Getting started with disability monitoring
What you will learn in this chapter
- Why disability monitoring is important.
- Different ways to monitor disability.
Why is disability monitoring important?
The benefits of disability monitoring will be different for each organisation. It will depend on what you monitor and what you report.
Some examples are:
- being an inclusive employer
- improving workplace inclusion
- attracting and retaining more disabled employees
- understanding the barriers your employees face
- evaluating if your workplace adjustments are effective
- identifying staff satisfaction
- figuring out your disability pay gap
The government published the Voluntary Reporting Framework in November 2018. This encourages employers to report information on:
- disability
- mental health
- wellbeing
This is aimed at organisations with more than 250 employees. But smaller organisations can also benefit from monitoring disability. It just means that you will need to be more careful in your reporting to make sure people stay anonymous.
Voluntary reporting on disability, mental health and wellbeing (GOV.UK)
Types of disability monitoring
There are different ways to monitor disability in the workplace. And they can be used for different goals.
Human Resources records
HR records are a formal way to share a condition or impairment. These are not anonymous. So not everyone will be comfortable with this. Even if only specific HR employees can access the data. Some organisations use HR systems that don’t have the option to record this information. If this is the case, we suggest talking about this with your provider.
When it comes to your legal responsibilities, the definition of ‘disabled’ is the one used in the Equality Act 2010. But there are people who identify as disabled even if they don’t match this exact definition. And at Scope, we always encourage organisations to go above legal responsibilities.
The definition under the Equality Act 2010 says:
“You’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.”
Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010 (GOV.UK)
These records are still useful for monitoring. You can run automatic reports using HR records. You can get information about:
- how many disabled people you employ
- pay gaps between disabled and non-disabled employees
- differences in progression between disabled and non-disabled employees
- retention of disabled employees compared to non-disabled employees
Staff surveys
Staff surveys are anonymous. This means more people might feel comfortable sharing a condition or an impairment. You can also get more detailed data about things like reasonable adjustments. And you can compare employees’ experiences depending on their characteristics.
The information you get from staff surveys will depend on your questions. But they can be used to know about:
- how your reasonable adjustments are working
- how satisfied disabled employees are
- policies you might need to change or update