Does hospitality cater for disabled workers?

You'd be forgiven for immediately thinking of someone in a wheelchair, but a disability can be any physical or mental impairment that limits one or more major life activities.

Impaired vision or hearing, learning difficulties, even conditions like epilepsy all come under the disability banner.

Statistics show that in Britain, nearly one in five people of working age (7 million, or 18.6%) has a disability, but only 50% of them are in work compared to 80% of the able-bodied community.*

Christopher Rawstron, vice president of operations, UK and Ireland, for the InterContinental Hotels Group, is committed to recruiting and developing employees from this massive talent pool. He has been working closely with local councils and job centres by holding open days in InterContinental Hotels.

"The hotel industry embraces diversity, because it is naturally diverse in nature. There are so many different hotel jobs that someone could do, and we welcome many different sorts of guests, so naturally our workforce is going to reflect that.

"In fact, the natural lean towards shift and flexible working can actually be an advantage in many cases, because it means your work fits more easily around things like appointments or commuting outside rush hour."

Intercontinental Hotels have brought the issue of disability in employment into sharper focus in recent years.

"Our first open day was held in Edinburgh in 2006, where we invited jobseeking members of the disabled community to come down to spend the day with us," continues Christopher.

"We identified people who could go straight to interview. We then sent others on a pre-employment course, developed with the help of Jobcentre and the RNIB, which gave them an introduction to basic customer service, food hygiene, presentation skills, etc.

"Those that chose not to pursue a role with InterContinental walked away with transferable skills they could then take to another company, so nobody really lost out!"

So, are hospitality jobs suitable for a person with a disability who wanted to swap careers or get back to work?

Many hotels, restaurants and bars are members of the Employers' Forum on Disability (EFD), the world's leading employers' organisation focused on enabling companies to become disability confident by making it easier to recruit and retain employees with disabilities.

Christopher says it's simply about awareness, education and challenging perceptions. "You cannot limit the opportunities of anyone by your own expectations. It's not a case of saying 'you couldn't do that,' it's about asking what you can do to help them.

"The average cost of making reasonable adjustments to accommodate an employee with a disability is around the £100 mark. It could be something as simple as printing on a different colour of paper or increasing the size of the font you use."

Facts and figures

There are currently 1.3 million people with disabilities in the UK who are available for and want to work.*
Employment rates vary greatly according to the type of impairment a person has
Only 77% of people with a disability have work related qualifications, compared to 91% of the rest of the population.*
Employees with disabilities are proven to stay loyal to a company for longer. Sickness rates are also lower.

With thanks to Liz Nightingale from the EFD and Christopher Rawstron from Intercontinental Hotels Group

*Office for National Statistics - Labour Force Survey, Jan - March 2009