Blue-chip employers gathered this morning in the City for the launch of a 10-point recruitment protocol that will put the onus on recruitment agencies to provide barrier-free recruitment specifically for disabled candidates.

Produced by the Employers’ Forum on Disability (EFD), the protocol both outlines the requirements that clients will impose on agencies and sets out a 10-point Recruitment Service Provider Charter that recruitment partners will be asked to sign and commit to.

The measures include provisions such as a commitment to provide feedback to unsuccessful disabled candidates or candidates from disadvantaged groups more generally, and providing disability training to all employees on their legal obligations as a supplier of recruitment services.

Another provision calls on agencies to facilitate work trials and extended interviews for candidates disadvantaged by traditional assessment techniques, where appropriate.

Susan Scott-Parker, EFD chief executive, said that the work world was “surrounded by low expectations” of disabled candidates and how their access to work could be improved. “Only when we start to challenge these expectations,” she went on to say, will opportunities improve for disabled candidates and businesses which would potentially employ them.

Other speakers included Paula Lovitt of the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills and Graeme Elkins of staffing procurement agency de Poel.

Lovitt told the audience that the recruitment sector generally was “well run” but that sometimes the pace of the sector, such as pressure from clients to fill vacancies quickly, and the sheer numbers of candidates on their books could negatively affect their approach to effectively working with disabled candidates.

Speaking on behalf of de Poel, Elkins emphasised his firm’s commitment to contributing to barrier-free recruitment and briefly outlined the company’s year-old Placeability initiative, which aims to help employers adopt measures to help disabled candidates work in their businesses. 

He also pointed out that one in eight people in the UK have a disability. “How many people have you already employed that have a disability?” he asked.

Recruitment businesses and organisations that have committed to using the EFD’s Recruitment Protocal are: de Poel, Alexander Mann Solutions, Diversity Jobs, Reed, Equal Approach, GR Law, the Recruitment Society, and the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo). The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development are also among those organisations which have committed to the Protocol.