Raising awareness through My Lived Experience

More and more businesses now recognise that inclusion is good for business. The evidence is clear and compelling. It is fundamental to high levels of engagement and to a culture in which every individual can develop and thrive. No one should ever feel they cannot be a full and equal member of the firm or society because of a disability. The breadth of wisdom and perspective that people with different life experiences can bring to workplaces only makes us stronger and better at what we do. In the legal sector, with the raging war for talent, there is a huge opportunity for the sector to lead the way. 

With 15% of the world’s population living with a disability – some visible, many non-visible – every business should now be looking to bring disability to the centre of its inclusion strategy.

Since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, successive governments have failed to significantly move the dial on disability. Even now as the government’s flagship scheme – Disability Confident – turns seven years old, its impact remains unimpressive, with the disability employment gap stubbornly remaining at about 30% if you factor in increased disability prevalence. Despite it being 12 years since the introduction of the Equality Act, disability continues to be the ‘last frontier’ of inclusion.

But if there is one thing we have learned it is that, as in so many areas, business should not be, and indeed is not, waiting for the political leadership to bring about change. Several leading law firms have already acted on their business instincts to tap into a pool of talent which includes many top graduates every year. This should come as no surprise given that 14% of graduates are disabled.

At Clifford Chance, the importance of equal opportunities for those living with a disability has been a longstanding focus, ensuring equal accessibility and opportunity, for example through our recruitment initiatives and workplace adjustments for colleagues. However, the real game-changer within the firm has been the establishment in 2020 of Enable, our global affinity network on disability.

The Enable network has quickly made a material impact on the experiences of all our colleagues – whether living with a disability or not. One of the first areas to be tackled is stigma. To address this, one of the first initiatives launched by Enable was the My Lived Experience campaign. The campaign focuses on personal and human stories from across the firm to help raise awareness, visibility and understanding. The impact has been tremendous, with the highest level of engagement across the firm of any recent campaigns. There were some illuminating challenges to begin with: it proved harder to get lawyers, particularly male lawyers, to share their personal stories. This was a reflection of how, in a high-performance culture, many colleagues remain reluctant to share their experiences of disability. The Enable campaign has developed many other initiatives including reverse mentoring programmes – hugely rewarding to both mentors and leadership mentees – as well as collaborations with some amazing civil society groups, including The Valuable 500, Purple Space, WeThe15 and the Invictus Games.

If we are going to bring about progress, data and transparency will be key. Transparency ensures the leadership are held to account on progress and objectives, and it helps identify areas and barriers requiring specific interventions and actions. The Clifford Chance experience is that those living with non-visible disabilities can be reluctant to share details of their disability, conditions or needs. However, the My Lived Experience campaign along with greater engagement about why the data is important, have helped significantly. Clifford Chance is among those businesses that is now annually reporting its pay gap data in the UK in respect of those colleagues living with disability (as well as gender and ethnicity). The evidence for reporting and transparency to support inclusion and employment equality is convincing. We would both endorse reporting on disability wholeheartedly for businesses of 250 employees or more.

As we leave the pandemic behind us, it is business that is already helping the UK to get back on its feet, to grow, and to look beyond the ravages of Covid to a better future. But what does that actually look like? It is time to build on the evolving workplace trends that emerged in lockdown and which showed how adaptable businesses are.

As never before, we need to think big to succeed. For businesses to adopt the measures outlined here would be a very good start – and one we are confident they would not regret. With talent and inclusion so important to economic growth across all sectors of UK business, this article’s co-author Lord Shinkwin has been asked to chair the commission established by the Institute of Directors on The Future of Inclusive Business: Harnessing Diverse Talent for Success. The commission is currently gathering evidence and will report in the autumn with recommendations both on proposed government policy reforms as well as user-friendly, practical recommendations and guidelines for businesses, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. The focus of the commission is on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disability. The legal sector is well-represented on the commission with I. Stephanie Boyce, Virginia Clegg of DAC Beachcroft and this article’s other author Matthew Layton being members.

If you would like further information on the commission and its work, please contact either of us or George Relph at commissionchiefofstaff@iod.com.

Lord Shinkwin is a Conservative peer; Matthew Layton is a partner and former global managing partner at Clifford Chance