Our journey to Disability Confident Employer – one of the ways we include everyone

As a charity, we have a responsibility to create an environment that welcomes everyone and reflects the diversity of the city. We’re committed to promoting equity and inclusion in all aspects of our work. 

We’ve recently achieved Level 2 of the Disability Confident Employer scheme, but what does that mean? And how do you get there? 

We hear from Samantha and Kinny all about the process, and how this supports our Inclusion pledge in practice. 

Briefly introduce yourselves and your roles 

S: I’m Samantha Jones, Belonging Manager at We The Curious. Belonging work covers the whole organisation and incorporates internal inclusion, pathways (including work experience), induction, anti-racism and what we’re covering today – becoming a Disability Confident Leader.  

K: My name is Kinny Chinangwa, manager of WECIL's business support brand, Disability.Inc. WECIL is a Disability Social Enterprise Charity that supports Disabled people and businesses through a range of services. My role is to build relationships with businesses and organisations from different sectors to support them in becoming a more inclusive and accessible. I’ve been supporting the team at We The Curious through the Disability Confident Employer process over the past few months, using our expertise on mapping out what they're doing to meet the core actions and relevant activities.  
 

We’ve recently achieved Disability Confident Employer Level 2 (DCE L2) – broadly, what does that mean to you both? Can you give some examples of what sorts of activities and projects this includes? 

S: We’re an organisation that strives to include everyone in every aspect of our work, so achieving DCE L2 was reassuring to see that we’re really putting into practice what we value.  
 
We have some brilliant pockets of knowledge and expertise in every department. And by pulling together a working group from across our departments we’ve really increased our knowledge and understanding of accessibility across the organisation.  
 
An example of this is our Disability Champions, who play a crucial role in fostering a sense of inclusion and community at We The Curious.  They organise activities, encourage open communication, and advocate for our disabled people - contributing to a workplace culture of shared understanding and effective collaboration where our people thrive - both personally and professionally. They also co-ordinate the Disability Networks, a peer led space for building community at work. 

Other examples of activities and projects include continuous improvement and development of our recruitment and induction process, delivering disability-focussed training and creating pathways into We The Curious through placements, work experience and Insight Days. 

We have had the pleasure of welcoming students from Weston College's Supported Employment programmes for a week of hands-on project work across our teams. The students feedback feeling welcome and comfortable, and a huge increase in confidence was shared. Where needed we adjusted the week, such as offering a choice of location (part from our office and part from college) and a shortened week where being in an office environment was over stimulating to two or three days.

K: For me, achieving Level 2 employer status is the beginning of a very important part of the scheme. This is where a lot of work takes place in understanding where improvements need to be made when meeting the core actions and activities in each theme of the scheme, all backed up with evidence.  Major organisational changes can happen at this point with potential changes to policies, procedures, working environment and support processes to name a few. 

Samantha, how does this work support our pledge to inclusion? 

S: Disability Confident Employer supports our inclusion pledge in every way with ‘Belonging’ a result of real inclusive and equitable practice.  Our Include Everyone pledge includes the whole Belonging journey we’ve been on since 2017 – key to this is We The Curious being a workplace that is truly welcoming for our current, but also future workforce.
 
We have a strong relationship with WECIL having worked in partnership for a number of years, and Kinny has a great understanding of our context and so the support he provides is bespoke to our needs, but everyone we have worked with at WECIL comes with an open and human approach.  
 
As a charity we don’t have the budget to employ a disability expert – so this is a way of accessing support that we can trust. We hugely value that the expertise and knowledge that comes from lived experience. 

 

Samantha, as DCE lead here at We The Curious, how does this work impact the culture here? 
S: A workforce thrives when allowed space to explore and permission to learn from mistakes. When people are truly included and shown that the organisation cares for them as their authentic selves - this benefits everyone.   

The DCE process encourages us to self-assess and think what barriers we have put up – it encourages us to think outside of ourselves and to plan longer term. 
 
We aim to create a positive workplace culture here at We The Curious where people don’t want to leave – so when spaces do come up and we do get the opportunity to recruit, we want to push forward in line with our commitments to better represent the communities we serve. 

Both – what have you learned throughout this process?

S: The whole journey to date has been a fabulous opportunity for learning and growth. It has been a great way to delve deeper into our current systems, processes and projects – to self-evaluate – what are we currently doing? How well does this work for everyone? And ask ourselves how can we better adapt our approach to create change that benefits everyone. 

The biggest learning has been that it’s OK not to have achieved everything straight away. We really want to get it right and to do everything instantly but have learnt through this process that change isn’t possible overnight - especially when we are bringing everyone along on the journey.  
 
K: I've learned more about some of the great projects and initiatives that We The Curious are doing but also some of the things that are already in place that has helped them to progress nicely through the process. Their updated recruitment process was one of them that has changed and implemented very well, and  i managed to witness first hand. It's also clear that different organisations from different sectors can enter this process differently based on how their organisation is set up, structured and how much inclusion means to them. 

Both – what’s next? What does Level 3 look like?  

S: The language used in the accreditation refers to ‘employees’, but for us our people mean staff, trustees and volunteers. We’ve made a commitment to interpret employees as ‘our people’ as we go through the process to ensure everyone who has contact with us benefits from the work through DCE.  
 
There will always be things we missed, so this will be a live project with improvements ongoing and continuous even once we’ve achieved (hopefully!) Level 3. 

K: When you get to Level 3 you will work hard on ensuring you continue to meet the core actions and activities with new initiatives and projects that may bring different challenges. You make improvements in certain areas identified in the validation but also work jointly with WECIL and other Disability Confident Leaders in sharing their knowledge on the scheme to support partners, suppliers and businesses in other networks who are considering starting the process to becoming a Disability Confident Leader.