What it means for Businesses
Following a master’s in sustainability in the mid-2000s, I moved away from accountancy. On disclosing my diagnosis to prospective employees, it was a shock to experience how their attitude changed and diminished me. This, amongst other reasons, is why I founded Beyond Green, which became a B Corp in 2018 and was recognised for both our environmental work and workplace programmes. Over 3 years, our Accessibility and Inclusion programme led to our accreditation as a Disability Confident Leader (DCL), led by Lisa Kaiffer.
Making Change Together
Working under Lisa’s leadership, I learnt as much about disability in 3 years as I did in the previous 50! As importantly, we transformed how we enacted our core values of Fairness, Ambition and Freedom in supporting mental wellness, inclusion and accessibility. Actions we’ve taken, which I am proud of, include:
- Implemented a well-being policy that provides two weeks of paid leave that can be taken as a way to prevent mental health issues from building up, and up to 6 sessions of paid professional therapy.
- Share interview questions with all candidates in advance, along with designing interviews to include various options to share skills and knowledge – it’s not a test, we want to understand your strengths and growth potential.
- Interviews focus on a collaborative session, a growth mindset, instead of skill / knowledge-based questions
- Accessibility and inclusion training on topics like unconscious bias, improving document accessibility, LGBTQ+ and various aspects of mental health and neurodivergent conditions
- After a 1-year pilot in 2024, we introduced a proper 4-day working week, as disabled people will generally expend more energy overcoming the barriers of work and usually face a pay cut to manage energy levels.
- Introduced additional leave for perimenopause/menopause, as well as new parent connection personal connection time.
- Monthly 1-1 check-ins with senior management to talk through the good times and tough times at work.
- Regular check-ins on workload pressures and taking proactive action to minimise stress.
Above all, our mantra is what can we do to reduce the energy it takes you to fulfil your role and deliver rewarding work to our clients.
Sharing with Sir Charlie Mayfield – “Keep Britain Working” Workplace review
As part of the disability confident employer scheme in Scotland, I was invited to a round table discussion with Charlie Mayfield in Glasgow earlier this year. In the session, I shared the points above and responded to the challenge of employers in the private and public sectors about funding workplace adjustments as follows:
“We frame adjustments in the context of energy demand. If we make adjustments to our process, technology, or how we work together to remove barriers, we reduce energy, anxiety, or stress. In turn, this leads to people working to their strengths, enhancing skill development, client service, and productivity. We don’t see it as a cost, but a way of working differently. Just as we have done with the introduction of a four-day work week, it benefits all, and disabled people do not need to take a pay cut for reduced hours because the unadjusted workplace consumes their energy.”
Working with the People in Front of You
And we are not alone in caring for our team, as Charlie noted in the interview, that many businesses are concerned about employee wellbeing, recognising the marked shift in employees showing early signs of mental ill health over the last decade. Working together, mental ill health and disabilities do not need to be life-defining conditions, but we need to deal with the real issue in the workplace. It is about creating a supportive environment and understanding difficulties, even when you don’t experience them yourself. Businesses need to work with the person in front of them, lean into their needs, and by doing so, create a culture where all the people are able to perform well. Its fairness, which at Beyond Green means equity as well as equality depending on the case in hand, and the unique needs of the employee – we don’t all need the same help, but we all often need help that works for us.
Moreover, as business leaders, we need to recognise that the whole person comes to work and brings an ever-increasing set of anxieties about the world we live in, such as the cost-of-living crisis, the climate crisis, the housing crisis, and supporting dependents. With a supportive and adaptive culture, the employer and employee can ride these waves together as both parties fundamentally want to perform well.
It may not always work out, but it will mean that employees are better placed to understand the type of work that suits them best, and employers are learning where they can be flexible and where their business model requires a more fixed approach. Above the legal requirements, employers do not need to have a perfect solution or get it right the first time. At Beyond Green, our approach evolved with each situation, and what sticks with employees is how you made them feel; and they’ll take that with them as advocates of your business and a new way of engaging.
All the players on the pitch
As Charlie Mayfield noted in the interview and at our roundtable, to improve our workplace wellbeing and create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to flourish, a genuine partnership between the healthcare system, employers and employees is required. And it is important to remember: those with disabilities are already expending a lot of energy battling to break down barriers in their path, be it housing adaptations, access to transportation or struggling in the workplace, such as taking notes, planning work, or sensitivity to noise in an open plan office.
They’re on the pitch in work or trying to find work. Now the employers, with the support of public services, need to join them as equal partners because we are only going to win with a full squad playing towards the same goal.
I chose to write this piece because it’s not about how hard it was for me. After all, lots of other people had/have it harder than me (imposter syndrome coming on); and I could follow our conditioning of just suck it up, get on with it and do your best. it’s about how life could be so much better for everyone and for organisations that are struggling with productivity if we worked collaboratively to reduce the total energy required to bring the change we desperately need to improve wellbeing, the state of the planet and the prosperity for the 99%.