Shaping the Future of Work Through Disability Inclusion Insights

Have you ever pondered the hidden layers of workplace inclusion, particularly for those with disabilities? Hillary Wool from Boston Consulting Group joins us to shed light on this critical issue, revealing a stark gap between the perceived and actual numbers of employees with disabilities. Through Hillary's extensive research, we engage with the transformative influence of a DEI ecosystem attuned to the needs of disabled workers, the undeniable importance of mentorship, and the game-changing impact of accessible accommodations. Our conversation doesn't just skim the surface; it delves into the deep waters of intersectionality and its ramifications for organizations, stressing the need for diversity and openness in every corporate layer.

Navigating the varied landscape of global disability data collection poses its challenges, but understanding this is key to developing more inclusive company policies and generating powerful advocacy efforts. We discuss the hurdles and triumphs in recognizing disabled individuals within the workforce, and the significant roles they play as consumers in product design and user experience. This episode is an invigorating call to action for companies to share resources and enhance the availability of quality disability-related data, acknowledging the influence of identity in the workplace and the consequences of underrepresentation in leadership. Prepare to be engaged in a profound discourse that pushes the boundaries of traditional thinking about diversity and inclusion in the modern working world.

Transcript

0:00

AXSCHAT Hilary Wool

NEIL: 0:02

Hello and welcome to Axschat. I'm delighted that we are joined today by HILARY Wool, who is a partner at BCT, Boston Consulting Group. I am really pleased that HILARY is here because I quote pieces of HILARY's work all the time. She has done some research on self-identity and disability and the feeling of belonging. I hope that you will check it out. We'll put the links up on our web page. But HILARY and I first met at El Enabling Conference in Washington DC last year, hit it off, been talking about stuff ever since, really thought it would be great to have HILARY on the Podcast. So great to have you here, HILARY. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, why you ended up doing research into disability in the workplace et cetera and then we'll take it from there?

HILARY: 0:50

Awesome. Neil, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you all today. So, my name is Hilary Wool. I am a Partner at Boston Consulting Group based in Philadelphia. I work across our public sector and healthcare practices. So working on transformations to better serve constituents and patients, often through the lens of government agencies. I'm a co-founder of our disability employee resource group, ERG, called Accessibility@BCG and so founded that about five or so years ago. And it has grown from a handful of folks up to 1500 or so staff members globally. And about year and a half ago, I started leading our research for BCG, focused on workplace of studies. I'm excited to talk more about that today. Yes, and then you know, outside of that, I'm passionate about paratriathlon. I love being part of the disability community. I have Ehler's-Danlos Syndrome and ankle spondylitis. I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user. And so, you know, this is all really, really close to my heart and you know, certainly relevant to the work that I've done professionally and also, personally.

NEIL: 2:17

Excellent, that is a really concise but very detailed intro. So can you tell us a little bit about that research that I so frequently quote? So I think that the headline figures that really got me and that are the conversations starters were that companies, that people work for, that have responded to the survey, generally report between, they think they have between 4 and 7% of their workforce as people with disabilities. And yet when people felt safe for able to disclose disability or a long-term health condition, the numbers that were coming back as self-reporting were around 25%. So that is a huge difference between what the organisations think and what they actually have amongst their employee population. But there was plenty more to the report as well. So please, you know, tell us about that and I know you followed up with a second report, which has just recently been published as well. So we'll dive into that as well.

