The Importance of Small and Medium Size Employers for Closing the Disability Employment Gap
What role do small and medium size employers (SMEs) play in reducing the ‘disability employment gap’ (the difference between the number of disabled and non-disabled people in paid employment), and what are the experiences of SMEs in hiring and retaining disabled people (including workers with long-term health conditions)?
These are important questions that must be addressed because the UK government made a commitment in Improving Lives: the future of work, health and disability to get one million more disabled people into paid employment by 2027.
Although the disability employment gap has reduced slightly since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, it consistently hovers around a 30-percentage point difference. If the government is serious about its aim to help get more disabled people into paid work, then it needs to understand the SME employer experiences of hiring and retaining disabled people. This is necessary because they dominate in terms of size of business population (61% of all private sector employment takes place in SMEs).
Hutton, G. and Ward, M., 2021. Business Statistics: Research Briefing. [pdf] The House of Commons Library, p.13. Available at: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06152/SN06152.pdf [Accessed 3 March 2022].
"Although the disability employment gap has reduced slightly since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, it consistently hovers around a 30-percentage point difference"
What may surprise many people is that SMEs in the UK are already the largest employer of disabled people. Indeed, government policy documents, including the National Disability Strategy consistently imply that SMEs are less likely to recruit and retain disabled people. Yet the statistics reveal a very different story.
The fact is, small firms with less than 50 employees employ significantly more disabled people compared to larger firms as shown in this table, taken from the Annual Population Survey figures and published by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) in November 2021.
A table comparing the amount of disabled people employed by small, medium and large employers, and non-specifically sized employers. The figures show that small employers with less than 50 employees employ significantly more disabled people compared to larger employers.
Given this insight, why does government policy not mention the great work that the SME sector is already doing? Why are we not using the SME business sector as the example of ‘best practice’ and encouraging large enterprise employers to learn from their smaller counterparts? Of course, SME employers are not getting it right all of the time, but they are doing a much better job of being inclusive compared to the larger, well resourced businesses who so often portray themselves to be Disability Confident.
"Why are we not using the SME business sector as the example of ‘best practice’ and encouraging large enterprise employers to learn from their smaller counterparts?"
So often the SME employer voice has been missing from studies into the disability employment gap, with far more attention given to the needs of large employers. However, there is now an emerging body of new research which is providing a clearer picture of UK based SME employer experiences from across various different industrial sectors. For example, Disabled People, Work and Small-Medium-Size Enterprises explores the barriers and challenges that both disabled people and SME employers face.
The good news is that disabled people reported feeling ‘welcome’ in SME workplaces and consider smaller employers to be more accommodating of their different needs because of close interpersonal working relationships. It was the closeness of such relationships that reduced a fear to ‘disclose’ their impairment, thus reducing a dilemma for people with hidden impairments.
They were also positive about the informal approach to receiving workplace accommodations, and flexibility to arrange their working hours, location and tasks around their impairment effects. On the whole, SME workplace cultures tended to be viewed positively, suggesting that larger employers could learn from this.
It is evident that SME employer experiences are nuanced and informed by the sector in which they operate, the level of knowledge they have about their legal obligations to provide reasonable adjustments, and their understanding of disability as either a socially created or individual problem. Employer attitudes and values are shaped by earlier proximity to disabled people (either through having a disabled relative or previous experience of hiring disabled people) and these prior relationships are an important proxy for inclusion.
The research found that employers were also more inclined to consider recruiting people from the same impairment category. In alignment with previous research, the study also found evidence that small employers often worry unnecessarily about the cost implications for their business, which might be associated with making adaptations. To alleviate such fears, promoting schemes such as Access to Work (AtW), which offers practical advice or financial support to businesses as well as workers, may encourage more small employers to recruit disabled people.
The study did however find that employers still largely frame their understanding of ‘disability’ on deficit medical model understandings until the point they have an opportunity to question existing assumptions and the wide-ranging unconsciousness of some discriminatory workplace design and practices.
Private-sector employers tended to report a lack of clarity on their legal duty to make
reasonable adjustments, which makes them reticent about hiring people who they perceive to require ‘special’ treatment. They worried about the impact of adjusting the organisation of work on other employees. It was also the case that informality in recruitment processes can unwittingly lead to hiring decisions based upon notions of who will ‘fit’ into the existing workplace culture.
SME employers should ensure that they are drawing upon all available advice and support available to them, and that they are accessing the full range of support provided by disability organisations, government departments, trade unions and other stakeholders.
Despite some weaknesses, on balance, the evidence from discussion with SME employers in combination with the government statistics highlights the important role that SMEs are currently playing in offering employment to large numbers of disabled people. Therefore, SMEs should be asked to share their good practice with the wider business community, with researchers, and with policy makers if we are to finally make the disability employment gap a thing of the past.
Written by Dr. Cara Molyneux
Senior Research Associate, Division of Health Research, Lancaster University
c.molyneux@lancaster.ac.uk
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