Diversity, equity and inclusion: Disability – a key focus for organizations

Why is disability inclusion a business imperative? How can organizations harness allyship to dispel misconceptions and lay the foundation for meaningful representation?

In this podcast, we consider the business case for investing in disability inclusion – an often forgotten strand in corporate DEI efforts – and the importance of changing mindsets in order to ensure progress. 

Our presenters delve into how organizations can pursue their business goals while investing in DEI by acting in a truly responsible manner and making effective use of the tools at their disposal. 

Our host David Boutcher is joined by Vaibhav Adlakha, Joanne Christopher, and Carole Mehigan.

Transcript: 

Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions and challenges, past and present, all with the goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included. 

David: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Inclusivity Included. My name's David Boutcher. I'm a partner in the Reed Smith Global Corporate Group based in London. The title of this podcast is Diversity, equity and inclusion: Disability, a key focus for organizations. I've been involved with uh LEADRS, Reed Smith's Disability Group, since it began. And we thought it would be important to uh have a podcast as to why we think it's important to focus on, on disability, disability events, uh disability initiatives. Uh I'm joined by colleagues, Vaibhav Adlakha, Joanne Christopher, and Carole Mehigan. As they join the podcast, I will ask them to say a little bit about, about uh who they are as well. So I think um I'd like to kick off with talking about some of the specific events that we've had over recent years and the reasoning behind them and why we think they're really important and uh Vaibhav perhaps you'd like to kick us off on that.

Vaibhav: Thanks David. So as David mentioned, my name is Vaibhav Adlakha. I am an associate in our competition team here in London, but I also have an interest specifically in the diversity inclusion issues. I also have a physical disability and use a wheelchair. Now, I wanna begin with a personal, little personal thing. Before I joined Reed Smith and I thought about what my identity was going to be, I thought I only wanted to be a lawyer, but as I joined and began my journey here at Reed Smith, I realized that we have a platform to make the change what we want to see in the profession and be a leader in what we want, how we want people to see view the profession. As David often says, we are the best of a bad bunch. But I guess my goal was to try and create uh something where it is beyond my own success. It is a legacy that we can continue.

Just to spotlight on one of on some of our events, we started in doing our Disability Inclusion Summits in 2020. Um Necessity is the mother of invention. So uh during the pandemic, we wanted to celebrate International Day of Persons with Disabilities. And we, thought, what better way to do that when by discussing issues and creating an environment not only for our ourselves, but also for our clients and anyone who wishes to participate, to be honest, uh whether no matter how far you are in your disability journey, whether you have reservations, whether you're further ahead, whether you're converted. So that's the Disability Summits explored different topics. How it is to work in the pandemic. What is the myths of uh disability inclusion? How can you embrace the journey? What are some of the things that different clients have done in their journey to disability? So long story short, the the Disability Summits were done as a platform to of discussion no matter how, how far you are in that journey. And we believe that it's an important, important aspect to understanding what we can do better, how we can invest in education and especially disability education and how we can cut down boundaries.

If I can touch upon briefly on some of our other events uh that we have done, which is the allyship event on the importance of carers, allies and support groups. Uh This was basically done for the purpose of understanding the mindset of those who support vulnerable people, whether that's people with disabilities, uh parents, children. Because if you understand the mindset of those individuals who do it, regardless of the challenges, then you can be part of that super group, you can become part of being an ally. So that was the reason we did that as an event. And uh the importance of a career fair. Um Carole who will, who you will hear from did a specific career for fair for people with disabilities. And we wanted to do that simply because we are keen to uh cut down the barriers uh that people with disabilities face in education, in schools so that uh they, they can understand the aspirations that it you can have. And finally, we do uh understand the importance of learning and constantly improving, and that's why disability training sessions are not only important from a policy perspective as it is the right thing to do, but also so that it, it transfers down from people who work with you every day so that they understand what it is to work with people with disabilities. And we understand as well as people with disabilities, how we can, how we need to adapt to fit within the environment. Um So with that, I'll just hand over back to David to and David, I wanted to ask you about why from a Reed Smith perspective, because I've given the reason for the idea is that we had, but why from a Reed Smith perspective, it's important as a firm that we invest in disability inclusion?