HILARY: 3:22

I can share a few of the headlines and then we can dive in and happy to talk a little bit about the follow up work we have recently done, which is focussed on intersectionality, another one of my favourite topics to talk shop up on. So Neil, yes, as you said, companies are you know simply put underestimating the share of their workforce that has a disability and we know that companies make decisions, they make policy, right; they're resourcing around data and so I think that's one of the many reasons, why I think this matters. We surveyed 28,000 employees, across 16 countries, including the US, the UK, India, Australia, Germany, China and you know, we asked, as one of the questions, you know, indicate if you identify as having a disability or a major health condition, impacting one or more life activities? And there were some details under it. We used a pretty comprehensive definition of disability. Which I think is one of the reasons that folks were willing to self-identify at higher rate. But as you mentioned, we found in our data that 25% of the workforce, at large organisations, do identify as having a disability. People with disabilities, we saw in our survey, have lower feelings of workplace inclusion in every country that we surveyed. So we used kind of a property inclusion index that BCG has developed called the Bliss Index and we saw that on average, employees with disabilities are about three points on this index lower than the average for nondisabled employees. And this relates to you know, psychological safety, people feeling that they can bring themselves to work like, they have a sense of belonging and at work and we saw that, reported discrimination was higher and many of the other measures that you know, that you would unfortunately expect among people with disabilities, people with disabilities. The positive finding though is that it is, it's not inevitable for disabled employees to have a worse workplace experience. And we actually found that in the prevalence of three specific you know, strategies, policies interventions, that story can be flipped and that inclusion gap can actually be closed and in some cases inverted. And so the three things that we found really make the biggest difference. One, something that we call an employee centric you know, DEI ecosystem. So do you have a Chief Diversity Officer? Are you investing in employee groups for staff members of all identities? Are you incorporating programming? Are leaders openly talking about their support for employees with diverse identities? The second being mentorship. We saw that the inclusion gap actually closes when staff with disabilities have mentors. Even mentors that don't necessarily share their identity or identities. And then the third is having access to employee centric reasonable accommodation. So workplace adjustments that enable workers to fulfil the essential functions of their job. And we know that this is a particular pain point, you know, across many organisations and many countries, even ones that do have legal frameworks and policies around them. So that is a little bit longer, short snippet of the critical things that we found in that study.

DEBRA: 7:15

Hilary, thank you for the work we really appreciate it and I think we need more of this type of work and coming from a lot of different groups. I am curious about the comprehensive definition that you talked about because I know that the Americans with Disabilities Act is a broader definition of disabilities, than for example, the definition of the convention of the rights of persons with disabilities.

HILARY: 7:42

Absolutely.

DEBRA: 7:43

And so I assume you use both of those legislations or both of those definitions but -- ?

HILARY: 7:54

Yes. And so yes, thank you for raising that. So our definition, includes us as I alluded to, all people who self-identify as a having a disability, a health condition or challenge that limits one or more nature of life activities. And we provided some examples in that drop down, when folks were filling out the survey, to be as expansive as possible. So you know, including physical disabilities, psychological and mental health conditions, chronic illness, neurological conditions and both visible and invisible conditions. So we really try to you know, spell out for our survey takers, our participants. Like, here are the many different categories that of which one or more may impact your daily life.

DEBRA: 8:44

All right. And another thing I'm fascinated with, I'm fascinated with the 16 countries that you selected. Because and I know we talked about this a little bit Off Air. But it's fascinating because countries are doing it different compared to what is happening in their cultures. So I think it's interesting that you included the United States were making a lot of efforts, not getting it right. But we are getting some things right and we are learning on others. I heard those two countries and I'll look to see what are the 16 are. But it seems like there is also an opportunity to figure out a bunch of things almost culturally. I am building an organisation called Billion Strong, to bring together the billion people with lived experiences with disabilities, many of whom don't want to identify. It's challenging but we find people are treated differently in different countries. Because countries certainly have different priorities, we understand. But we are seeing some countries just really are not meaningfully including people with disabilities and empowering them as others are. I think all the countries have plenty of things to do. But I was just curious if you found, because of the countries you selected, if you found any parts of it that wound up being interesting? You know, because once again, we have assumptions about how certain countries are doing things. But I still think a lot of data that needs to be done about what is really happening. We don't really understand the dynamics of all these intense nuances.

