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About these guides
We understand that while there can be common aspects, organisations work in different ways and what works for one, might not fit so well with another. These guides are written as an example of what best practice might look like in your organisation, but it may be that you have to adjust what is recommended to accommodate your particular circumstances.
Similarly the guides do not include detailed technical information as this would tie them to a specific technology or set of circumstances.Instead the guides convey important principals and approaches that can be applied in any industry and using any technology.Where appropriate the guides reference other sites and resources which contain more technical detail at the time of publication/last review.
Introduction
Technology Taskforce members recognise that listening and acting on the feedback from staff with disabilities and long term health conditions can help improve their experiences of working within an organisation. By listening, learning and acting, organisations will understand the needs of their staff. An open dialogue will help to ensure that the needs of staff and their feedback are heard and acted upon.
Although many of the Taskforce members have accessibility experts working with them, they know that because everyone experiences disability differently, regular consultation with those who will actually be using their systems produces better results. What staff think of the current state of what they provide, and any changes they plan to make can help shape the outcome more positively.
By listening, learning and acting organisations can become better at attracting, recruiting, supporting and developing a diverse and talented workforce. Staff with disabilities feel valued, empowered and enabled to achieve their full potential.
The rest of this document looks at how one of our members, Barclays Bank PLC, approaches customer consultation, the successes they’ve had and presents a case study that illustrates the work they’ve done. We have also referenced the work of HMRC to show how organisation can approach the same issues in different ways.
Susan Scott-Parker, Chief Executive and Founder of Business Disability Forum
Authors: Paul Smyth, Barclays,
Contributors: Sean Smith OBE, HMRC and David Caldwell, Barclays
Editors: Lucy Ruck and Bela Gor
1. Consultation Methods
Barclays uses a range of tools and methods to consult with and obtain feedback from staff with disabilities – some proactive and others reactive.
These include:
· Periodic surveys of entire workforce
· Dedicated surveys of disability network (‘Reach’)
· Disability network (‘Reach’) focus groups
· Disability network (‘Reach’) listening groups
· User testing panels
· Reasonable adjustments / work place assessment process
· Recruitment and training
· Disability Confidence Training Videos
It is vital to create easy and effective feedback mechanisms to continuously improve processes. There are many business as usual processes that can be leveraged to gain useful insight into the experiences of disabled staff across the organisation.
1.1 Periodic surveys of entire workforce
At Barclays they conduct an Employee Opinion Survey (EOS) – this is an anonymous annualised barometer of staff views. They are able to analyse the responses of staff split by those who have / have not told them about a disability which can prove insightful. The downside of this is that, to be recognised, staff must choose to tell them about their disability and many do not given the negative stigma perceived of doing so in the workplace.
As Barclays continues its accessibility agenda and disability confidence grows throughout the workforce they expect to see the proportion of staff telling them about a disability to increase, both because they are employing more people with disabilities and because existing staff are more open and confident about doing so. . Analysing the responses of disabled versus non-disabled staff can also be insightful, identifying where there are sizeable deviations in positive or negative opinion with a view to understanding the root causes. In recent years Barclays has identified that staff with disabilities have had a more negative outlook and/or faced more challenges with regards to training and career development opportunities which has then been a key focus area. Another common theme was that staff struggled in locating information and resources explaining what additional support and services were available to them – highlighting the increased need for clear and effective communications and relevant signposting to information.
In 2013 they launched the Barclays Values Jam, a three-day online forum open to all staff to ‘have their say’ and discuss and exchange views on Barclays’ Purpose and Values. The outputs identified actions and shaped the planning and thinking for how the organisation would embed the values going forward. The qualitative information outputted was grouped into themes and helped them to identify hot topics with regards to disability. This real-time social networking style suggestions box of ideas was great in letting staff decide the hot topics and then to discuss improvements.
1.2 Dedicated surveys of disability network (Reach)
Barclays commissioned a survey across their disability network Reach, undertaken by an external access consultant which gained over 100 responses. This gave them a great insight into respondents’ perceptions of the accessibility of the banking sector as well as more detailed feedback of what Barclays as an employer of disabled talent needed to start, stop and continue doing. They asked a subset of the survey questions to an additional 200 individuals with disabilities who bank with Barclays and other financial institutions too so that they could see how perceptions from external customers versus internal colleagues differed.
Survey outputs were a mixture of quantitative and qualitative responses in order to track progress over time with a prize raffle (including an iPad) to incentivise completion rates. One downside is that the survey consisted of individuals who had already pro-actively signed up to the voluntary ‘Reach’ network – i.e. individuals who had self-identified as having a disability, having an interest in disability or acting in a carer capacity for a family or friend member and this may have resulted in the results being skewed as respondents were already engaged in the disability agenda.
Areas of questioning included:
· The communication channels staff preferred to use
· What they find difficult to access at work, be this premises, systems, reasonable adjustments or general support and resources available
· Would they recommend Barclays as an employer to others
The network consists of and represents the needs of staff with disabilities so by surveying its members, it helps the network refresh its key priorities and work-streams. In recent years these have included mental health support and signposting, pan-disability awareness events, member engagement and external outreach programmes.