David: Thanks Vaibhav. Yeah, I mean, I think um it's really important for so many reasons if you like both internal and external as far as uh the firm is concerned. uh Reed Smith is very proud of its culture and its core values. And I think to have these events and initiatives on issues and highlighting the challenges of people with disabilities really shows uh that culture and those core values uh in action. And also I think it helps uh educate our own people with regard to the challenges faced by people with disabilities. I think so often people feel as though they haven't come across people with disabilities and are actually unsure as to how to deal with those people. So I think most employers actually face a key challenge to, to address that issue. And I think professional services organizations like Reed Smith are particularly well placed. It's a bit of a cliché, but we often say we're a, we're a people business, which we are. And I think that means that we have a responsibility to talk to all of our people. But also the people with whom we interact, particularly clients about the challenges faced by people with disabilities. A as it’s often said, when talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, the one area of diversity which is often at the bottom of the list, and I'm, I'm afraid to say sometimes not even mentioned is the, the challenges in the area of people, people with disabilities. It is changing, it's not changing fast enough. Um So I think it's really important that we, that we, we focus on it uh as an organization. And I think also it's important in terms of training and education at multiple levels and, and, and I know, Vaibhav, you've had uh experience when you were training as to what you might be training for and what might be available to you uh as a person with a disability. And I think again, we have a responsibility as employer to demonstrate how people with disabilities can be included, work with colleagues and most importantly, be treated equally. And I think that is often the challenge that people are not sure how to accommodate people with disabilities. And it is often a fine balance between uh treating people equally. Uh But they're not treating them equally because they, if you like focusing on their disabilities and and unfairly making that um stand out and we only improve that by uh talking about these issues. And in terms of uh you know, having a platform where we can help change the mindset around people with disabilities as with any mindset. Actually, it's not something you're gonna change overnight. So I think it's important that we have a continuing program of initiatives uh and events where we talk about the many challenges faced by um people with disabilities. And of course, the whole area of disability itself is, is, is very complex, there are physical disabilities, there are mental hidden disabilities. And again, I just think historically, it's just not something that people have talked about and I think people want to hear other people's views, they want to be here uh about the experiences that people with disabilities have had. And the other really important thing is we want to make the most of people's talents and so many people with disabilities have unique talents. I, I've often said often somebody with a disability has had huge challenges in their lives, which they've met, you know, with gusto, they, it's given them great confidence and that actually gives the individual the kind of qualities that most employers would really want to have. So there are all sorts of positives to look at uh as well. But most importantly, unless we address this, we've almost got a whole lost sector of our population where we're not actually uh making the most of that uh of that talent. And I think it's really important to address it on so many levels. So as Vaibhav has said, we've had many different events and most recently we've been talking about support groups and allyship and representation.

Vaibhav: David I just wanted to make before you hand over to Carole, is you talked about how from a disability point of view, we we as firms, we need to understand what, during my training for instance, you said, what are you working towards? I think from a disability person perspective, it's also fundamental for, for us to understand how, how to work with an organization because in the end organizations or businesses. So it's more of a collaborative effort. And I think by doing these events uh or being on the inside, right, you can not only kind of make the profession of the firm or what you're aspiring towards. Uh you can mold that together as a, as a partnership, but also uh the wider perspective. Also, I was hoping we could talk about why clients think it's important to in that respect. So we can, we can discuss that at some point.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, clients, uh as I mentioned earlier, I think it, it, it's, that's why again, it's important for the firm because I think that we need to share those experiences with clients and and ultimately, of course, it helps strengthen the relationship with clients. And again, where I welcome uh Carole’s comments, you know, that often comes down to other parties, support groups, uh allyship representation, which was of course the focus of the last disability event that we held. So Carole, perhaps you'd like to say a few words about that.

