How benefits can create a better workplace for disabled employees
The words ‘choice’ and ‘personalisation’ appear frequently in discussions about employee benefits.
However, giving an employee a few choices is not, in itself, personalisation. To truly personalise an employee’s benefits experience, we must begin to understand them and their particular needs.
This is most obvious in the way we could be using employee benefits to create workplaces that are more welcoming and inclusive for disabled employees.
To help me better understand how we do this, I linked up with Professor Nicolas Bacon from City, University of London, and Professor Kim Hoque from King’s Business School to discuss how we address ableism in the workplace.
Employee benefit and wellbeing challenges
At a time when employee finances are under pressure from the cost-of-living crisis, we are reminded that while we all face the same storm, some employees are in quite different boats.
According to IPSOS, disabled people are on average more pessimistic about their finances than non-disabled people. They also appear to be more cautious financially and are less likely to seek formal financial advice. In the US, disabled employees are twice as likely to have overdue medical bills and twice as likely to be unable to find $2,000 if an unexpected bill arose in the next month.
Worldwide, the experiences of disabled employees are inevitably affecting their benefits and wellbeing needs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, American disabled adults report experiencing mental distress almost five times as often as non-disabled counterparts.
In South Korea, after adjusting for health, marital status, employment status, education and age, disabled people present with higher levels of depression. More than half of people in the UK with a learning disability also have a mental health condition.
There is also evidence that disabled people are at an increased risk of considering taking their own lives (or actually doing so). During the pandemic we saw that those with physical disabilities were more likely to have poor mental health and to feel lonelier than their more abled counterparts.
Breaking down the barriers
However, the evidence also shows that it is often not the condition itself that is disabling, but instead the obstacles and barriers society presents to disabled people. For employers looking to support their people, it is essential that employee benefits schemes do not inadvertently exclude disabled employees.
The most inclusive employers will go a step further, from ensuring that employee benefits are not excluding disabled employees, to ensuring that their benefits and wellbeing provision is supporting the employees who need it most.
Ableism in the workplace
The International Longevity Centre UK reported that in 2021 ableism across the globe was leading to the exclusion of many disabled people from the workplace, particularly as they age. The report highlighted that, despite legislation such as the UK’s Equality Act 2010, ableism remains rife.
Disabled employees often report experiences of subtle discrimination, such as feeling excluded or ignored. Fostering a culture of inclusion at work requires us to be considerate of disabled employees’ needs and wants and how they are represented in employee benefit policy documents, benefit guides or handbooks and wider reward policies.
Addressing ableism also requires us to consider whether our employee benefit schemes have potentially inadvertent effects. Worryingly, awareness of disability discrimination in employee benefits seems nonexistent.
Yet organisations that seek to address this discrimination will potentially benefit from a more committed and motivated workforce, and from attracting talent from a larger and more diverse candidate pool.
It is essential, therefore, that we ensure that disabled people are able to access the benefits we offer just as readily as non-disabled people, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it will lead to a healthier, more productive organisation – and even be good for the bottom line.
Make sure all benefits are accessible
Workplace benefits schemes tend to be viewed as neutral and innocuous. However, some of the most common schemes can either exclude disabled people or even further their stigmatisation.
Workplace wellbeing schemes focusing on sports, running groups and step challenges, for example, do not take into account the likelihood that many groups of disabled people may be unable to participate.
Such activities can also provide networking opportunities, which in turn can have important implications for advancement. Disabled people’s exclusion from these activities could, therefore, have negative career ramifications.
Disability discrimination is defined as being disadvantaged for a reason that relates to your disability, and it may be direct (eg, not being appointed or promoted specifically because of one’s disability) or indirect (eg, a policy that inadvertently disadvantages the disabled).
So, it is easy to see that exclusion from some benefit options could be viewed as a form of indirect disability discrimination.