At HMRC forStaff Consultation, they also have a disability network. However they have within this specialist user groups for Dragon software and Visual Impairment (and they are in the process of setting up ones for Dyslexia and Hearing). A key feature of these groups isthat they have a broadinterpretation of 'Consultation' -they treat them as centres of expertise who, not only advise and suggest, but mentor and support other users.The key point here is integration - it's not just users and 'management'. The IT Helpdesk's Accessibility Support Team and the JAWS and Dragon Learning Facilitators team are standing members. They have fortnightly telecoms for the Dragon Group for example and they serve to allow all sides to share news, agree ways forwards etc. It's not just consultation - it's partnership.
1.3 Disability network (Reach) focus groups
Barclays have 5 focus groups open to all Reach network members but designed to target those with disabilities and those who have expertise in the concerned field of disability and policy; the groups are split by disability category (visual, hearing/speech, physical & medical, learning & social and mental health & wellbeing). These groups meet regularly (mainly monthly) and have a two way feedback mechanism – each group raises issues with subject matter experts to fix as well as being on hand to the business to provide advice, consultancy and user testing.
In addition to targeted addressing of issues, focus groups work collectively on pan disability issues such as establishing a buddy / mentoring scheme or in assisting HR in applying a disability lens when reviewing our HR policies. How the focus groups interact will differ too, mainly comprising telephone conference calls and intranet discussion boards although there are clear preferences per group (e.g. hearing/speech focus group prefer instant messaging, vision and learning/social focus group prefer talking over phone, etc.).
1.4 Disability network (Reach) listening groups
The bi-annual disability listening group meetings are open to members of staff who have told the network that they have a disability, giving them the opportunity to raise issues and voice their concerns to senior leadership and subject matter experts within the organisation as well as getting involved in suggesting solutions to these challenges. These listening groups help keep the business honest and help to identify and prioritise activities over the subsequent months. The format includes theme-led focus groups, open forum Q&A sessions and objective setting. Getting the focus groups to focus in on a handful of hot topics in break-out sessions, articulating the issues encountered and proposing recommended actions before playing back the groups thoughts to the wider listening group is a key element of the event, boosting participation and involvement of members.
1.5 User testing panels
One invaluable service that the Reach network provides to the business is consultancy on disability matters. Project teams are encouraged to consult with Reach user testers in the design, build or test phase of a project to ensure that the end product or process is as accessible and inclusive as possible by applying a diverse user testing programme. For IT, this covers anything with a user interface but also expands into physical accessibility or build environment (e.g. refurbished branches or offices) as well as training materials (e.g. reviewing disability confidence frontline staff training).
For material customer-facing projects in addition to disabled staff user testing Barclays has a governance process involving drawing on external expertise via a directory of access consultants and/or charities that can be used for more specialist, thorough or comprehensive user testing.
1.6 Reasonable Adjustments / work place assessments
When reasonable adjustments have been provided to enable individuals to carry out their roles productively and reach their full potential, getting feedback from them at the end of the application process as part of case tracking can help to identify issues with both the process itself and the adjustments made.
Metrics surrounding the process (case volumes, costs and time taken for each step in the process) are vital. It is equally important, however, to monitor and track end user satisfaction; asking the individual whether they got the adjustments & support they needed, whether it is helping them in their day job to be more productive, what they thought of the assessment, the general experience and duration of the overall process and any suggested improvements they may have. Comparing the experiences of end users with HR, IT and procurement teams in the process is also a useful tool in reviewing the success of the process.
1.7 Recruitment, training and barriers
As part of their recruitment processes, Barclays seek feedback from applicants with disabilities to enable them to monitor how many applicants have told them about their disabilities, and how they feel their recruitment processes worked for them.
They have used past knowledge of accessibility issues around our mandatory eLearning training curriculum, gained through feedback from staff through clear escalation routes, to ensure that future courses are accessible for all.
Where staff may come across general physical, technical or attitudinal barriers, Barclays have ensured that they can find clear routes to subject matter experts in order to escalate these barriers to decision makers. Barclays says that establishing these feedback mechanisms “helps ‘keep us honest’ and makes it simple for users to raise issues and suggestions with their work environment, with eLearning and system accessibility or with HR employment practices.”
1.8 Disability confidence training videos
Barclays frontline branch and telephony staff highlighted a knowledge gap in early 2013, both in general disability etiquette and communication advice as well as needing more clarity on specific accessibility aids and support on offer to disabled and elderly customers.
Barclays partnered with a specialist external film production company and access consultant, to film genuine customers with disabilities explaining in their own words the barriers they face in doing banking and what support or advice they would recommend to staff. A broad coverage of disability groups were covered and content was refined for maximum impact and helpfulness by partnering with Reach colleagues throughout the production process. The final videos are now being used to educate frontline staff and new starters on disability matters.
2 Case Study: ‘Living In Our Customers’ World’ accessibility awareness
In April 2013, Barclays ran a ‘Living in Our Customer’s World’ accessibility focused event, taking 130 of the senior business leaders of the Retail Bank for a one day offsite event of experiential and immersive learning. This included hearing first hand from external individuals with disabilities about the challenges they face with everyday life and banking, receiving direct feedback on what works and what does not from customers in small focus group sessions and providing the opportunity for attendees to get ‘hands on’ with disability simulation kit to experience themselves the physical constraints. Examples of accessibility aids and support and services currently available to disabled customers were also show-cased in order to boost awareness. External charities and staff with disabilities were also scattered throughout the audience to encourage discussions and steer conversations.