HILARY: 10:26

Absolutely. I really appreciate you bringing that up. And you know, we have a view where we show kind of country by country what that inclusion gap looked like to nondisabled workers and while across all countries it was lower than nondisabled employees, they were some disparities that we saw and I think a lot of that does reflect the, you know, stigmatisation of people with disabilities. If you double click into the specific type of disabilities, we know that in certain countries, mental health is you know really, really stigmatised and it's very difficult for people to admit openly or even on an anonymous survey being impacted by a mental condition. So some of that we saw play out but if you go to the survey and all of this is online, we have got the picture and the rankings. You may be surprised; you know for example India fell right next of the UK and the Nordics; right. You know, China, which was the lowest in terms of the biggest gap between disabled and nondisabled was right there next to Germany, France and South Africa. And the top three, Brazil, Japan and Spain, all have really different history and narratives of where we are. And so while there are some differences, some of that links you to know known stigmas or gaps or policy stands. I think there were some elements that might be more surprising that certain emerging market countries and OECD countries are actually right there next to each other, in terms of how they are feeling.

DEBRA: 12:17

Which is very exciting and I know Antonio has a question. But I just want to say also, I would assume and just based on the work I'm doing and we are dealing with. I would assume that you had probably more people respond than say from the US and the UK than you did from China and India. So I know that we have to consider that as well, as we are trying to do this data. Thank goodness you are doing this because we need more of this done. But I think also, we just still aren't getting the numbers of people really responding to what is happening in their countries as well. And I know you mentioned earlier, that's something you mentioned earlier as well, that's something you showed as well how many responses you got in those countries as well; correct?

HILARY: 13:01

Yes and all that information in depth, is in the report but yes, you know the number of respondents was different in each country depending on response rates and other factors.

DEBRA: 13:16

Right, right. Thank you. Antonio?

ANTONIO: 13:19

No. Using my sociologist hat, if we look at the way all data is collected from the different census around the world, it makes it really, really difficult to people with disabilities to identify themselves, when they are filling the census and if we compare countries, you know, it's basically, it's almost impossible to do a comparative study, using census data, considering how different the questions are. However, we have other elements of data and that you know how many people in the world need contact lenses or glasses. Around 64% of the population, in certain countries, have this need. You know, there is a recent study that identifies that 3.4 billion people worldwide have experienced some kind of neurological conditions. So we have this we are looking for data with people with disabilities, organisations look into that. But how do we factor this external data that point to much higher numbers than sometimes we consider when we look at the workplace? Because we cannot separate people, the workplace from society. So how do we see organisations you know, okay, it's good that we have the numbers. But how can they see themselves as part of the society and as being as factoring the fact that there is much more people with disabilities out there than they might think?

HILARY: 15:03

Yes. So thinking great question and great point. I think it just speaks to the broader challenge. I know within the disability research community and business community, like, the constant discussion and question around, you know data and quality data and you know, data, valid data and how to compare across, whether that's countries, companies, industries. So I think two lenses. So one, from the standpoint of organisational leaders and I think something, we have said repeatedly in talking about this work, especially with business audiences. Irrespective of what your company internal data says, you have a lot of people with disabilities who work for you and they are there no matter whether they are telling you they are there or not. They are there. And so you need to make policies and you know, have HR initiatives and programmes and considerations and you know, accommodations like knowing that most likely about a quarter of your people have a disability. And that is vastly different from the perspective of well, we are going to look at our internal data based on what it tells us. You know we are going to prioritise and pretend these people are here and these people are not. So I think that's the first lens. The second is you know, thinking about the constituents and customers that companies and organisations are serving. Your customers have disabilities. And so, you need to think of that, I mean this is going on to a little bit of a different topic, but in planning for, designing for, you know product management. We talk about this all the time right? The product management life cycle, you need to be doing that user research on the frontend and considering accessibility, both digital and analogue accessibility, like, proactively in your design process and not waiting until someone says, hey, I'm blind and I can't use this product; yes.

NEIL: 17:18

Absolutely. Where do I start? So one of the reasons I really liked the reports was that it was statistically relevant, you know and you know, a significant number. So the survey had some weight to it. Because a lot of the stats that get banded about don't have frankly very good quality research behind them and the methodology is poor. And that dilutes the quality of the argument that you can make because if people can pick holes in your data, sorry data I'm going to speak with being British for a second, then that starts to undermine all of the arguments you make, based upon data. So having really good data is super. So thank you, right? That's why I wanted you on here; right?

