This month we are revisiting an article from February 2020:
Meaning well doesn’t equal inclusion
Real inclusion takes action as well as good intentions.
by Christina Ryan DLI CEO
It’s unusual to meet someone who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to employ disabled people, or to be working towards an inclusive workplace.
So, why is it still so hard to find good workplaces that are inclusive where disabled people feel comfortable and stay for the long haul? Why have the statistics on disability employment stagnated for decades, or gone backwards?
Because everybody thinks they’re doing something, and very few are.
Disability Leadership Institute (DLI) members recently shared their experiences of workplace inclusion. They identified that workplaces still aren’t getting inclusion right, with a continuing lack of real action, and despite many workplaces claiming they are inclusive.
There is no doubt employers mean well, but is meaning well enough to get inclusion over the line? Unfortunately not. Meaning well doesn’t equate to action, and it is real action that is needed.
DLI members had several comments and suggestions for getting inclusion right across a range of workplace touch points. Many of these suggestions come from managers of teams, CEOs, and highly qualified disabled people struggling to find work. All the suggestions are from disabled people as both practitioners of inclusion and participants in inclusive processes.
Inclusion needs to start at the beginning, during recruitment, and continue as an ongoing focus for management and leadership every day. Complacency is not an option. Never assume your organisation is fully inclusive, nor that you have no further work to do. There is always more to be done, just as there are always more ways of being inclusive, because diverse people are diverse and each person must be treated as an individual.
Recruitment:
Contacting people before their recruitment interview, or appraisal process, to ask what adjustments need to be made and then making those adjustments
Making sure interviewers can respond to questions about workplace adjustments at interview
Ensuring interviews are accessible so that people can focus on their interview and not their disability needs
Ensuring people are confident and comfortable asking for adjustment during the recruitment phase, this means having an accessible recruitment process
Providing questions before interview, meeting interview panel members beforehand, or not even having a formal interview process
Openly seeking disabled people for your workforce
Human Resources:
Ensuring there are disabled people working in human resources, and valuing the expert contribution of those staff
Asking all staff how they like to work/communicate and then creating shared profiles with that information, so everyone knows that everyone one else has particular strengths and preferences
Collecting data on diversity numbers and length of employment, including how many people openly identify as disabled
Management:
Taking organisation level policies and applying them at team level
Ongoing conversations amongst team members which may lead to flexible work arrangements on where and how work is done
Doing regular things like staff meetings and team gatherings in open reflective ways
Leadership:
Leadership leading by example, making sure all team members are checked on as part of daily routines to avoid exclusion and cliques developing
Maintaining an open conversation about gaps in inclusion and openly working to address those gaps
Workplaces claiming to be diverse should be planning, providing funding and seeking counsel for success in diversity, just as they would any other part of their business mission
Finally, and rather obviously: having more than good intentions by actually employing disabled people. Many organisations say that employing disabled people is a good thing to do, yet half of all disabled people remain unemployed.
Clearly good intentions are not good enough. Workplaces need to mean it and that means action.
Action starts from recruitment and continues throughout the organisation as part of daily operations. Action means policies, processes and an ongoing conversation about what inclusion looks like for this team.
Action also means management openly taking responsibility for addressing inclusion gaps as a leadership example.
Inclusion will look different for every team, because every team is different; however, there are some structural underpinnings that can be considered for any organisation that wishes to be inclusive, as well as being seen to be inclusive.
Thanks to the many DLI members who shared thoughts and experiences for this article.
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Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person
Keynote speech by Christina Ryan DLI CEO to the Strengthening Disability Advocacy Conference, 19 September 2024.
I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, whose beautiful country we are gathering on today. I also acknowledge other First Nations folk who are here with us.
We are at a crossroads in the disability rights movement. Many big processes have concluded and left many of us are asking whether these processes have taken us forward or back. We have also seen a shift in the disability advocacy sector and how it works.
