Where are you now?
What you will learn in this chapter
- Why you should self-assess.
- Different questions you can use to self-assess.
To monitor disability successfully, there are some essential steps. One of them is to assess where you are now. This will involve:
- finding out what information you are currently monitoring
- how you are currently monitoring this information
Why should you self-assess?
Doing a self-assessment will help you with creating your statement of intention. This is a statement to explain why you are doing this process, and how.
You can show employees that you have committed time and thought to monitoring. And you can present your existing data and talk about what you are missing.
Your self-assessment will also inform:
- changes to your HR reporting system
- what kind of questions you need to ask in a staff survey
After collecting data, you will be able to compare where you are and where you thought you were. You will be able to fill gaps in knowledge and continue improving.
What are you currently monitoring?
You need to monitor the right things to achieve the right outcomes. Start by looking at what you are currently monitoring in terms of:
- statistics on disabled employees
- information on how many employees asked for reasonable adjustments
- information on how many reasonable adjustments have been approved
- information on the type of reasonable adjustments you have in place
- staff’s satisfaction with their reasonable adjustments
- progression of disabled staff
How are you currently monitoring your workforce?
We talked about types of disability monitoring. Have a look at your HR system:
- Do you have data on disability in your HR system?
- Can employees update their information themselves?
- What data is available?
- Are you able to run data reports?
- What phrasing are you using for your questions?
- How do you use the data available?
You might also have data through other systems. For example, you might have separate processes for reasonable adjustments. You can use the suggested questions to look at any system.
If you have done staff surveys, you can look at:
- How often do you do a staff survey?
- Have you used them to monitor disability?
- What questions are you asking?
- What phrasing are you using for your questions?
The way you ask questions about disability can make a difference in what people share. When you look at past staff surveys, you should also review the changes you made based on the results.