89% of Aus SMEs have positive attitude towards disability

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The Disability Confidence Survey is the first national survey of how small to medium enterprises (SMEs) rate their awareness and inclusion of people with disability as both employees and customers.

The report surveyed 500 SMEs and found that 89 percent of Australian SMEs have a positive attitude to employing suitably skilled people with disability and 80 percent recognise they have customers with disability.

 It also found there was a lack of understanding and action which could be costly for businesses and mean that people with disability are missing out on access to jobs, products and services.

“The overwhelmingly positive attitude to both employees and customers with disability is extremely heartening but more action is needed,” said Suzanne Colbert, CEO of AND.

“With more than four million Australians having a disability this is an important segment for businesses seeking to reach as many customers as possible, as well as those who want to recruit from the entire talent pool and ensure their employees reflect their customers.”

 Colbert noted that the cost of ignoring the needs of people with disability can be very high.

“In the UK, studies have shown that as many as 83 percent of customers with disability had walked away from inaccessible services,” she said.

“Organisations like AND are here to help businesses through this process and build awareness of how to support access and inclusion of all people with disability in Australia.”

Jim Longley, Deputy Secretary, Ageing, Disability and Home Care, commented on the Disability Confidence Survey report and his involvement in the launch event, “Creating an industry benchmark to prompt and encourage companies to support access and inclusion of people with disability in Australia is a key imperative for our society.

AND is also developing an Australian Access and Inclusion Index, which will be available in 2016.  This will include a set of online tools and resources that will assist businesses and community organisations to assess and build their disability confidence.

Looking to the future, Colbert believes the outlook is positive. “We welcome the finding that 62 percent of respondents said they are likely to make changes in the next year to make it easier forcustomers with disability to do business with them. We intend to conduct the survey annually to measure progress over time.”

Disability Confidence Survey: Key Findings

  • 89% believe their organisation has a positive attitude to employing suitably skilled people with disability and 1 in 3 believe their organisation has employed people with disability.
  • 80% believe they have some customers with disability and 53% of these say they have done something specific to assist customers with disability in the past year.
  • 1 in 5 don’t think they have customers with disability but 60% of these have not proactively sought to find out if any of their customers have disability.
  • 62% of all respondents said they are likely to make changes in the next year to make it easier for customers with disability to do business with them.

For more information or to download the report, please visit the AND website.

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