We’ve had several years of major processes and reforms, including the Royal Commission, the NDIS review, the registered provider inquiry, more reviews of the advocacy sector, and most recently the NDIS legislation process. This has all been happening alongside our usual work of implementing the CRPD, engaging with the United Nations, and keeping in touch with our international colleagues about latest developments. A lot has been going on.
Many of us felt deflated with the government’s underwhelming response to the Royal Commission. We waited a long time for the government to work out how it would respond, and ultimately, they couldn’t even accept the recommendation that disabled people should be consulted. It has left a lot of people asking where to from here?
Disabled people fought hard for the Royal Commission. We then committed a lot of trust and energy to making sure it was the best we could make it. Then our various governments, state and federal, couldn’t find the courage to use it as a catalyst. Rather they seem to have found it awkward and inconvenient. Then other processes were forced upon us, sometimes with very short timeframes like the NDIS legislation changes, and we once again engaged in those reviews and legislative reforms to do the best for our community to move things forward in a positive direction.
It has been very difficult to see if we are achieving any real change with these processes. It is always hard to see change when we are right in the middle of things, when we are working flat out at the coalface every day doing our best to make things happen, but ultimately these processes have all contributed to change, some of it big and some of it incremental.
Let’s pull back to the bigger picture; our disability rights movement is about equality and how we are getting equal. So, what has been happening there? How have all these processes been making a difference to disabled people getting equal? Are we really implementing the CRPD?
Power
When I look back over the last decade one big change becomes obvious: disabled people are now expected to be in the room. A decade ago, we were knocking politely and asking that disabled people be part of the conversation, that we be a part of discussions about how our lives looked and how much we controlled them. I look back to the NDIS build process and recall that many of the working groups had one single disabled person on them, and often we had to fight to have that one disabled person in the room.
Disabled people now have power that we have never had before. We have gone from asking to be in the room, to expecting to be in the room. Sure, we are yet to be there in the numbers we should be, and we are rarely if ever there as the key policy designers and decision makers. We are not yet there as government ministers or heads of departments. We still have only 4 openly disabled parliamentarians across the 950, or so, members of Australian parliaments state and federal.
However, no process about disability is considered legitimate today unless disabled people are there. Our voices are stronger than ever. We have developed our own power.
What I am not seeing is the disability community using our power consciously or deliberately. Somehow, we are still tapping politely on doors and asking to have a say, just like we did a decade ago. It’s time to stop this, to recognise that we do have power and to start expecting to be part of the big conversations. Every disabled person in this room today has power and I would like to see you using it.
We have colleagues fighting right now insisting that the new CEO of Vision Australia is from the blind and vision impaired community. United Blind Leaders have circulated an open letter insisting that a transparent and accountable process is undertaken to achieve this.[1] You can sign it at change.org. (Update: the day before the conference, Vision Australia announced that it would change its recruitment process and also include being blind or vision impaired as a desirable selection criteria.)
The Deaf President Now campaign at Gallaudet University of the Deaf back in the 1980s was the result of many individuals standing up and saying, “we do not accept degraded status”.[2] They succeeded in getting the first Deaf person appointed as chair of the university board, because they refused to accept anything less.
Our New Zealand colleagues were appalled in 2022 when the head of the new Ministry of Disabled People was announced, and it wasn’t a disabled person. They fought hard for this ministry and did not want to see it going the way of other disability specific agencies. So, they refused to accept the appointment. They let the government know that the appointment wasn’t legitimate or credible and insisted that a disabled person be appointed. Within a few days the appointment was renamed as “interim” while a disabled person was found, and you bet they found one!
And who can forget Stop The Tram? A campaign that has recently been revived started in Melbourne in the 1990s to get accessible trams and stops. This campaign was an outstanding example of disabled people using our power to make change. A whole heap of people chained themselves to the front of Bourke Street trams in flash protests that held up traffic for hours. It changed a lot of things, including the national transport standards. Many of us now enjoy an accessible inner city Melbourne tram system as a result.
