BT has called on businesses and public sector organisations to join them in promoting equal treatment in the workplace for people with facial disfigurements.   

Speaking this week in support of charity Changing Faces, Caroline Waters, BT’s head of people and policy, told an audience of employers that facial disfigurement could represent the final frontier of discrimination if steps were not taken to acknowledge and address its existence.

The aim of any organisation should be inclusion of people with every variety of difference, Waters urged: “We should routinely expect that people are going to be different. The real key is allowing people to be different.”

BT has embedded ‘Face Equality at Work’ awareness into its recruitment practices, Waters told Recruiter. “It’s a very practical process really.”

Speaker Joanne Corbin, a Changing Faces champion, said she had experienced first-hand the impact of facial discrimination when recruiters could not maintain eye contact with her during interviews. “This is not about being PC [politically correct] or a PR exercise,” Corbin said, “this is about giving applicants a fair chance.”

www.changingfaces.org.uk