We have also seen changes with training providers and employers who are adopting recruitment strategies – including outreach to disabled communities, schools and colleges, offering job-shadowing opportunities in their organisations, trial commute runs and ‘get-to-know-your-colleagues’ lunches – and inclusion policies and are actively collecting more demographic data about their employees.
However, while this good practice is happening, the report concluded that the sector is not yet doing enough to consistently promote and utilise the EmployAbility Leisure Guides and to support the training and employment of disabled people in a collaborative way.
Plus the results of the Annual Disability and Activity Survey (2023-24) by Activity Alliance says that disabled people are more than half as likely to ‘see people like me’ participating, working, and volunteering in sport and physical activity (17% disabled people vs. 43% non-disabled people).
So there's still work to be done.
Next steps
At present our group has made a commitment to keep working collaboratively to achieve sustainable change in the UK’s physical activity and leisure sector to get more disabled people into their workforce.
In the last 12 months we have developed a new Terms of Reference for the group with a new focus and have discussed the learning from the original project.
We are now putting together an action plan, using the learning from the past two years, to guide us – and the sector – forward.
The new aims the group include:
- keep promoting careers in the sector as an attractive and achievable option for disabled people
- building confidence and knowledge within the workforce with regards to working with disabled people as employees
- developing more inclusive and accessible internal cultures across training, education and employer organisations.
I know that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done and I’m certain that, under the guidance of Activity Alliance (who’ll chair the group in 2025), our group will make great progress in the year ahead.
I invite anyone interested in this work to use the EmployAbility guides and to get in touch to be more involved on a strategic level.
We look forward to hearing from you, so please send us your questions or any interesting case study that you think we should be aware of.
Let's work together so the sport, physical activity and leisure sector improves its efforts to offer suitable work opportunities to everybody.