Throughout history, those in power have never given it away. Power is not ceded by those who have it. When it changes hands, it is because others have stepped forward, moved alongside and taken it. If disabled people want equality, if we want to be in the rooms of decision making about our lives then we must recognise our power, own it and start using it.
When we see appointments being made to disability specific or relevant roles, it is within our power to accept or reject those appointments. It is up to us to insist that disabled people are appointed to run our organisations, our service providers, our offices of disability, and to the various statutory appointments like commissioners for disability or heading our regulatory agencies like the safeguards commission. If we really want equality, it is also time we got into the parliaments and into the cabinet rooms.
When non-disabled people are appointed, we can say: “no, go back and do better.” Just as our forebears have done in various campaigns, we can reject others speaking for us or being in positions of power that make decisions about our lives.
We can also start saying no when policy or processes are not acceptable to us. When governments tell us they will only accept 13 of the Royal Commission’s recommendations we have the power to say: “no, go back and do better.” Not good enough.
Disability advocacy has also evolved. We have reached a point where it has become offensive for anyone other than disabled people to speak for disabled people. This includes frontline individual advocates, who now work using a rights based approach and understand that they do not speak “for” a person, but rather are there to support a disabled person to be heard, in line with the CRPD expectation of support being provided so that a disabled person can engage in a particular system or process.
Our allies have become those who step back and make space for us to be in the room, to be heard, to be respected as equals. Our allies help us to do our work, hep us to be strong, support us to show up. They have our backs and make our work possible. In the disability community allies do vital work that makes it possible for disabled people to do our work getting equal, but they do not and cannot do our work. They do not have the expertise of lived experience.
Those who are not our allies, who are not creating space, are not supporting us and putting us forward are lagging behind and it’s time for them to go back, have a think and come back when they are ready to do better.
Disabled people are no longer prepared to ask, we now expect those who are making decisions that affect us to be us.
Productivity
Australia is having a productivity crisis. For at least 20 years we have been struggling to improve our international competitiveness. For even longer we have been towards the back of the OECD pack when it comes to disability employment. I sometimes wonder if solving disability employment might not also assist with improving our international competitiveness and productivity.[3]
Australia needs our disabled people to be part of fulfilling our potential as a country. This isn’t just a buzz phrase; it is a serious economic problem. Around one fifth of the Australian population struggles to find work and struggles to build careers in our chosen fields. With around 5 million Australians with disability, we are talking big numbers who are not contributing as we would like to.
Disabled people are needed, and yet we are shut out from being part of the solution. We don’t just find it hard to get work, we are rarely seen in any senior leadership positions, whether it is in the public, private or community sector. We must start with our advocacy organisations and our service providers, while also looking at any government position related to disability. If disabled people are not being appointed, we should be asking why, reject the appointments, and send recruiters back to do better. This needs to happen for the country, not just for us and getting equal.
Reputable studies have shown that disabled people are 10 per cent more innovative in the workplace than the people we work alongside.[4]
A more recent study showed that when disabled people are team leaders and supervisors, our teams are far more productive.[5] When those teams are also largely teams of disabled people, they become even more productive.
So why isn’t Australia going full pelt on building our disability leadership and our disability workforce, right across all sectors?
For at least the last 3 decades the Australian policy push has been for entry level employment. What I call the “get a job” policy. Yet, various studies show that to generate culture change and build more inclusive workplaces you need diverse leadership. Studies also show that disability leadership provides for greater innovation and productivity.
Disabled people aren’t superhuman, but we do see things differently and we are outstanding problem solvers. We are great at finding workarounds and making systems work. Disability leaders are masters of flexibility and adaptability to circumstance. If you want something done, a disability leader will find a way to do it.
