This week, we attended the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on youth employment to hear about options to support young people furthest from the labour market.

During the meeting we heard from Mark Pike from Develop EBP who gave some detail on the broad topic. Some of the reasons he gave for young people being furthest away from the labour market included social deprivation, ill health, special education needs and disabilities.

Based on our own youth employment accessibility research, we know that how a company operates and how inclusive they are is an important criteria for young people when choosing an employer.

It’s a matter of company culture and how companies embrace diverse groups through their recruitment efforts. This would include young people and those furthest from the labour market.

We will be including evidence on this basis as part our submission to the APPG on young people furthest from the labour market this quarter.

Diversity in the UK

According to the latest report from the Papworth Trust, there are 11.9million disabled people in the UK. That’s almost 1 in 5 people (19%) with a disability.

“A graduate with a work limiting disability is more likely to not have a job compared to an unqualified person with no disability.”

44.3% of working age disabled people are not working which is 4 times higher than non-disabled people.

Adopting and celebrating a diverse workforce

During the APPG we caught up with Sheena Bell from Northampton University. Sheena has been involved in a European initiative called SENEL – Special Educational Needs Employment Links. The project created two free resources to support the employment of young people with special education needs and disabilities. Find out more and access the free resources here.

Sheena is now looking to do further work on SENEL and we’re pleased to be supporting the work to encourage employers to embrace diversity. More details to be revealed later in the year.

At Access Generation, we adopt and celebrate a diverse workforce as part of our values. Look out for our blog next week when we introduce our team of 4 young people working with us on the next phase of the youth employment accessibility research.

For now, we will leave you with some of the benefits of adopting a diverse workforce:

• “Greater diversity is more likely to result in better problem-solving and risk management” – NatWest
• Disabled people on average have higher retention rates than non disabled people – EvenBreak
• Positive employer brand – CIPHR
• “You’ll be able to recruit top talent if your applications are open to all instead of a select few” – High Speed Training

Do you want to become Disability Confident employer? If so, why not sign up to the government’s campaign – Disability Confident – to access resources and find out more about the benefits to your business.