This International Day of Persons with Disabilities (3rd December), new research commissioned by Maximus UK highlights that managers do not feel fully equipped to support disabled employees in the workplace. 

The research showed that business managers are not confident to provide the right level of support to disabled colleagues with one in five managers saying they are not confident that they would know what to do if an employee came to them with an issue related to their mental health, and 14 per cent said the same for a physical disability.

Managers urgently need training and resources to help them support disabled employees as almost two fifths (39 per cent) said their business could do with more, and more than one in ten said that their business provided none.

Similarly, only 45 per cent of managers said that their business has the right systems and facilities in place to accommodate employees with a physical disability while half of managers (49 per cent) said their organisation doesn’t get any specialist advice or follow any guidelines on how to appropriately employ people with a disability.

Margaret McNab, Managing Director of occupational health provider Health Management commented:

“Employers have a duty of care to make sure their workforce feels fully supported. That’s why it’s really important that businesses have the right level of information, resource and support in place to allow their management teams to be in a position to fully accommodate any disabled person in their business.

“At Health Management we provide specialist workforce training courses on the topic of disability and health, including our disability and health workshop for managers, Autism awareness, Dyslexia awareness, Hearing loss awareness and Disability champions training.”

Find out more about how Health Management supports businesses to be disability confident here: https://healthmanagement.co.uk/