We also know that diverse leadership is the key to building and sustaining a diverse workforce. Yet, for some reason Australia is lousy at appointing disabled people to senior positions, whether it be in government, corporate, community or academic sectors. Everyone seems to be talking diversity; except they keep forgetting disability diversity. When they do talk disability diversity, they don’t mean leadership, they mean entry level. Yet it is when we have disabled people in leadership positions that productivity and innovation increase. Why isn’t Australia getting the message?
Well let’s make sure it does.
We need disabled people across all fields, across all sectors, and in our parliaments. That means you, me, all of us. This must become our frontier work, the tough and difficult job of being the first, and often only, disabled person in your workplace or at your level, but it must be done. The job of the disability rights movement is to support each other as we infiltrate all of these systems, workplaces, and institutions. It’s a long game and it is going to be a tough fight, but it’s one we must take on to tackle the continuing ableism and prejudice that continues to govern our lives.
More and more disabled people are being open about their disability at work, and we must recognise how hard it still is for people to be doing this. By backing each other through our networks, our community and our professional organisations like the Disability Leadership Institute we can make it easier for the next person and the one after that.
When people on the inside are unable to speak out, our advocates and change makers can. We are going to need both contributions to get to where we are going. The disability rights movement is big and diverse, and it is going to take all of us, across all of our intersectional spaces, to get to the equality we are looking for.
We can start by saying no and expecting better.
It is time we expected to be in board rooms, executive offices and in parliaments as decision makers, not just about disability but right across all fields because that is what Australia really needs if we are going to be a powerhouse 21st century economy.
Disabled people are in a very different position to where we were a decade ago. We now have power and a voice, and we must learn how to use it. It is time we told the organisations and governments that affect our lives to go back and start doing better.
Most of us enjoy a nice morning tea. The chance to catch up with colleagues, move away from our desks, and celebrate something over tea and cupcakes.
For the disability community many of these morning teas are centred on launching Disability Action Plans in one form or another. Months, even years, of work can go into developing a good action plan and celebrating that with a launch is a great thing to do. Acknowledging all the consultation and codesign work, the contributions of many people, and the beginning of a new era for organisations as they turn towards a more inclusive future.
What we don’t see, though, are morning teas to celebrate the outcomes of those plans. What happens at the end of 3 or 5 years when the plan expires? Where are the morning teas that acknowledge the work that has gone into implementing the plan and making the gains that it aspired to?
Sometimes organisations don’t achieve the aspirational goals they have set. Like all plans and goals, this happens. Rather than admitting that the plan was ambitious and using the lessons learned as a way of doing better in the future, some organisations quietly forget that they made a big fuss and stop talking about their plans. Organisations that once proudly and publicly declared their intentions suddenly go quiet. Some remove their plans from their websites or cease reporting gains in their annual reports. There was a period a few years ago when it was almost impossible to find any mention of Disability Action Plans or their outcomes on government websites. Fortunately, those days seem to be over.
Where are the morning teas to acknowledge the end of a plan? A celebration of the lessons that were learned, and ownership of any mistakes made. Why are organisations embarrassed by not achieving lofty goals, or by not exactly hitting a target?
It’s time to start planning end of plan morning teas! While it’s lovely to have a launch and to get excited by what the future might hold, we should also be unafraid of small gains, of not quite reaching big aspirational goals, and of learning from our mistakes. The outcomes that have been achieved should be celebrated. Every small step represents a gain for the disability community, and often gains are few and far between.
Next time you attend a launch morning tea, ask what the plan is for the outcomes celebration. Whatever those outcomes are they are worth it.
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Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person
Disabled people are consigned to the room next door.
Disability leadership happens in the rooms next door.
Few disabled people are in positions of power and decision making; we rarely sit on the boards, in the parliaments, or on the executive teams, even when disability is the central issue being discussed. Disability leaders are consigned to advisory groups and must tap politely on the door to be heard, waiting for the moment when it suits those inside.
