Disability Confident Accredited

Harley Longley, People Business Partner, Sheffield College

At Sheffield College, we were awarded the Disability Confident Leader Level 3 accreditation in 2023. We want to continue to foster an inclusive workplace that values diversity and supports employees with disabilities. We are very proud to have such a diverse student body and want this to be reflected within our workforce, so it is as equitable, inclusive and diverse as possible.

To achieve the accreditation, we completed a comprehensive review to identify areas for improvement. Our initial aim was to provide awareness and develop the tools and resources for staff to learn more about disabilities and health conditions, and the ways that these can be supported within the workplace.

Our challenge was knowing where to begin, as there are so many ways to develop a disability-confident culture. It started primarily as a people-led process but lots of colleagues were keen to get involved and therefore, it evolved into a cross-college initiative.

We wanted to ensure that our recruitment process was accessible for all candidates and ensure our hiring managers were confidently embedding our values into our recruitment processes. We implemented an inclusive recruitment strategy including blind shortlisting, a guaranteed interview scheme, providing guidance for disabled candidates and training our hiring managers on disability confidence.

We identified that the most important people to engage with to provide support for disabilities was staff with disabilities. A Disability Working Group was established to gain feedback on what we are doing well and what can be improved. This has allowed us to provide initiatives such as accessibility walks, better signage, improved learning and development provision, and the development of the Equality Impact Assessment process.

Staff also identified that it was important for their colleagues to identify where they can access support whether they have a disability or not, and as a result, we provided Disability Equality Awareness training for everyone, and have integrated it into the college induction. We also introduced Disability Confidence training for line managers to provide them with the tools to support their staff.

Through our annual disability confidence surveys, our results show that staff with disabilities and health conditions feel very supported. We are also seeing an increase in declared disabilities and health conditions, which is allowing us to continually develop and improve the support we offer to staff. We are on a journey from good to great and will continue to work towards improving our practice every day.