It has become much harder to ignore the value of having a diverse and inclusive workforce for any business that aims to seriously compete in today’s market space. More than ever, there is more demand for a world that caters to everyone. More and more consumers are driven by how much they agree with or relate to the policies and leaning of the businesses they patronize. A 2018 research showed that more customers are drawn to businesses that can communicate their ethical policies and standards and are more inclined to support the ones that agree with or reflect their beliefs. Also, another study by Forbes revealed that companies with above-average diversity tend to make a greater proportion of revenue from innovation than those who fall below the average diversity by a difference of 19%, meaning that diversity and inclusion translates to better financial gains. With these in mind, it is only important that any forward-minded business that intends to keep its competitive edge should make policies that reflect inclusion and diversity and put them into effective execution.

In developing diversity and inclusion policies, there is a need to be as inclusive as possible. This begins with an understanding of diversity’s broadness, which goes beyond gender, age group and ethnicity. A major aspect of diversity efforts should go towards the inclusion of PWD. This is especially important to note as most corporate bodies and businesses in Nigeria tend to leave out Persons with Disabilities (PWD), a demographic that makes up almost 15% of the total population, in their efforts. This attitude negates the very ideal of diversity and inclusion. In 2018, the federal government signed into law a prohibition act against all forms of discrimination against PWD. Besides, it is only right that no human being is denied the equal opportunity to seek a better life.

Your D&I policies that are made with PWD in mind should address the various barriers in your company system that prevent the inclusion of PWD in your workforce or make it difficult for them to work in your company. Some of the efforts that can be made in addressing the inclusion of PWD in your company include:

• Removing barriers that automatically exclude PWD from jobs: This means revamping the recruitment process of your business with PWD in mind. You can do this by watching the language of job descriptions, making job recruitment calls accessible to PWD, using an interview venue that is accessible to PWD and educating your HR and recruitment department against disability bias.
• Making the workplace accessible: Locating your work environment in physical structures that cannot be accessed by disabled people signifies that your inclusion policies do not cater to them.
• Making policy programs that educate your workforce on disability inclusion: Having employees who, for example, are unaware of how ableist language can hurt or target disabled people can make for a toxic work environment for PWD. Educate your workforce on disability inclusion.
• Involving PWD in the policy-making process: Having disabled people at the table when policies are being made is one of the ways to indicate a true dedication to disability inclusion.

Making these policies is not enough. You need to be able to tell if they are being implemented correctly and if they are meeting the required need. This can only be possible if you know how to measure these efforts you have put in with PWD in mind, and doing this implies data gathering. But before you decide on how to measure these efforts, you have to define your company’s diversity and inclusion goals, especially as regards PWD. Having an approach that is personalized to the specific need areas of your company is the way to go. This is what determines what you measure for and what metrics to look to.

To measure your company’s D&I efforts, you use metrics that can diagnose the problem and risk areas. Examples of such metrics include:

• Recruitment metric: This compares the number of disabled persons who apply to open positions advertised by your company to the number of non-disabled people who do. It helps you identify if there are barriers to your recruitment process that prevent disabled people from applying.
• Selection metric: This metric tracks the number of disabled people selected for appointment by your company to the number of non-disabled people. It sheds light on the selection biases that might exist in your recruitment process.
• Representation metric: This metric compares the number of employees who are disabled to those who are not and how that number performs in terms of the desired benchmark.
• Retention metric: This compares the average amount of time disabled people tend to spend as employees in your company to the average for non-disabled people. It gives you insight into how satisfied disabled people feel with the workplace.
• Promotion metric: This tracks how your company performs when it comes to promotion for disabled employees compared to non-disabled employees.
• Pay and benefits metric: These measure pay discrepancies between disabled and non-disabled people in your company.

Using these will give you a good idea of where your company stands regarding its inclusion of PWD. The results will lead you to the question of what you need to do differently and what you need to do better; this provides you with a good basis to revamp your policies, and they will also guide the measurement of your company’s progress when new inclusive policies and programs have been activated. It is usually best practice to employ blind survey tools where necessary when gathering data for these parameters. This is to keep respondent bias at a minimum. For example, when tracking for bias in the company’s selection process, this comes in handy. In the same vein, using blind surveys that track employee experience is a good way to get data towards job satisfaction and job retention as regards PWD.

Finding the right balance for your diversity and inclusion policy, especially as it affects the inclusion of PWD is a continuous process. You never stop reviewing your processes or tweaking your programs to get you to the desired benchmark.