All business owners want the best talent. But recruiting the best talent requires casting your net as widely as possible. So if that net falls short of one in five people, it simply won’t be possible to attract the best candidate for the job.
Despite accounting for so much of the population, disabled people are twice as likely to be unemployed. This is not for lack of talent or skills, but because conventional workplaces, rigid office hours and inaccessible transport put up barrier after barrier to disabled workers.
Freelancing overcomes these obstacles. It means that disabled people are able to work remotely, around environments and schedules which accommodate their needs. We’ve all grown used to working from home in recent months. Now employers need to make flexible workforces part of their long term strategy if they are to access the wealth of talent disabled people have to offer.
In the past, employers have looked to the expertise of freelancers only when they have needed to fulfil a specific need or gap in knowledge. But by creating more opportunities for freelancers and making them a valued, supported and integrated part of your business, the entire team will reap the rewards.
Empowering freelancers means empowering more voices and more perspectives. It means being able to approach briefs and business challenges with the widest possible lens and in turn produce creative solutions which consider all angles. Two heads are better than one. But better still is when those heads come together from different backgrounds.
A disabled person is constantly having to adapt; it’s a hallmark of each day. This means they can bring new approaches to business challenges and find routes to success which their able-bodied counterparts might overlook.
Disabled freelancers can improve business performance, but it’s also important to see diversity as more than a numbers game. In order to take advantage of different perspectives, companies must first make the effort to understand them. Carefully considering how their culture, processes and operations can reflect these needs is what makes inclusivity authentic.
And for employers who are able to do this, it’s a win-win: freelancers and staff across all demographics feel empowered and armed with the tools they need to join forces and reach their full potential.
By Liz Johnson
~Business Game Changer Special Promotion~
About the author
Liz Johnson is a Paralympic gold medallist turned disability campaigner and businesswoman. She is the founder of two organisations which aim to close the disability employment gap. The Ability People is the first disability-led employment consultancy, which works with companies to change their outlook on disability and transform their operations to be authentically inclusive. And recently, Liz has launched Podium, the first jobs marketplace for disabled freelancers. The new platform empowers disabled people to access meaningful remote work which meets their needs, and enables employers to access diverse talent across any sector and from any part of the world.