HILARY: 18:20

Labour of love and I think just a quick comment. One so we, like imagine we waited like a number of years until we had our ERG up and running, to start doing research and do any seat at the table activities like, we need to get our house together internally before we do this more broadly. But I think the reality is you know, organisations, professional services, research organisations like BCG, we have got the capabilities to do research on this scale. And you know, on parallel with levels of universities and large institutions. But it takes a lot of time and budget and effort and there is need for it. And so there is that constant challenge of like, how do we share resources across and it is to get the right data and information out.

NEIL: 19:13

Absolutely. And the fact that you have got a tool that enables you. You have got an index tool anyway that enables you to have that statistical significance. I think what -- the reason I was commenting on this and I keep going back to it. You mentioned people want to know how many people and we keep saying, you know, what have we got internally? And I've worked with a number of our CEOs over the years, we have had a few and it's the first question they ask and it's a natural question to ask and you say how many people impacted and you sort of say, well we don't know, but it's more than we think. Having something researched is really helpful. I mean with our current CEO Nourdine, he asked that question. But was you know really well prepared to listen and understand why that wouldn't give him the answer that he wanted. So he went from asking that question from a well, how many people are impacted point of view, to then understanding that we needed to create a culture of psychological safety and then still wanting to gather the data but it came from a different purpose, it was not, do I need to act? But can it tell me what the things are I need to act upon. And I think that is the mind shift that we need to get upon not within you know company leadership, but also within those product teams that are developing things that the teams are doing the research. So it's not so much do I have to do it or is this going to prove that I can get away with not doing it. It's more actually can I gather the data that informs me on how to make the products better. How to serve people better. So I mean I think I mean that that shift in mindset is really important and through continuing to build good reports based upon decent research and you know, large data sets that really helps us start to build that sort of quality and build that into the way that companies think and operate and people think and operate as professionals. I know that Debra you had some pints and then I think Antonio.

DEBRA: 21:35

I have. I have comments for, certainly HILARY, but Neil and Antonio, you all come in too. But obviously, I have identity on the mind as I'm building this Billion Strong but I do think, as a question that corporate employers, especially big corporate employers that are saying that they want to include us, need to really think about and not just from the lens of people with disabilities, just speaking with, just using that particular language. But why is our identity so important to employers. Why should big corporations, why should you all even care how we choose or do not choose to identify? And all the different parts that we identify as? Why does it matter? And why do we as a community have an obligation or do which have an obligation to stand up and really talk about who we are so employers can get it better right? Because right now the employer is not really getting it right, but at the same time we are not really being fair as a community because we are saying, at the same time we are not being fair as a community because we are saying, no, jump higher, no, no jump a little -- we are not participating as meaningfully as we should be. We have some people participating. We have a lot of Americans and UK and people talking about it, but our community is not meaningfully joining these conversations. I mean I've questions but I'm not going to ask you now because I know Antonio has a question. But how you came up with the people to take the study? How you even know how to get us when we won't come out and identify and 70 or 75% of us have hidden disabilities and we have to tell you we are part of community? So I think that's interesting at the same time it goes into the different word we use and the different diverse groups. So I think the question that we all employers need to ask upon why? Why does identity matter at the end of the day? And I'll just throw a little point to it and that something Antonio said to me. Antonio was born in Portugal. Antonio, English is not his first language. English may be his third language. I'm not sure because I'm American and I only speak one language. Come on Americans. But at the same time, he was explaining to me, how these social media channels was changing and things were happening. How was advanced because he was not a native speaker, just picking on you for a second Antonio. We disadvantaged so many people in so many different ways that it feels as employers this is part of the reason why we have to figure out these identity questions and I also know and I won't say who did it but a group, they went out to a whole bunch of CEOs of major corporations and asked if they had a disability. Three or four of them identified that they did but they would not disclose it. So once again, interesting dynamics and possible things to talk about and were trying to and I just wondered if HILARY wanted to comment on that and maybe Neil and Antonio too?

