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People with disability are facing alarming levels of exclusion at work, causing many to avoid sharing their disability status with their employer, according to a report released this week by Diversity Council Australia in collaboration with the Australian Disability Network.
The report shed light on the workplace experiences of people with disability, highlighting the necessity of essential strategies for fostering workplace environments.
The employment data found employees with disability are twice as likely to experience discrimination and harassment than those without disability, while a third reported being left out of social gatherings at work as well as being ignored or treated as though they don’t exist.
On top of these troubling findings, close to a third of employees chose not to share their disability status with their employer out of fear they would be seen less favourably by managers or overlooked for promotions or development opportunities.
Lisa Annese, CEO of Diversity Council Australia, says close to half of people living with disability have that experience in the workplace.
That's nearly double the rate of people without disability.
“We were concerned to discover that people with disabilities face disproportionate exclusion at work and they're even more likely not just to feel professionally excluded but to feel socially excluded, so those findings were very concerning for us,” Ms Annese says.
According to Ms Annese, this is the first time disability has been spotlighted so expansively within employment data collection.
The report revealed limited improvement, even though Australian workplaces say they are focused on accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities.
“The results were poor to begin with and they're still poor, so that's a bit concerning,” Annese says.
“One of the other things the report revealed was a reluctance of people to disclose [their disability] because they were concerned about how that information would be used and they thought it would negatively impact them.”
Australian Disability Network Chief Executive Corene Strauss said the collection of disability data allows organisations to track their progress in addressing the disability employment gap.
“The safe and respectful collection of disability data is essential to increase the workforce participation rate of people with disability. We can’t fix what we don’t understand,” she says.
In other words, organisations need to have a starting point where they understand who's in their workplace, and what their workplace experiences are to address workplace inequality.
Diversity Council Australia and the Australian Disability Network want organisations to get proactive on building their disability awareness and confidence.
“Understand disability through the social model, not the medical and deficit model…Lean into the potential benefits that come from having an inclusive workplace that supports people with disabilities,” Ms Annese says.
Ms Annese encourages employers to implement the strategies found in the report and go to the Australian Disability Network for specialised advice.