Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash
The very best teams are made up of people from a diverse range of backgrounds. But true diversity goes far beyond race, gender, and sexual orientation. Employers often forget to include a strategy for including people with disabilities in their hiring plans.
This often means that workplaces are not as accessible as they should be. By making an effort to support current and future workers with disabilities, you can set your organization up to truly take advantage of a truly diverse workforce.
A report by Accenture found that companies with higher rates of inclusion had higher profit margins and profits than those that did not.
Not only will current and future employees benefit from the accessibility of your workplace, but visitors and clients will too.
Here are a few things to consider when planning to make your office more accessible.
Start With The Basics
The Americans With Disabilities Act sets out a legal requirement that employers make reasonable modifications to their workplace to qualified individuals.
Focus on these legal requirements first and take care of the basic requirements. For example, get wheelchair ramp installers to make your workplace navigable by someone in a wheelchair.
Invest in screen reader technology for those that are visually impaired.
Hire A Specialist
It can often be difficult for someone without a disability to anticipate the needs of someone who does. In that case, it makes sense to hire an expert on the subject.
There are a number of specialist companies and consultants who will be able to advise you on any changes or improvements that need to be made.
Don’t forget to ask your employees too.
Don’t Just Concentrate On Movement Issues
Some disabilities can’t be seen, but still, need to be catered for. People often think of accessibility in terms of office layout and freedom of movement.
Other adjustments to consider include:
- Screen readers
- Audio loops
- Enlarged keyboards and screens
- Voice recognition
- Flexible and home working options
Educate Your Employees
Changing your office layout and providing specialist software is great, but now you need to go further and educate your employees on how to put diversity considerations at the heart of their everyday actions around the office.
If you truly want an inclusive culture, current and future employees need to know how they can help to create and maintain an accessible environment.
Training should include how to ensure that the workplace is kept free of hazards such as blocked walkways and that practices such as circulating documents or presentations before meetings will allow people to view them on any specialist software, rather than struggling to see the material for the first time in the meeting.
Take your existing employees through your policies. After this, you can incorporate this training into your onboarding and induction plans.
Constantly review what you could change or improve and ask for feedback from employees regularly.
Once you’ve made a commitment to true diversity in the workplace, you can start benefitting from all of the advantages that come with it.
