Our mission is to alleviate the impact of disability in work and business, so everyone can succeed at work.
Here’s how we do it:
1. We support disabled people using the Social Model of Disability.
The normal ways of working are not always suitable to everyone, and this presents additional challenges that don’t exist for non-disabled people. If all staff had the same medical condition, the norms of working would be accessible.
Viewed from this perspective, our coaching focuses on the additional challenges of disability, commonly referred to as barriers, and these can be physical, social, cultural and attitudinal.
So, when we talk about supporting disabled people in our work, we mean people disabled by the barriers. This is the essence of the Social Model of Disability, which sits at the heart of our work.
2. We harness the benefits of different ways of thinking and doing, and use this to help disabled people towards their goals.
Our coaching programs support disabled people by helping them to better understand what they want and define what they need. Together, we identify any barriers that can block or inhibit progress and get to work on removing, working around or adjusting to them. Then, we plan intentional and achievable actions that progress them towards their wants and deliver upon their needs. This support can be delivered in 1-to-1 and Group Coaching formats, using a non-directive (non-advice giving) approach that is informed by psychological and behavioural science.
We’ll share more details about our coaching approach, and why we think it is such a powerful tool for working with disabled people later on in our website.
3. We help companies and organisations develop accessible and inclusive workplace policies to retain and attract disabled talent.
We do this in two ways:
Firstly, we offer Inclusive Leadership Coaching to help leaders better understand their role in creating workplace cultures and policies that are disability-informed.
Secondly, we provide a 1 hour webinar and an interactive half-day workshop based on the Social Model of Disability. This educates all staff on the important role they play within it, whether they are disabled or not.
Company-wide understanding of disability in the workplace using the Social Model and not the Medical or Charity Model achieves systemic support for disabled people in the workplace. This is important because it creates diverse teams and diversity benefits businesses intellectually, creatively, socially and economically. We’ll talk in more detail about this further on in our website.
Now, here’s why we do it:
The disabled population makes up the largest minority group in the world.
Representing 16% of the global population, that’s 1 in 6 of us, disabled people and their family form a viable part of your talent pool.
In the UK, 23% of the working aged population have a disability, almost 1 in every 4 of us!
Disabled people are the only minority group anyone can find transitioning into at anytime, as 80% of disabled people acquire their disability when they are of working-age. So, even if you are not actively recruiting disabled people, a sizeable percentage of your existing employees will transition into this minority group.
The disabled population are an important part of the economy too.
When it comes to spending power, disabled people and their families in the UK have £274 billion, a figure is rising at 14% per annum.
Globally, that spending power is $13 trillion. Interested in the disposable income of disabled people in their own right? That is $1 trillion each year!
These figures show that disabled people and their family form a viable part of your consumer base too. Remember, even if disabled people are not already a part of your target demographic, a sizeable percentage will transition into this minority group.
Can your business afford to ignore disability?
We can work with you!
You could be a disabled person, working for an employer, freelance, self-employed or an entrepreneur. We work with companies and self-funding individuals too.
You could be a person with a disabled person to care for outside of work, wanting to work on business or career goals with someone that understands how this might impact your day-to-day.
You could be a leader or middle manager with a disabled person in your team to support and you want to know how best to support them as a human at work and not as a medical diagnosis.
You could be an executive or senior leadership team wanting to develop your workplace cultures and policies to be more disability-friendly.
You could be a business owner or an entrepreneur that wants to better serve disabled people with your products or services.
Equity, Diversity & Inclusion matters to us too!
We are a profit and purpose focused company.
So if you are self-funding and concerned you cannot afford our rates, please do get in touch with us.
We offer a selection of bursaries each year for people.
Wondering about our use of the giraffe?
We have used the giraffe in our company logo, and for the imagery in our website, because we believe the giraffe serves as an excellent metaphor for disability.
Here’s why:
1. The icons regularly used to indicate disability aren’t actually that reflective of the disabled population. For example, only 1% of the world’s population are wheelchair users, but this is the most commonly used and recognised symbol representing disability. A more reflective symbol is difficult, because 80% of disabilities are hidden or invisible. So, we have chosen to use a metaphor.
2. We feel the giraffe also works as a counter-argument for the “if you hear hooves think horses” rhetoric that medical professionals are taught to use in medical school. This is something the disabled community challenges because there are many different animals with hooves, and of course the giraffe is one of them!
3. Each giraffe has their own unique coat pattern much like our human fingerprints. Also, there are a few collective nouns for the giraffe, a herd, tower and journey. We see our work as a journey we make together, disabled and non-disabled, towards our goal, which is to alleviate the impact of disability in the workplace!
IMAGE IDs are included for those using screen readers.
Both images were generated by The Disability Force using Artificial Intelligence (AI). We used Magic Media and Canva to generate our images to look like coloured photographs of giraffes in the workplace. They look very realistic, but of course they are not, because Giraffes cannot work in an office. Or, can they? Winky, tongue out emoji!
We will use non-gendered pronouns for our giraffes in our images, which we use as a metaphor to represent disabled people.
Image No.1: shows a giraffe sat at a desk, interviewing as a candidate for a job interview in a modern office setting. They look smart, confident and dignified.
Image No.2: shows a giraffe, again sat at a desk in a modern office setting, but this time they are at their desk working on what appears to be a spreadsheet on a computer.
Image Credits: Both images were generated by The Disability Force using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology via Magic Media & Canva.
©Michelle Scicluna, 2024 / Magic Media & Canva.