Recruiters don’t need a business case to hire more people from minority and disadvantaged groups, according to BT’s head of people and policy.

Speaking at the launch of Clearkit, an online resource to help businesses recruit more disabled people, Caroline Waters told Recruiter: “If you really believe in meritocracy, you just have to reach out to all the available segments in the population.If you do that you will recruit the best people and the company will deliver the best results.”

Meanwhile, many recruiters are actively taking special measures to increase the numbers of disabled people they employ.
Sonia Sharples, head of HR at Poundland, told Recruiter that removing store managers’ fears about recruiting disabled people had been key to the company hiring 198 people with disabilities in the past 12 months.

Describing these fears as irrational, Sharples said: “When people think of disability they think of extreme disability, rather than the vast majority [that are not extreme].

“It’s just fear of legislation; for example, if I take someone on will I have a discrimination claim [in the future]? There is also the fear about what I can and can’t say, and the fear of not knowing.”

Sharples said that Poundland had partnered with Remploy, who spoke to managers, giving them information and helping to support the recruitment process.

Jan McCarthy, HR director of cerebral palsy charity Scope, told Recruiter that introducing a new policy of reserving more jobs for disabled people had been vital in increasing the percentage of its employees with a disability from 5% in 2005 to its present 25%. “We said ’we want to turn this on its head’, and managers now have to justify why a post shouldn’t be reserved.” She said this was fully compliant with legislation, where certain groups were under-represented at Scope.

Yvonne Foster, head of resourcing at E.ON, said among the measures it has taken was the removal of the requirement for graduates to have a driving licence. This could be regarded as discriminatory, said Foster.

It was also important to be careful with job descriptions, she added. “For example, saying ’we are looking for someone who is energetic and flexible’ might put off someone in a wheelchair from applying.”