Our mission is to alleviate the impact of disability in the workplace.

Here’s how we do it:

1. We support disabled people using the Social Model of Disability.

The normal ways of working are not always suitable to everyone, and this presents additional challenges that don’t exist for non-disabled people. If all staff had the same medical condition, the norms of working would be accessible.

Viewed from this perspective, our coaching focuses on the additional challenges of disability, commonly referred to as barriers, and these can be physical, social, cultural and attitudinal.

So, when we talk about supporting disabled people in our work, we mean people disabled by the barriers. This is the essence of the Social Model of Disability, which sits at the heart of our work.

2. We harness the benefits of different ways of thinking and doing, and use this to help disabled people towards their goals.

Our coaching programs support disabled people by helping them to better understand what they want and why they want it, and then we plan intentional and achievable actions that will help them get it. Our work will also include identifying barriers that can block or inhibit progress, so we can get to work on removing, working around or adjusting to them.

This support can be delivered in 1-to-1 and group coaching formats, and uses a non-directive (non-advice giving) approach that is informed by psychological and behavioural science.

We’ll share more detail about our coaching approach, and why we think it is such a powerful tool for working with disabled people, later on in our website.

3. We help companies and organisations develop inclusive working policies, so they can attract and retain disabled talent.

We do this in two ways.

Firstly, we offer Inclusive Leadership Coaching to help leaders better understand their role in creating workplace cultures and policies that are disability-informed.

Secondly, we can provide a 1 hour webinar and an interactive half-day workshop based on the Social Model of Disability. This educates all staff on the important role they play within it, whether they are disabled or not.

Company wide understanding of disability in the workplace, using the Social Model and not the Medical or Charity Model, provides systemic support for disabled people in the workplace. This creates diverse teams that benefit the business intellectually, creatively, socially and economically. We’ll talk in more detail about this further on in our website.

AI Generated photograph of a giraffe (our metaphor for a disabled person) sat at a desk, as a candidate for a job interview in an office setting, looking confident. AI image generated by The Disability Force using Magic Media in 2024

Now, here’s why we do it:

The disabled population makes up the largest minority group in the world.

Representing 16% of the global population, or one in every six of us, disabled people and their family form a viable part of your talent pool. Disability is very relevant to work and business because disabled people are the only minority group anyone can find themselves joining at anytime.

In the UK, 23% of the working aged population have a disability. Also, and here’s a crucial statistic, 80% of disabled people acquire their disability when they are of working-age. So, even if you are not actively recruiting disabled people, a sizeable percentage of your existing employees will transition into this minority group.

The disabled population are an important part of the economy.

When it comes to spending power, disabled people and their families in the UK have £274 billion. That figure is rising at 14% per annum. Globally, that spending power is $13 trillion. If you want to know the disposable income of disabled people in their own right, that is $1 trillion each year.

These figures show that disabled people and their family form a viable part of your consumer base. Again, even if disabled people are not already a part of your target demographic, a sizeable percentage will transition into this minority group. Can your business afford to ignore disability?

We can work with any Disability:

It could be a Physical Disability

or a Neurodiversity.

It can be a Visible, Invisible or Hidden Disability.

It could be an Acquired Disability,

or a Disability from Birth.

And, of course,

it could be any

combination of the above.

We can also work with anyone, at any level, and from any industry:

You could be an Executive,

or a Senior Leader,

or a Manager of a team.

You could be a

Business Owner,

or a Business Partner,

an Entrepreneur,

or a Sole Trader.

You could be an

Employee,

working solo on a project

or as a member of team.

Or, you might be a Freelancer.

However you like or want to work,

we can work with it!

This is because of our non-directive approach to coaching. You will learn more about this approach a little further into our website.

AI Generated photograph of a giraffe (our metaphor for a disabled person) sat working at a desktop computer in an office a modern and minimal office, with a pot plant on the desk. AI image generated by The Disability Force using Magic Media in 2024

Wondering about our use of the giraffe?

We have used the giraffe in our company logo, and for the imagery in our website, because we believe the giraffe serves as an excellent metaphor for disability.

Here’s why:

1. The icons regularly used to indicate disability aren’t actually that reflective of the disabled population. For example, only 1% of the world’s population are wheelchair users, but this is the most commonly used and recognised symbol representing disability. A more reflective symbol is difficult, because 80% of disabilities are hidden or invisible. So, we have chosen to use a metaphor.

2. We feel the giraffe also works as a counter-argument for the “if you hear hooves think horses” rhetoric that medical professionals are taught to use in medical school. This is something the disabled community challenges because there are many different animals with hooves, and of course the giraffe is one of them!

3. Each giraffe has their own unique coat pattern much like our human fingerprints. Also, there are a few collective nouns for the giraffe, a herd, tower and journey. We see our work as a journey we make together, disabled and non-disabled, towards our goal, which is to alleviate the impact of disability in the workplace!

IMAGE IDs: Both images were generated by The Disability Force using Artificial Intelligence (AI). We used Magic Media and Canva to generate our images to look like coloured photographs of giraffes in the workplace. They look very realistic, but of course they are not, because Giraffes cannot work in an office. Or, can they? Winky, tongue out emoji!

We will use non-gendered pronouns for our giraffes in our images, which we use as a metaphor to represent disabled people.

Image No.1: shows a giraffe sat at a desk, interviewing as a candidate for a job interview in a modern office setting. They look smart, confident and dignified.

Image No.2: shows a giraffe, again sat at a desk in a modern office setting, but this time they are at their desk working on what appears to be a spreadsheet on a computer.

Ready for more detail about our approach, and the reasons why we believe it is so effective?

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