Disability confident businesses reinforce social cohesion and will benefit from increased economic competitiveness.

Changing attitudes and increased employer flexibility have helped lift the number of disabled people in work in the UK from 43% to 50%.[iv] However continued exclusion from the workplace and the marketplace has a negative impact on millions, placing:

• a financial cost on society
• a taxation burden on business and
• adversely affecting national productivity and competitiveness.

Addressing disability related exclusion is essential for sustainable economic development and greater social equality.

There is a disability dimension to many factors of disadvantage. Disability and poverty are closely interrelated [v]

• Three out of 10 disabled adults of working age in the UK live in poverty [vi]
• People in the poorest fifth of the population are two and half times more likely to become disabled in a year than those in the top fifth[vii]

Disabled people are more likely to be excluded from education:

• 30% of disabled people in South Africa have no education at all, compared to 13% of non-disabled people [viii].

Living standards for disabled people in the US are falling even as incomes for the rest of the population rise.[ix] In the USA, the UK and elsewhere, the risk of poverty continues to rise for those with disabilities, despite the fact that it is falling for others.[x]

State support for disabled people, many of whom want to work, is very expensive.

• Disability benefits in Europe on average account for more than 10% of social spending. [xi]
• In 2002, the USA spent $213 billion to support working age disabled people and their dependents...the equivalent of 2% of the nation's GDP.[xii]

The waste of the productive capabilities of so many is expensive for business.

• One Canadian study reported that the lost productivity costs alone, due to all forms of disability, accounted for more than 5% of total GDP.[xiii]
• Musculoskeletal disorders are the single greatest contributor to lost European productivity and cost employers more than @24.5 billion [xiv]
• 7.8 million people of all ages live with chronic pain in the UK [xv]; 25% of those diagnosed with chronic pain go on to lose their jobs and in 49% of cases chronic pain also leads to depression. Pain is the second most common reason given by claimains of incapacity benefit
• 77% of the total 240,000 people in the UK with M.E. have lost their jobs because of the illness, with a cost to the nation of £6.4billion a year [xvi]. Before developing M.E., 63% of those questioned worked full-time, compared to 6% after. Over a quarter of those who lost their jobs were either dismissed or forced to resign.

An alternative?

Disability confident business will be well placed to help shift the status-quo towards a more sustainable and flexible labour market. Employers pioneering the business led ‘Recruitment that works' process, which provides job-preparation training and carefully ‘pulls' candidates to vacancies, have achieved high rates of retention in hard to fill positions and helped create a net benefit to the economy of £6,548 per individual.[xvii]

If the one million disabled people now supported by Incapacity Benefit, who say they want to work, were helped to find jobs over the next decade, Britain would save £7 billion in benefits and make unquantifiable productivity gains. [xviii]

Overcoming inequality while creating a society to which we all contribute is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice - and justice enriches us all.

Duncan Mitchell, Vice President & Managing Director, UK & Ireland, Cisco Systems Ltd.

Sources

1. [i] Rising poverty in the midst of plenty' Burkhauser, Houtenville, Rovba, Cornell, April 2005.
2. [ii] Moore R, Mao Y, Zhang J, Clarke K, Economic Burden of illness in Canada 1998; 2
3. [iii] John Hutton, speaking in the House of Commons, 24 January 2006, Hansard.
4. [iv] ACAS, Labour Force survey
5. [v] Disability and Inclusive Development: Special Report, July 2005
6. [vi] Guy Palmer, Jane Carr and Peter Kenway, ‘Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2005,' Joseph Rowntree Foundation; ACAS
7. [vii] Tanya Burchardt, ‘Social exclusion and the onset of disability, Joseph Rowntree, November 2003.
8. [viii] South Africa Census 2001
9. [ix] Rising poverty in the midst of plenty' Burkhauser, Houtenville, Rovba, Cornell, April 2005.
10. [x] ‘Has the employment rate of people with disabilities declined?' Stapleton, Burkhauser, Houtenville, Cornell ILR, December 2004
11. [xi] Banks J, Kapteyn A, Smith JP, van Soest AHO. International comparisons of work disability. Tilberg University 2004:43.
12. [xii] ‘Has the employment rate of people with disabilities declined?' Stapleton, Burkhauser, Houtenville, Cornell ILR, December 2004
13. [xiii] Moore R, Mao Y, Zhang J, Clarke K, Economic Burden of illness in Canada 1998; 2
14. [xiv] The Chronic pain Policy Coalition
15. [xv] Thiehoff R, Economic significance of work disability caused by musculoskeletal disorders. Orthopade 2002
16. [xvi] Survery and Statistical Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, 2006
17. [xvii] Recruitment that Works analysis, TRIPOD report, 2005
18. [xviii] John Hutton, speaking in the House of Commons, 24 January 2006, Hansard.