HILARY: 24:55

Tiring in so many different directions. So let me, yes, so a couple of threads that I just I wanted to pull on. I won't pull on all of them. So the piece about leadership. I spent a lot of time talking about this with my co-founder and mentor at within accessibility at BCG, Brad Loftus, who is a quad, a very senior partner in our organisation and there are not a lot of out disabled folks at the top of organisations. And especially corporate organisations and you know, high powered industries or however you want to frame it or call it the C suite yada, yada, and we know that there are more as you alluded to Debra than are raising their hands. And so, I think it's both the challenge you know, how do we, I mean we know there is severe under representation and so ensuring that we are taking proactive steps to make sure that retention and promotion is equitable at every step of the journey across disability. But also across you know, every other demographic and identity lens as well. And then of the folks who are there at the top, I think it's about having that, you know organisational environment, that is supportive of diversity and openness at all levels and also like, folks with disabilities and leadership doing the work you know, just to say it like, internally, like it's hard to be out and be like hey I might be the only one of my level, who looks. I mean I am definitely the most senior, at least woman, most senior woman in my organisation who is a mobility device user and that can feel really lonely sometimes but you know what there are a couple of us at my peer organisations, who are more junior than me and I often kind of have that conversation with employers, if not you than who. Like it's you who need to continue being vocal and being out there. So you don't want to create, you know to perpetuate the same you know, level of representation and narratives for the next generations to come. But it's hard, it's challenging. I think in terms of the, you know, philosophically, practically why does identity matter at all? You know, shifting gears to the second piece of research that we did, so this was a much narrower deep dive, we looked at intersectionality for people with disabilities in the workplace and we only looked at the US context just because race and ethnicity are so different in every country and in some countries, it's not even legal to ask in a survey. So there are lots of difference. But what we saw and I have not seen any other research that has analysed this. If you guys know, please send it my way, I would love to read it. But I really wanted to look at who is getting accommodations granted? Based on your you know, intersecting identities and what we found is that, you know, when you compare disabled bi-POC employees, so, people of colour, to white disabled folks. So for example, you know looking at women, looking at men, there is about a ten-percentage point differential. Right so for example, about 44 ish percentage of white disabled people are getting accommodations they ask for, in the US, fully granted verses only about 33% or a third of bi POC folks with disabilities: right. And it's not real surprising in that totally lines up with what members of the community will tell you. It's not all that different from what we see in the healthcare space, in terms of the care and you know, treatment of people of colour verses white folks in the health care arena. But you know, if you're acknowledging that is gap, you're just continuing to have biased you know HR accommodation policies and so going back to the question of why does identity matter, I think at the most literal level, like, identity matters because outcomes and experiences in the workplace and in society are different as a function of identity and then of course there is also the you know, like being able to bring yourself and all of the assets and perspectives and values, to a place where maybe you're spending the majority of your waking hours. That matters for you know what is going on in the four walls of your organisation and it also matters in terms of the value and creativity of the products and services that you're delivering to your users and customers and constituents. I could talk about that forever but those are the just the threads that poked out of my brain when you said that Debra.

DEBRA: 30:19

Impressive thoughts. Neil, Antonio?

ANTONIO: 30:24

I was about to follow on Debra's, question, but then you were able to bring, you know, the topic of HR and probably there is a more relevant question to ask. We all have business KPIs, in many different areas. How do we make HR more accountable with KPIs to make sure they don't sure they don't discriminate because I feel they are getting away of it. And if you look back at the history of disability and even accessibility and inclusion in the workplace, even if you go back 20 years, they seem to be getting away with this, for quite a long period of time.

