4 Organisational Disability Measurement and Reporting in the UK

A new demand-side policy approach to narrowing disability-related employment disadvantage in the UK requires that the government and organisations carefully consider how to enhance organisational workforce data collection on disability. Within organisations, identifying disability inequality, the impact of management practice and employees covered by disability equality legislation are only possible where disability is accurately measured. However, the coverage and quality of existing organisational data is poor, such that it restricts the development and evaluation of policy and practice at both the national and organisational levels. This data deficit, and the need for a lead from government to address it, is insufficiently recognised. Learning from national data collection and monitoring, this chapter provides a set of recommendations to promote organisational data collection on disability based on an approach that is useful, meaningful and manageable for the organisation, and which will have significant benefits for national policy development.