Carole: Thank you, David. Thank you Vaibhav. Thank you for having me on this podcast today. Um Delighted to be speaking with my wonderful colleagues. So my name's Carole Mehigan. I am the responsible business manager for our Europe Middle East and Asian offices. I am based in the London office. Um and I concentrate mainly on the London and our Leeds office where I host a multitude of events and um projects um across the area. So, concentrating on, on disability, really. I do a lot of student programs across the different age range. Um And during my time in doing my role at Reed Smith, I realized that, you know, disability is still slightly taboo amongst our students. I know young people, they don't actually realize that, you know, we're breaking those barriers down for them and that we're trying to ensure that they feel inclusive to, you know, going into a law firm and the legal sector uh has changed over the years. So working with schools who uh who predominantly work with students with disabilities and universities, who also focus a lot on a lot of students who have disabilities has been fantastic for us as a law firm because they were actually hitting that talent that seems to still be hidden away. And one of the reasons why I was so keen to do the disability career fair, um which we did um last year was because I wanted to really shine a light on those students and young people who don't feel that they are getting the focus enough or don't still feel like they would be welcomed into the legal industry. So actually focusing on them and giving them the opportunity to come into a place like where we work and to really speak to people from a diverse background, but also people with disabilities, myself being one. I was diagnosed in 2020 with neurodiversity and disabilities. So for me being an advocate in that respect as well, um and also supporting from, from the representation within Reed Smith, I thought was a very keen focus for me to make sure that students understood that we were a disability friendly organization. And David and Vaibhav have both touched upon the client engagement on the, at the disability fair. We did invite some clients who again are disability friendly. They wanted to promote that and show uh students what opportunities you can find within their organizations. So it really gave us a chance for us to talk about what we do, what we do in that space, what sort of opportunities there are for students with, with or without disabilities, but obviously focus a lot on on on disability side and also to encourage students and young people to feel like they can talk about their disability. They can actually bring that into the conversation and not be scared to hide, hide it in the background because they're worried that if they do say anything about their disability, then it will be frowned upon or they will be seen as a lesser candidate for any particular role within the business. So for me doing work uh with schools and with universities on the back of the disability fair, I'm now working with a school which exclusively has students. Every student has a disability. I'm now working with them to provide some of their students with work experience. So it's that continue of working with, you know, students and young people. So they understand that there are loads of opportunities, loads of great ways of them having an insight into our firm and, and hopefully that's going to continue. So that's what we're doing really on from the UK and the sort of Europe, Middle East and Asia side. I'm gonna hand over to Joanne who is one of our colleagues in the US for her to kind of give a little bit of more about what we're doing in the US with regards to disability.

Joanne: Thank you, Carole. Uh My name is Joanne Christopher. I'm the senior human resources manager in our Pittsburgh office. I'm also the HR liaison to our LEADRS disability employee resource group in the US. Of course, we do participate with our college in Europe in the Middle East and also in Asia um on our disability program. Um as as David mentioned, people with disabilities have amazing abilities by not including them or missing out on a vast talent pole. It's very important to have diversity of thought, uh diversity of culture, and people disabilities are part of that diversity that Reed Smith values. I know that a lot of employers uh when they hear about employing folks with disability, they immediately talk about the cost of accommodations. It's widely known that most accommodations cost less than $500 and some cost nothing at all. So there's no reason not to include these colleagues. Uh People with disabilities want to work and they have a lot to offer us. Here in the United States, uh we are very proud that we have received the National Organization on Disabilities uh Leading Disability Employer Recognition. We also are part of NOD’s Leadership Council and we've received 100% on the disability equality index through Disability: IN. And so, um it, it's not just a lot of talking words. Reed Smith really is putting into action a lot of initiatives to help our colleagues with disabilities because we value the gifts that they have to offer us. Some of the resources for our employers that we've developed, we've created this disability etiquette guide to help those people who aren't used to working with people with disabilities to be a little more comfortable to know how to approach a situation. We have institute of project ability where we work with clients on including a person with disability on each side of our client teams and the disability is only disclosed if the person wants to disclose that. So, you know, you could not know who the disabled person is on a particular project. We've created an accommodations resource to help other folks feel comfortable coming forward to request accommodations. It's a sample of a lot of the accommodations that we have across the firm. We also host weekly coffees and in those weekly coffees uh which again are available throughout our global platform, we get to know our colleagues. We offer support if someone is struggling or, you know, we just get to know each other if there is an oppressing issue that someone wants to bring forward. We have established subcommittees on accessibility, neurodiversity, peer support, recruiting, retention, and promotion and events and speakers here in the US, particularly in Pittsburgh, we partner with St. Anthony's School at Duquesne University to provide vocational training opportunities for college age students who uh have down syndrome autism or other intellectual disability by hosting them here in an internship program where they're learning a lot of job skills, uh how to dress for the world of work. Uh Some of those, those non uh visible types of things that you need to bring to a job, like being on time, how to get to and from work and those kinds of things. But more than that our employees just love when, when the students are here and it gives them an opportunity to work side by side with people with disabilities. Um We've also partnered with Special Olympics to host bocce tournaments. We have different awareness days and um again, we have a process to uh support all of our employees, those with disabilities and those without. So, so that's a little bit of what we're doing here in the US. 

