thank you, but we had someone with more experience. 

Inclusive recruitment strategies encompasses all of that. So there's a whole psychological thing around that. So you've got to create, and I help organizations do this, create really inclusive recruitment practices that are specifically designed for disabled candidates. And when you get that mix right, that's when you really start to make traction and make progress. But if you're trying to attract disabled candidates using non-disabled methods and approaches and psychology, you're probably going to be missing the mark more often than not, and you're going to be spinning your wheels, and that's why you're not progressing.

So that would be something that I would say. And then it's continuous feedback and improvement. So you're going through these cycles. There's lots of other stuff as well. Point checking what's working, what's not working? How can we tweak things slightly? Going internally may be talking to disabled networks that you've got, if you've got any. If not then how about creating a disability network, ERG? I've done that for a couple of clients. It transforms, when you've got that representation and that role modeling internally in your organization, it really starts to drive change and it starts to create this anchor really for a safe place for people to go “I'm actually not quite sure what I should do here, but what do you think? Do you think that's a good idea?” And that's then how it grows and it's that it's that belief. And then we all start to move in the same direction. And then that's very exciting because then you start to see real change happen.

Prerna

Wow. And I think we've heard this, a lot of times, right. It's not it's not about surface level changes, right? It has to really seep into the core DNA of the organization. And actually. that applies to all DEI initiatives. And that's why we keep, we keep getting them wrong. Because people who have never had lived experience are trying to solve the problem for those who have the experience, and majority of the time they are just checking the box and just covering the surface level optics. Optics is what everybody is focused on, not really what fundamentally needs to change. So I already have a strategy. I'm going to just layer on things on top of it, rather than I have to fundamentally rethink my strategy. Right? 

So just changing gears a little bit, obviously it's tied to the conversation we've been having. But one of the things that you spend a lot of time on is \disability Confident scheme. Now for our listeners who are not aware of what Disability Confident Scheme is, which is a problem in itself because everybody should be aware of it. But can we double click on that and can you help us understand what is Disability Confident scheme, and just give us a little bit of an insight into it.

Cressida

So the Disability Confidence Scheme is a government backed scheme and it's a voluntary self- enrollment scheme that any organization can enroll in at any point. It's completely free. And the Disability Confident Scheme was set up by governments to really encourage employers to employ disabled people, to close the employment gap of disabled people. And what you do is that there are three levels to the Disability Confident scheme.

So every organization, when they join they join at commitment level, Committed level. Then you've got Confidence and then you've got Leader. Being part of a Disability Confident scheme, what that means as an employer is that you are guaranteeing disabled workers an interview for a job if you meet the minimum requirements of the job that they're recruiting for. So you automatically guarantee them an interview.

So it's, it's a great scheme that allows, organizations to focus, to develop, to retain, to recruit disabled candidates in many ways where they would often be overlooked. Disabled candidates apply for 69% of roles before they get offered a job, whereas non-disabled candidates have to apply for I think it's something like 49. So disabled candidates have to apply to more roles to get that breakthrough.

And very often they are applying for roles which are less salary, but they do it because they just want to get a foot in the door and they just want to get a job. So with the Disability Confident Scheme to be a committed level, you've got various, competencies, if you like, that you have to go through that you have to tick. You have an evidence template that you have to then measure and track all of your commitments and your journey and provide evidence of what you've been doing and how you've been doing it, etc. Once you've gotten through the commitment level, then you can then go to the competent level, and that's where you then really have to demonstrate that you're now recruiting and developing disabled candidates.

And the competencies are not, they're not onerous. They’re fairly straightforward, it's about everything that we've be talking about. It's about raising awareness. It's about creating inclusive recruitment strategies. It's about sponsoring and providing work placements and employment opportunity for disabled candidates. There's nothing in those requirements of the Disability Confident scheme that would make an employer go, oh my goodness, no, I could never possibly do that. It's very straightforward. But again, it's the know how. And that's the piece. It’s self-assessed. You go through and then when you get to the Confident level, you then have to have your application looked at by a third party to then say, yes, you've now reached leadership level. If you think of it as a framework of how to get disabled candidates into employment and back into the workforce, it's a good, it's a great, framework to follow.

