Allowing disabled staff to flourish: 'How do we make this work?'

Four years ago, while struggling to come to terms with the consequences of a disabling paragliding accident, Toby Gordon-Smith, a London-based strategy director at Glanbia Performance Nutrition, promised himself that he would not allow the loss of his mobility to blight his career. In this, at least, he counted himself fortunate. Most of the other spinal injury patients in the hospital had manual jobs that required them to be able-bodied.

"I remember thinking their whole world had changed; but that didn't have to happen to me. My brain still worked, I could sit at a desk and I could use a PC." There was just one problem. He had no idea how, in a wheelchair, he would manage the travel his international role entailed.

Today Mr Gordon-Smith divides his time between Europe, the UK and the US. For this he thanks a boss who suggested that before attempting international travel, "to test the water" they should fly together to the company's Middlesbrough plant, a journey normally made by train. He managed the logistics and before long was flying unaccompanied, carrying his hand-luggage on his lap. "To be honest I now find travel very easy."

Mr Gordon-Smith's employer encouraged him to devise workarounds to continue his international role. As getting ready now takes longer, he avoids early flights and makes fewer, longer trips, scheduling his meetings in blocks.

Many talented people who suffer accidents, or who are born with disabilities, are not so well supported. Getting into buildings and on to public transport is a recurrent challenge. Even more demoralising are the low expectations that recruiters often have of workers with disabilities. As Paul Wilden, a senior banker at Standard Chartered bank in Singapore, who was born with a malformed, non-functional right ear, puts it: "There's often a perception that you might be able to do a clerical job, but you couldn't run a business."

Ajith Kubatoor, a Bangalore-based IT specialist now with Infosys, has experienced such prejudice. In 2000, shortly after graduating with a top degree that he saw as a career passport, he suffered a paralysing injury in a road accident. When he was ready, he was confident of finding a job quickly. Yet, more than 50 employers rejected his applications, until, eventually, IBM hired him. Though in a wheelchair, "I was still the same coder [as before my accident]."

Workers with disabilities in all cultures encounter prejudice from time to time. But in some countries the problem is compounded by legal systems that pay little attention to disability rights. For global organisations this poses a dilemma: how to live up to the aspiration to value employees equally in a world where there is no consensus over the responsibilities owed to those with disabilities.

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Approaches that focus merely on legal compliance disadvantage workers in countries that do not prioritise equality rights. As the world becomes more interconnected, they may also be bad for business, laying global employers open to accusations of double standards. Business Disability International, (BDI), a recently established employers' forum, aims to dismantle the barriers that block workers with disabilities from advancing, worldwide. Initiatives that its members advocate include adopting disability-friendly hiring practices internationally, making accessibility considerations integral to procurement processes, encouraging disability networks in which ideas are swapped and establishing "listening groups" in which workers with disabilities talk about the policy modifications that would help them.

Funding workplace adaptations centrally is another good practice, says Susan Scott-Parker, BDI chief executive. The idea, taking blindness as an example, is to give employees access to helpful technologies, such as software that reads out what is on screen, regardless of whether they work in a wealthy country that subsidises the employer's costs or a developing market. "In centralising we have removed the budgetary constraint [on local managers]," says Mark McLane who heads global diversity and inclusion at Barclays.

When it comes to tackling culturally ingrained prejudices, global employers face the issue of how far and how fast to push for consistency. A case in point is mental health. Although edging on to western wellbeing agendas, in many Asian cultures it remains a taboo topic.

There are no easy remedies, says Natalie Woodford, who heads talent and leadership development at GlaxoSmithKline. But she believes that with difficult-to-discuss subjects it is best to begin in markets "where some energy" has built up, before addressing the issue globally. Then organisations can experiment with different approaches. And, by starting in more open markets, it may be possible to persuade employees who have succeeded professionally despite a disability to share their stories, thereby reducing the stigma.

On an optimistic note, Karl Meesters, a Brussels-based project manager at Adecco, who works with the International Paralympic Committee to find corporate roles for former Paralympians, says that technology is transforming the outlook for disabled workers. Diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition aged 20 and now classed as blind, Mr Meesters' most prized possession is his screen-reader-enabled iPhone. He uses it to listen to emails and move around with minimal fuss, checking flight and train departures and hailing taxis via Uber. "When I arrive on time to chair an international meeting, I know it changes how others in the room perceive visually-impaired people."

Although his current focus is Europe, Mr Gordon-Smith has begun pondering how, in the future, he might become better acquainted with markets in Africa and the Middle East. With a driver's assistance, it might be possible to do the trips himself. Or he might entrust "the leg work" to a team member, thereby providing a colleague with a development opportunity. "From the outset the dialogue between myself and the company has always been 'how do we make this work?' - and we always have done."

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