Ableism and the future of the employee benefits
Disabled people have long understood that there are two main kinds of ableism in the workplace: prejudice and lack of education/understanding, and ableism within our policies and everyday practices. To help overcome ableism at work, we must not only change attitudes and improve education, but also tackle the structural exclusion of disabled people. Exactly the same principles apply to the provision of employee benefits.
When we design employee benefit strategies, we should consider the experiences of all people if we are to truly build inclusive and welcoming cultures. This means we need to think about how a benefit might be accessed and used by different people and consider what barriers there might be to disabled people using them.
For example, are employee assistance programmes always accessible to employees with hearing impairments? Are disabled people excluded from insurance schemes that require them to build credits or points through physical exercise? How do we cater to the possibility that not all employees will be able to easily attend in-person wellbeing events? Can benefit content be digested by those with partial or full sight loss?
There are also particular concerns regarding healthcare benefits. This is an important issue given growing worries among disabled people regarding the healthcare they receive. Nearly one in five disabled people in the UK say they receive second rate healthcare.
A survey of US doctors in 2021 found that more than 80% of them believe people with a significant disability have a worse quality of life than non-disabled people. And just 41% of doctors felt very confident that they could provide the same level of care to disabled patients as to non-disabled patients.
Given these concerns, it is especially important that the healthcare benefits we offer are accessible to disabled people. As such, when we offer employee benefits such as health cash plans or private medical insurance, we need to go further with the questions we ask. Are our providers able to ensure disabled employees’ needs are catered for? How do health insurance plans that base premiums on physical activity accommodate disabled people? Can employees access testing kits or professional support from home in order to avoid unnecessary travel to medical centres or hospitals? Do the plans account for the greater propensity for disabled people to develop poor mental health?
This also affects the bottom line
A key aspect of disabled people’s experience of work is that they are able to receive and access benefits to the same extent as non-disabled people. Research suggests that this is currently not happening. Yet we have very clear evidence that employee benefits are positively associated with work attitudes and commitment, motivation, productivity, retention, loyalty and engagement.
So, if disabled employees are unable to access benefits, this not only negatively impacts their experience of work, but it also affects the employers’ bottom line. If employers want to maximise the positive impact the benefits they provide will have on employee engagement and commitment, it is essential they ensure these benefits are accessible to all.
Providing accommodations to disabled people has been shown to also get a positive response from non-disabled employees, as it fosters a sense that their employers value individuals and build an inclusive workplace. So it is perhaps unsurprising that organisations prioritising the inclusion of disabled employees are four times more likely to outperform their competitors.
The provision of inclusive benefits could also help employers address skill and labour supply shortages. Disabled people are likely to be attracted to employers that offer inclusive benefits, providing employers with access to a broader candidate pool.
Studies show that disabled employees tend to be more reliable, have higher overall job retention rates and are just as competent as non-disabled employees. Hence, providing accessible benefits may help employers access a particularly high quality talent pool. By helping create an inclusive environment in which disabled people feel represented, the provision of inclusive benefits may also reduce disabled people’s likelihood of quitting, reducing employee turnover.
In designing benefits, employers should consider how they:
- Strengthen disabled employee’s choice, autonomy, and control over the benefits available to them
- Listen to the views of disabled employees about the benefits on offer and make adjustments to these benefits where necessary
- Address the barriers disabled people encounter in accessing benefits
- Take into account the views of disabled employees when designing new benefits or wellbeing initiatives.
There has been surprisingly little consideration to date of how inclusive employee benefits really are - despite the fact that the positives of inclusivity are wide-ranging. Should employers start taking a more inclusive approach, this will not only be of significant benefit to disabled people themselves, but will potentially have important positive implications for employers in terms of employee attitudes, labour and skill shortages, and ultimately their bottom line.
Professors Nicolas Bacon and Kim Hoque are founding members of Disability@Work.
This work informs the Disability Employment Charter, which has to date been signed by 130+ organisations calling for greater government action on a set of specific proposals to address disability-related disadvantage.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, Benifex
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