Whitney

Thank you so much for that really detailed explanation. I think it'll be really helpful for our listeners, because there's this fear and anxiety around doing this kind of work is so time intensive and laborious, but when you break it down, there's so many different tools and resources to help get you along that journey. And perfection isn't an expectation. There is no such thing as perfection. And in any type of DE&I inclusivity work. It's just constant work and trying to become a bit better. So in terms of the key steps that organizations to take to become more disability confident, can you boil that down into kind of the top three or top five steps?

Cressida

Yeah, absolutely. So the first of which is to start the journey, okay. And I think there's, when I speak to employers, a lot of the time people think they need to be in the perfect position, the perfect timing, to make a start. And you don't. You don't have to be perfect. You just need to start, okay? You're going to make mistakes. It's a journey. No one's doing it correctly. No one gets it 100% right 100% of the time. What we're doing is we're starting the journey because we're saying we want to be better. And just by having that acknowledgment, that's the key thing. So start and commit to the journey. If you can at that point, have an audit, have a disability audit of your policies, your organization, your workplace, your recruitment practices.

So you've got an idea of what your starting point is, good and bad. And you'll be surprised because when I do this for organizations, they're actually surprised when I go in. They go, “actually we’re doing some things really quite well”. And I’m like “Yes you are, you are, you’re doing some really, really good stuff”. It's not all doom and gloom and you shouldn't be doing this.

But if you don't know what your starting point is, I think that's really, really important because then you've got an idea of, okay, so we're not going to boil the ocean in the next 12 months. That's ridiculous. Why don't we just improve our metrics and just push them slightly so that it's achievable. And that's the key. So I would definitely suggest, getting an audit, that's really great to understand where your landscape lies, etc. and then just start on the process. 

Get to committed status. You will automatically, it's very easy to join. If anyone has any issues when they do it, give me a shout out, I’ll help them out. It's not a problem. And just look at then the key criteria that you need and you don't need to achieve all of them, you need to achieve several of them. So how are you going to increase disability awareness within your organization? What does that look like? How are you going to measure the impact and the success of that. And that's what you need to then put in your templates, your evidence templates to progress through, etc. And that's really all it is. I don't think we need to overcomplicate it. You know, you could do lots and lots more, but I think they are the key three things that I would suggest. It’s just start, just start.

Prerna

Brilliant. So those don't sound very complex to me. So, what are the obstacles? What's stopping people from jumping on and starting this journey?

Cressida

So, I think the first thing is that a lot of employers think right, Disability Confident scheme and then suddenly we'll get in all these disabled candidates and they see that that's just the, it's just a single action and that they don't have to do anything after that. And that's not the case. So you, the Disability Confident scheme in itself will not, if you just register and don't do anything, it's not going to magically, you're not going to magically, suddenly have all these disabled people knocking on your door wanting to work for you, okay.
 
 

You've got to do the work. And what I mean by that is that you've got to start to create a disability smart ecosystem. And so the key pin of that, the key foundation of that, is joining the Disability Confident scheme. 

But if you don't have an accessible careers website, if you don't have an accessible application process, if you don't have inclusive and accessible hiring practices, or your managers haven't been trained in neurodiversity and disability awareness training, you're not focused in on, disabled candidate sourcing channels. You're not going to hire disabled candidates. So the common misconception with the Disability Confident scheme is I've enrolled, jobs a’ good-un’, let's go. Let's go and have a cup of tea. We're good. And it doesn't work like that. You've got to do the work. So you've got to join and then you've got to commit to the practice.