Recently, Disability Leadership Institute members have been discussing anger and being angry. It seems many of us are angry a lot of the time. Being angry is a natural consequence of being constantly marginalised and told you do not belong, you don’t fit. Anger is also what happens when we see injustice all around us.
We tap politely on the door and ask to be remembered:
– when pandemic plans are being formulated;
– when vaccination is being rolled out;
– when we require adjustments at work;
– we tap politely so that we can participate equally in meetings; and,
– when policy about our services is being designed.
Yet we are consistently ignored, told others know best, or just forgotten.
Disability leaders consistently see non-disabled people speaking for us; we notice the issues we raise are not listened to; and we see disabled people being harmed or dying because of gaps in policy and action. DLI members have talked about becoming angry, and then being told to be polite, to be nice when raising critical issues, otherwise we will not be listened to.
Denying the anger of someone is a way of shutting them down. It is a form of silencing. It has become a tool of the privileged inside the room, used to marginalise those who are outside. Rather than show leadership by listening to anger, and understand the causes of that anger, those in power and authority close inward and suggest we are emotional or hysterical. Our anger is turned back upon us as a weakness that proves we are incapable of leadership or clarity.
Anger is not aggression, nor is being angry rude. We are told we should not be angry, yet it is only when we become angry that our experience of discrimination and marginalisation becomes clear to others. Our anger is rejected and silenced by those who have marginalised our voices and our expertise. The privilege of rejecting anger belongs to those who get to decide what is listened to and what is not. These are unlikely to be disabled people because disabled people are rarely in positions of power and authority. Disabled people are consigned to the room next door.
Why should disability leaders be silent about the levels of violence we see, or about being forgotten in pandemic policy, or being deprioritised in the vaccination rollout, or when poor government policy is imposed upon us, or when we are overlooked for senior appointments yet again?
Being angry does not mean being rude, although it is sometimes interpreted this way. Being angry does not mean being aggressive, although it is often interpreted this way by those we are raising issues with. Being angry does not mean being destructive, although we are often trying to deconstruct systems of oppression when expressing anger.
Disability leaders are highly constructive about being angry about violence, marginalisation, oppression, and the deaths of members of our community through poor policy or inaction. We are experts in using our anger to make a difference; recognising its impact and making it count. We are experts in being polite about being in the room next door, left out of decision making with our expertise unrecognised. Anger has become a necessary part of how we do leadership.
Our anger can make others uncomfortable, but it is through our anger that those in positions of power and authority (the people inside the room) realise that we do not accept what they are saying, or the consequences of leaving us in the room next door. We do not accept their discrimination. Our anger threatens their power and authority, it reminds them that their decisions are poor, and their expertise is lacking.
This anger will not subside until we no longer need to tap politely on the door, until we are part of decision making and policy development, until we sit inside the rooms of power and authority. Until we are equal.
(This article is revisited, it was first published by the DLI in 2021).
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Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person
Many government agencies in Australia now use external recruitment companies to fill high level statutory appointments. They pride themselves on recruitment happening at arms length from decision makers. Unfortunately, most of these recruitment companies have little experience in disability leadership and even less understanding of the career paths of successful disability leaders.
Even when disability leaders are shortlisted for senior positions, recruitment panels and processes continue to use outdated “merit” based recruitment strategies which frequently overlook highly qualified and competent disability leaders in favour of those with no background in disability and no competence in the nuances and political sensitivities that have become vital to delivering the high pressure big budget outcomes now dominating disability policy and program areas.
When governments choose to do so, they seem able to find highly competent and qualified disabled people to fill positions, but they rarely choose to do so. They are not really seeking people who understand disability and the delicate politics of disability. Rather, they prefer to perpetuate the status quo of plodding ableism which misses the importance of consultation and codesign and imposes convenient solutions on the disability community. Solutions which keep the existing power structures in place and ensure the discomfort levels of those inside those power structures are minimised.
