Becoming a Disability Confident Leader

At UKROEd we are proud to have become a Disability Confident Leader. As part of this accreditation we have a responsibility to promote the scheme and to help others on their journey to whichever level they aspire.
We talk a lot about the Equality Act, and how important it is to not discriminate against our clients, but this is equally as important around those who are employed or seeking to be employed within the scheme.
Awards and accreditations are great to have in an Organisation, but it really means more than that. It gives a real opportunity to benchmark on all the hard work that goes into Equality, Diversity and Inclusion against other businesses and look at how we can constantly improve.
One such accreditation is the Government run Disability Confident Scheme. This was established to encourage employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people in the workplace. It was developed by employers and disabled people’s representatives to look at how Companies create employment opportunities, ensuring that they are easily accessible.
UKROEd, under the leadership of Sarah Disalvo, this journey started in 2022 with a self-assessment, which was a really useful process for us to understand how we operated in this area. A tool kit is readily available Gov.uk website, and this enabled us to take a critical look at what we had in place to support people with disabilities into the workplace and those wishing to be recruited. From this we looked to both enhance and launch new policies and procedures to achieve this aim.
Our journey continued through 2023 being accredited with Disability Confident Committed which is the entry level through to level two which is a Disability Confident Employer.
In March 2024 we achieved the accreditation of level three Disability Confident Leader. This was completed by a peer assessment from another organisation with Leader status. It involved a critical analysis of our working practices to check for compliance or identify areas for development. We were very pleased to be awarded this status which shows the commitment we have to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
The whole process has given UKROEd confidence that it has up to date policies and procedures which ensure people with disabilities have an opportunity to work for us, going over and above traditional methods.
Being Disability Confident is a unique opportunity to lead the way, and you might just discover someone your business cannot do without.
If anyone needs any further information on the scheme, please do not hesitate to get in touch using the email [email protected]