We were delighted to have the opportunity to work with Acas to update their recruitment guidance in order to provide more information to employers about when they can reserve roles for disabled people.
Many recruiters are unaware that employers can reserve any role for a disabled person and we wanted to ensure that clearer advice for employers was more widely available for recruiters.
Working with our colleagues at Inclusion London, we contacted Acas to flag that more guidance was needed, and participated in a meeting with their advice experts before commenting on a series of drafts.
Our CEO Caroline Collier said:
“We were really impressed at how responsive and ready to listen Acas showed themselves to be. This guidance was needed because it’s not widely known that you can reserve any role for a disabled person. You only need to support that with a ‘genuine occupational requirement’ when you want to recruit someone with a specific impairment. With the current rate of employment for disabled people almost 30% behind that for non-disabled people, it’s vital that the message gets out there.
“This is a real win and we hope it will encourage many more employers to reserve roles for disabled people. I’d also like to thank our funders at City Bridge Trust for making this kind of user voice work for disabled people possible.”
You can read the new guidance on the Acas website