Conference workshops

A. Engaging with your disabled staff

How can you enhance the working life of your disabled staff, ensure they want to continue working for you and allow them to contribute to the success of your business?

Appropriate and effective staff engagement can ensure that disabled staff feel involved, achieve career progression and receive timely and effective reasonable adjustments. It can also help you to achieve senior buy-in on disability, and to demonstrate the achievements of your organisation in this area.

This workshop will focus on utilising methods of employee engagement such as employee networks, staff surveys, monitoring and reasonable adjustment processes to ensure that you improve the way your business operates as an employer and a service provider. 

B. Encouraging disclosure of disability in your workplace

Understanding the issues relating to disclosure from both the organisational and individual viewpoint is fundamental to becoming a more disability confident organisation. 

This workshop will give you a better understanding of disclosure and how to collect data effectively. It will help you to understand your legal obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), supported by case law on the subject, and how this might affect your policies and procedures. 

C. Managing stress and mental ill health

Developing a working environment that promotes good mental health and encouraging supportive and responsive management practices is a core part of sustainable employment practices.

Whilst stress itself is not covered by the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), work-related stress is a leading occupational health problem in the UK. As stress related absence becomes more and more common, organisations need to understand what stress means and how to prevent and manage it in the workplace.

This workshop will help you to understand stress and how it links to disability, including the impact of long term stress and mental ill-health as well as learn what reasonable adjustments can be put in place for employees to create a healthier working environment. 

D. Disabled customers in a changing world

Understanding the changing world and its impact on your customers both now and in the future is fundamental to your business' success.  By 2031, 27 million (one third) of the UK population will be over 50.  As UK demographics change, your business will need to move quickly in order to address this change. 

Understanding who your customers are and how to continue to attract and retain disabled customers is key to tapping into the £80 billion spending power of disabled people.

This workshop will help you to address the changing demographics in the UK and debate what this means for your organisation, sharing with other members, how you ensure that you are a business of choice for disabled people.