Promoting diversity in your business will attract disabled people and their friends and families as customers. You can also increase your profits by reducing your costs in relation to recruitment and improved staff performance and productivity.
The spending power of disabled people is around £80 billion per annum.
Disabled people tend to have better attendance records than non-disabled people. Disabled people have also been found to have fewer accidents at work than their non-disabled colleagues.
One in five people looking for work is disabled, so if you are excluding disabled people from applying for your vacancies, you are missing out on a huge pool of talent. The wider your pool of candidates, the more likely you are to find the best person for the job. Disabled people tend to stay with employers longer. This means that the knowledge and skill they have acquired will stay in your company.
Most disabled people become disabled during their working life - this means they already have the skills, experience and knowledge that make them valuable people to recruit and retain.
Job satisfaction is frequently linked to motivation and performance. This leads to lower absenteeism, fewer grievances and disciplinary situations and better overall performance.
Employing disabled people means that your business will be more representative of the community you serve. Additionally, you will be better able to understand and anticipate your customers' needs. With an aging population and the numbers of disabled workers increasing they are the very people best placed to identify new niche markets and help you deliver your products and services in a new direction.
A positive image in the community and within your industry is good for business; people are increasingly making informed, ethical choices about where they shop and what services they use. From an employment point of view, if you are known as a "good" employer, people will want to work for you, staff will stay longer, be more engaged at work, and give better performance therefore improving your bottom line.
There is no upper limit on the amount of compensation awarded to claimants in discrimination cases at Employment Tribunals - and this can easily run into six figures.
No one wants to be taken to an employment tribunal; they are time consuming and expensive, and can result in bad publicity for your business. Not only this, but litigation can bankrupt a company. It makes good business sense therefore to make sure that your company meets all legislative requirements. The financial impact of being taken to an employment tribunal can be severe.
