As reported by the BBC, Disability Scoop, and other outlets this week, leaders at business giants like Mastercard, Prada, and Lenovo have made a commitment to both disabled employees and customers. The announcement comes from the Valuable 500, an initiative officially founded by Caroline Casey at the World Economic Forum in 2019. The initiative has previously partnered with the International Paralympic Committee and released a number of reports on disability issues, including one with UK-based outlet Tortoise Media that was released on May 19, 2021, one day after The Valuable 500 announced that they had reached their namesake goal, securing commitment from 500 CEOs worldwide. Those 500 companies translate to 20 million employees across 64 sectors and 36 countries, according to the organization’s data.
The Tortoise report found that, of those on the FTSE 100, 3.2% of their employees identify with disability. The researchers had comparatively little data to work with. Just 20% of companies reported on disability status at all, and this data is always challenged by the barriers to disclosure that comes with being disabled in a workplace. A 2017 report by COQUAL — a global thinktank focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion — found that 30% of US employees had disabilities while just 3.2% self-identified to their employers. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts the current disability rate in the US population at 26%.
[Read further into Key Findings in Global Survey Data About Disabled Employee Experience.]
The Valuable 500’s announcement means that 13 of the group’s co-signers: Allianz, BBC, Deloitte, EY, Google, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., LSEG, Omnicom, P&G, Salesforce, Sony, Sky and Verizon will, in the words of the release, "co-fund, co-build and co-test the programmes and solutions, using their industry experience to help catalyse progress for the entire community." This work is focused at the C-suite level. A number of projects are planned as part of this second phase, now that the first milestone of including 500 companies has reached.
According to the Valuable 500 team this means focusing on "6 impact areas" that include "CSuite, Culture and Customer" as well as "Reporting, Research, and Representation."
Nine specific projects were announced as part of the release. These include:
These come in addition to two projects across the collective. One is meant to "capture" stories about disability and leadership. The second is intended to take one young disabled person from each company and bring them together as part of a "reverse-mentoring programme." Apple has also signed on as a design partner.
Beyond the lack of disabled people in the workplace, there has been a growing focus in recent years on the purchasing power of the disability community. In the US, a 2004 government report found that Americans with disabilities had $175 billion to spend outside of their regular expenses. Fast forward to 2018, and that number had skyrocketed to $500 billion, according to A Hidden Market: The Purchasing Power of Working-Age Adults With Disabilities (PDF). Casey told the BBC that, in not catering to disabled people’s needs, companies were leaving "$13trn on the table." That’s the amount listed by Return on Disability, a Canadian data and design firm, in their 2020 Report Summary: The Global Economics of Disability (PDF). As they put the market’s approach, "Most companies focus on compliance, not value creation, when it comes to PWD [People with Disabilities]. They are missing their biggest value driver: serving PWD as customers."
Where the big companies lead, smaller ones follow. How the Valuable 500 impacts employment and the overall market for those with disability remains to be seen, but with large names attached to the initiative it’s already caused a stir.