I think the other obstacles are a misconception, that it's too expensive, because when you then get into for individuals to join our organization, we've really got to completely overhaul our buildings, our policies, etc., etc. and that's going to cost too much money. And that's a real misconception. Only 8% of disabled people in the UK are wheelchair users, The irony is the universal symbol of disability is it's a wheelchair. I don’t use a wheelchair. I use a crutch. I have a crutch to walk. I'm a blue badge holder. And I get shouted at sometimes in Tesco's car park because I parked in a disabled parking space, but because I don't have a wheelchair, obviously I'm not disabled. So that's a stereotype right there, right? So, there's a lot of unknowns, lack of awareness, misconception.

I think that that the fear of it I think that's one of the biggest barriers. And and if it's not then being driven by senior leadership, then that becomes a problem. And then just the wheels stop turning and then it just gets shelved and people don't progress.

Whitney 

It's just so interesting how kind of these misconceptions can fuel so much kind of just misunderstanding. And I guess that's that's the whole point of misconceptions. But thank you for kind of drilling into that. We've had a really great conversation. I think it's just been so insightful to hear about your experience and learning more about the Disability Confident Scheme.

Can you share some examples of organizations that have successfully implemented the Disability Confident Scheme, and, and what are some of the positive outcomes that they've achieved? I know you've touched on a little bit, but just, elaborating a bit more for our listeners who are interested.

Cressida

Three major global players who are just smashing it out of the park at the moment. And, and I talk about that in my workshops, etc.. So but one of the, one of the brilliant ones is Microsoft.

Okay. Now if you think, how much do we rely on Microsoft products? All the time, okay. And they, they've realized that. They've got a Chief Accessibility Officer who's a brilliant woman called, Jenny Lay-Flurrie. And she said that our traditional hiring processes at Microsoft are not set up for us to see the strengths of disabled and neurodivergent candidates.

So what they do is they have separate hiring programs for neurodivergent and disabled candidates. So consequently, they are Disability Confident leaders. They're incredible. So that their policy, their view, their philosophy, if you like, in life is, “we cannot create products and services and tools for everybody in this world if we don't employ everybody in this world.” And by employing everybody in this world, non-disabled, majority non-disabled people benefit massively, don't we?

And it's it's just having that break-through so they’re doing incredible things. But, by just changing the shift and changing the lens on that, and saying we need to include everybody. By not including everybody, we are actually minimizing our market share. We are letting the competition come in. So our competitive advantage is actually the fact that we are hiring disabled and neurodivergent candidates. And that’s the key. That’s the key.

So there's lots of organizations out there where, if you look at Gen-Z now and then soon will be Gen Alpha, it's more important for them to work for a diverse employer, which looks and recruits for all eight different DEI lenses. That is more important to them than salary. So if you're talking about looking at the future generations and wanting to have that kind of pipeline and, you know, being disability inclusive, it doesn't just suit disabled candidates. Obviously, it benefits us hugely, but it's hugely profitable and beneficial and advantageous for organizations from an innovation, staff turnover perspective is very, very low. If you think about, Alexa, automatic toothbrushes were developed in the 1950s by a Swiss doctor. So if you include disability by design, you're actually designing for the entire planet. And when you don't have, disability by design, then you're missing out on all of this innovation that now actually we take for granted. 

 Prerna

The more we talk to people, the more they emphasize the point that you can't build products and services for everyone if you don't have them represented in your workforce. And that's kind of point number one. And actually, we have been talking to Microsoft and they are pretty much everything they build is accessible and inclusive by design.

A lot of people turn off the features that make their products and services more accessible and more inclusive. So how do we get people to turn on the accessibility features by default rather than as an optional capability, right? So it's not even that majority of the organizations need to invest in potentially new products and services. They probably already have these products and capabilities.

They're just not using all the features, right. So, so no, I think I think listen, Cressida, I think this has been such an insightful conversation, you know, so thank you for taking the time. And thank you for coming and talking to us about the Disability Confident scheme, but also sharing some examples. 

So thank you so much for taking the time today.

Cressida

Pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.
 
 

Whitney 

And I just want to take a moment to thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into Accessible Finance by Project Nemo. We hope that you found this episode insightful and inspiring. And please don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for more fantastic conversations about the importance of making finance accessible to everyone.