Vaibhav: From a student perspective. You, you really, and this is me speaking not being a Reed Smith employee, you really don't understand how important those kind of events are working with your working with the schools and doing a career for solely for people with disabilities because what happens is they don't know what they can be. Uh, if me coming from India, living in the Netherlands, I didn't even realize I could be a lawyer because I didn't know what professions were open to me. And so from a student perspective, if, if you have uh an environment or uh have clients who are willing to say, you know, these are the career paths that you can have. They, not everybody is probably gonna be a lawyer, not everybody is going to be uh someone in the legal profession or a partner or something like that. But at least they have aspirations to, to know who they can be. And for someone with a disability who, who, who can, who sometimes is not allowed to see beyond just what, what he, she can't do that. That is invaluable. I think before we close, I, I wanted to ask David one thing about how, because a lot of organizations talk about these are our business goals, these are our diversity goals. And if we invest too much in diversity, especially in our legal profession because they, they charge every minute unfortunately, but uh and every second that you're actually working, how, how do you deal with the fact that someone with a disability may take longer may not be as efficient? And how do you then figure out that, that your business goals and your diversity goals can be one?

David: Well, I think it, and thanks Vaibhav, I think it even goes wider than that. I mean, as uh Joanne was talking, I was thinking about uh ESG environmental social governance, which we advise a lot of our, our clients on. And I think in terms of when it comes to goals uh related to the accommodation of people with disabilities which Vaibhav has just touched on, they really have to be integrated fully into all of our business goals. And this is the mistake. I think that so many organizations often make that uh they just focus on if you like their corporate and social responsibility actions rather than integrating these issues throughout their business. So uh I think as Joanne mentioned, we have this uh project ability initiative where we have, you know, uh somebody with a disability working on, on, on, on each matter, we have uh initiatives working with clients uh where we're discussing and championing the causes of people with disabilities. And I think also we're educating one another on uh as I touched on early treating people with disabilities equally because again, answering Vaibhav’s point about uh how we uh accommodate the challenges of people with disabilities within our own business goals. It's as we accommodate all people within our business goals because no one is perfect and uh all people have strengths and weaknesses. It just so happens that we're where you come to a person with a disability, their weakness is often focused on that disability. But other people's weaknesses may be focused on the fact that they don't have the greatest talent in certain areas, but they've got a much stronger talent in other areas. And as we would say, it's horses for courses and it, when it comes to people with disability, it's not saying, well, they're actually a completely different animal separately and we must kind of somehow have a separate initiative for them. Well, no, they're just, they're part of all of our people. Uh And the way we accommodate them is the way we accommodate everybody and everybody needs some kind of accommodation because as they say, nobody is perfect. And, and I think that one thing I've learned from working with a number of people with disabilities is that that's kind of the number one thing that they really want is to be treated equally and, and on parity with, with, with everybody else. And I think we're moving in that direction when I say we, I mean, society generally, and I think that's why the whole ESG initiative now is great because that is all about how businesses can not only operate themselves independently in doing the right thing, but how they impact all their stakeholders and the wider society and community at large. And I think work in uh helping and highlighting the challenges of people with disabilities fits into that so well, because there are so many issues to be addressed. And as Vaibhav has alluded to so many ways in which we can, uh we can influence wider society um for the better.