Change is often uncomfortable, and allowing disabled people into the rooms of power and decision making seems particularly discomfiting. Disability leaders often operate differently, and that difference causes discomfort. Disability leaders also know disability through lived experience, and that experience remains awkward, even threatening, to non-disabled people who have worked their way to the top through traditional means. Those inside the rooms of power deny access by suggesting that disabled people do not “fit” into the existing culture. What they mean is “the change you bring makes us too uncomfortable, so we are keeping you out to avoid that discomfort.” They have even changed the meaning of lived experience to include non-disabled people who have relationships to disabled people in an attempt to address this discomfort.
Culture comes from the top. Not having disability leaders in decision making rooms, means culture change isn’t happening, and the status quo is perpetuated. Non-disabled people continue to succeed in these “merit” based recruitment processes, poor policy and programs continue to be rolled out, and discomforting culture change is avoided. The Disability Leadership Institute continues to see eminently qualified disability leaders overlooked for positions, including disability related positions which require substantial disability expertise – many are not even shortlisted. Why? Because they do not have the same career paths as non-disabled candidates, and/or their expertise in disability is not valued and its certainly not welcome.
To succeed would be to confront the ableist power structures and create a culture change that governments say they support but continually fail to prove through implementation. So, disability leaders are kept out and the comfortable status quo remains.
Historically, disabled people have been seen as less than, as not as intelligent or competent, unable to face pressure or be resilient. In some cultures, kings who became disabled became ineligible to rule. Only the strongest and fittest were accepted as leaders. While these outdated ways of thinking rankle today, they still form the core of most of the cultural assumptions about disability and about what disabled people can do. They still form the core of the ableist power structures that dominate our society.
Leaders create and hold the culture of organisations. This is why it is crucial that governments and others actively appoint disability leadership to their senior ranks. Without a deliberate proactive campaign appointments will not result, and the culture of organisations will remain exclusive of disability. For organisations centred on disability policy and programs this has resulted in a catastrophic shortfall which perpetuates bad policy and delivery.
The continuing lack of disabled people in senior positions proves that existing recruitment processes are unable to produce an outcome that will change the status quo; a critical mass of disability leaders. The concrete ceiling will remain firmly in place unless specific deliberate directives are made by governments, ministers and agencies that disabled people will be the result of any process. Without such commitment, nothing will change.
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Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person.
“Not like you” means people who approach problems differently, achieve outcomes differently, and who might look and sound different.
Disability Leadership Institute members regularly report on ways that their workplaces insist they look the same, sound the same, approach problems the same, and work to achieve outcomes the same way as their manager or other team members. Sometimes this seems to be about “fitting in” and sometimes it seems to be generated by the manager’s discomfort with being around a disabled person, or in approaching work in a way that the manager isn’t familiar with.
This is a form of discrimination and harassment. It is also an effective way to prevent the disabled person from working freely and productively. It is a very effective way of obliterating the diversity in the room.
Somebody who stops being who they are and “fits in,” who works to change the way they work, is assimilating. Assimilation is not diversity, it is sameness.
The point of diversity is to embrace difference and acknowledge its contribution to innovation and problem solving. When we put two heads together, we get a different outcome. When we put many heads together, we get a very different outcome.
Why then do we have so much trouble embracing diversity in our workplaces? Difference, people who are not like you, makes for better decisions, better outcomes and faster problem solving.
Many disability leaders report leaving their jobs because someone new comes into the team or into management. The most common reason is that the new person expects them to be someone they cannot be. They are expected to lose their difference, to become the person that the new person wants. To be just like the new person. To be not disabled. This is assimilation; you are welcome here so long as you look, work, and behave like me.
Everyone is different. Every human is different. Yet, for some reason, disabled people are expected to not be different. We are expected to twist ourselves into being the same as other people so that we fit in.
This is damaging, it is reducing the effectiveness and productivity of highly qualified staff, and it is preventing the realisation of inclusive and diverse workplaces where all are welcome.
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Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person.