HILARY: 31:08

And so, I love this topics, you say, KPI's and as a consultant I'm like sign me up, love it. So I think two things. So one, I think it's always easy to kind of point a finger. You know, HR, what are HR doing, what is the manager doing, what is the CEO doing, what is the DEI team doing? So this Beverley Tatum has her analogy of race and anti-racism of like the moving walkway. We are all on that moving walkway. Like, ableism like racism is like a system that we exist in it. It's everywhere, all around us, it is not one person or one group doing the doing. But Antonio to your point, like, if we are not collectively taking proactive steps, initiatives, implementing policies to actively work against that. Then yes, it's going to keep pulling and then it's going to show up in the KPIs and what not. I think tactically and you know, something I have reflected on through this research and also what I do in my day job as a consultant for a large, complicated organisations. Like so there is a lot of different KPIs in metrics. You have got kind of outcomes and north stars in your KPIs and then you have got leading indicators. And so something like equity. We are going to have equitable representation in senior leadership, women, people with disabilities, folks of colour. Like that comes, that is an outcome of lots of other things needing to fall in place and there are a lot of leading indicators that can tell you like, whether you are on track to that. Both okay, looking at you know, what is the promotion and retention parody or lack thereof, like at every level. But then also, you know, using tools like survey, using employee engagement, you know mechanism, such as the Index that we used looking at hey, are folks feeling included. And this goes back to the some of the other research that I've done in our broader organisational space. But we clear see a linkage between inclusion with retention. We clearly see when managers articulate their commitment to DE&I, their team members of all identities, have a better workplace experience, feel more motivated want to stay in organisations and then those are the types of things over time that can lead to equity and outcomes; right, in promotion, retention, representation at the top. But if you're just looking at, like a lot of companies, they'll record and they publish data on you know, what is the representation of our workforce. But that's just scratching the surface, like if that's all you're looking at you're probably not going to get anywhere unless you're really intuitive and you know what your gaps are what your different employees are feeling.

ANTONIO: 34:22

So just a quick comment. So if you had to start the company today or advise someone today. Where would you recommend that organisation to have someone leading these topics? It would be at the CFO level, CEO, CTO, or at the junior level? Isn't it important to -- because I know that some organisations have linked the responsibility for diversity, equity and inclusion at the CFO. Others put it at the junior levels. How important is it the fact that it sits at the higher level in order to make sure it escalates to the whole organisation?

HILARY: 35:14

Great question. As I think I alluded to before, we do see that organisations that you know, make a heavier investment on leadership level, initiatives and support for you know, inclusion, efforts, for ERG's, another initiatives of support, diverse, you know, employees. The outcomes for employees are more positive. I mean, in terms of or design, I have seen, you know lots of examples of companies doing this in a number of different ways. But I think you know, regardless of the positions, like having executive level leaders, having executive level leadership, within you know, ERGs and for the diversity inclusion initiatives overall. So a Chief Diversity Officer, executive sponsors, if your ERGs, I think that all sends a really positive signal. I would say for accessibility and disability inclusion, I think organisations that only see this as a HR function, in my view not like not the right direction because inclusion and disability inclusion and accessibility are both internal and external function; right. Thinking about the accessibility of your products for customers, as well as processes for your own employees. So in my view like leadership at the top, taking a comprehensive and broad approach to thinking through accessibility, like those are some of the ingredients for doing this most effectively.

NEIL: 36:58

Yes, I can't but agree. Because, within my own organisation, accessibility is a transversal topic. Thank you so much. There is so much we could go on talking about here, we are already seven minutes over our schedule. We could keep going. It's been a real joy. We are going to have you back. I'm already mentally booking you in. But it has been great. We look forward to continuing the conversation on social media. It just remains for me to thank My Cleartext for keeping us captioned and Amazon for also being our friends and helping to keep us On Air. We're in our tenth year and we are still going strong. So thank you HILARY. It has been a real pleasure.

HILARY: 37:44

Yes, thank you Neil, Antonio, Debra, it was wonderful getting the chance to chat with you all. And we will continue the conversation and yes, excited for the listeners, the viewers out there, to check out our reports and that Neil will make sure gets posted, I'm sure. Thank you.