{"id":5162,"date":"2021-06-21T13:11:58","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T11:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/disabilityconnect.co.za\/?p=5162"},"modified":"2021-06-21T13:11:58","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T11:11:58","slug":"firms-lose-trillions-by-ignoring-disabled-consumers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/21\/firms-lose-trillions-by-ignoring-disabled-consumers\/","title":{"rendered":"Firms ‘lose trillions’ by ignoring disabled consumers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Source: BBC News<\/a><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Some of the world’s biggest firms have signed up to a campaign which aims to tackle prejudice towards disabled people in the business world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Companies with combined sales of more than $8 trillion and 20 million staff, including Apple, BP and Coca-Cola have joined the Valuable 500 initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But founder Caroline Casey said the campaign was not just about employing more people with disabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firms are losing $13tn in sales by ignoring disabled consumers, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms Casey told the BBC<\/a>: “As we move out of this pandemic and we need to recover, why would any business look at leaving $13trn on the table?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She told the BBC that in the UK one third of FTSE companies did not have a website that was “acceptable to people with disabilities and their families. Why would you do that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putting disability on the agenda<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Valuable 500 was launched at the 2019 World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos<\/a>, with a goal of getting 500 international companies to commit to putting disability inclusion on their board agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, it published research which said 56% of global company boards had never had a conversation about disability and this was “leading to leaving disabilities on the sidelines of business”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to figures released on Tuesday, there are no executives or senior managers at FTSE 100 companies who have disclosed a disability, and only 12% of firms report the number of their employees who are disclosed as disabled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figures also show the average representation of people with disabilities among staff reported by FTSE 100 firms is just 3.2%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HAVE YOU READ: Grow Right \u2013 Building A More Inclusive, Diverse And Empowered South African Workforce<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

‘Inequality crisis’<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Other companies which have joined the Valuable 500 initiative include Google, Deloitte, Nestle, Microsoft and Unilever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of them have have made a public commitment to advancing disability inclusion within their organisations, either among staff, customers or their supply chains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We have an inequality crisis facing the disability community which is just huge and it can’t be resolved without business meeting meaningfully at the table,” said Ms Casey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, she stressed Valuable 500 was not just about recruiting. “We’re looking at driving systematic change in the business system [in terms of] customers and suppliers and talent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If you want to be able to have access to that market you need to have that talent in your business and I think when we speak about disability business inclusions we always speak about employment and we forget the huge, huge value of this market globally.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lockdown has proved that change is possible<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Over the last year or so, Ms Casey said lockdown had helped show that the group’s objectives were achievable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s proved the business system can change, hasn’t it? Look how quickly our systems had to change because they wanted to and we can’t unknow what we now know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our systems can flex and they can change and as we move out into recovery why would any business, an intelligent business leader, leave behind 15-20% of the global population. It would be madness absolute madness.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HAVE YOU READ: How Persons With Disabilities Build Resilience In The Workplace<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: BBC News Some of the world’s biggest firms have signed up to a campaign which aims to tackle prejudice towards disabled people in the business world. Companies with combined sales of more than $8 trillion and 20 million staff, including Apple, BP and Coca-Cola have joined the Valuable 500 initiative. But founder Caroline Casey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5240,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[240,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-business-place","category-thought-leadership-the-business-place"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}