Vaibhav: So it's all about adapting and adapting the way, seeing the ability in others and adapting your working practices about adapting your mindset. And my one final question, because this is something I'm really passionate on is, Carole and Joanne, I think I, I think I wanted to understand because having every organization has a, has a CSR Corporate Social Responsibility or, or responsible business. These are, these are tools that every organization kind of has. And for me, I, I always think that if you can focus on a cause and use the tools you already possess as an organization, you can make a difference. How do you think uh in terms of what we are trying to achieve from a responsible business perspective, helps prepare society and businesses to embrace diversity, inclusion and become better allies.

Carole: I, I don't mind starting first. So I think, you know, we, we as a firm, we see responsible business is a way of life. It's a way of us showing our culture and of a firm and how we want to provide support for, for each other. So we see it that, you know, we are a business that wants to be responsible for the wider community and that includes uh young people and students, et cetera um in the disability arena. We want to, we don't want anyone to feel excluded. You know, for, like I said, for a long time, especially students and young people who do have disabilities have been afraid to say it. They've been afraid to say on an application form or when they're being interviewed. And the, the, the problem then you have is how can you support somebody if you don't know that they need that support. So as a responsible business, as you know, we have to ensure that people understand that, you know, bring your true self to the workplace. You know, when you are applying somewhere, if you feel that you can't be completely honest and open about what you know yourself and if you have a disability, it may be not the right place for you and with working with other organizations such as clients, for example, who are also thinking in the same way that we are, you know, makes that uh collaboration with our clients, not just from a client service perspective, but also from the fact that we're organizations all trying to meet the needs of a particular demographic of people who feel like they're still outsiders.

So I think being responsible for the wider community in whatever way you can bring in our community internally, to meet the external community is really important. And it also allows us as a community internally to show that we already have lots and lots of people with disabilities of all sorts, whether it's visible, invisible neurodiversity, whatever it may be and how, you know, how much they have made a success of their careers, you know, shining that light out there, letting other people know you could follow in the same footprints you could follow down the same career path is really, really important. So it's not just a case of talking the talk, you need to walk the walk, you need to do that by showing how you're going to do that. And the only way you can do that is like doing events like we've done already uh finding ways to get into the community and show what you can provide them and what they can provide to us. Because you know, even with having a disability of any sort, you bring a unique talent to the table, you know, we all bring something to the table and having disability is already a challenge for you as a person.  So when you can bring that to the table and be successful in your career, choice of career, I think just shows that, you know, you have resilience, you, you can champion yourself and you can really go, you know, help other people to feel that they can do the same thing. I'll hand over to Joanne at this point.

Joanne: The one thing I would say is a professional services firm, we are in the people business. So we need to take care of our people so that they can do the best work that they can do. Disability cuts across all corners of our lives. It's socio-economic, it's diverse groups. It's every ethnic background. There are people with disabilities in every corner and these people have a lot of gifts to offer and we need to support them. 

Vaibhav: As a final comment for me, this working on disability is not a silo. Every aspect of your organization can work on it whether you have pro bono uh projects that focus on disability, responsible business projects or simply come up with a legal initiative and do something like training for your employees so that they can better understand. But it's a two sided training. We, we as people with disabilities need to understand how it is to work in an organization and how it is to adapt. Whereas the organization has tools that are already there for them to focus on the ability of people. And that's something organizations do anyway, because they, they focus on who the person can be and what tools they can provide. So through this podcast, I hope that a lot of organizations who or people who are listening gain the confidence that you have the tools within your organization within yourselves to actually make a difference to anyone, let alone people with a disability and, and work and adapt to make professions better than when we found them, when we enter that each of us uh from our experience. So with that, I thank everybody for listening to our Inclusivity Included podcast. You will find a whole range of podcasts on Inclusivity Included, our podcast channel discussing a wide variety of issues to do with disability, and diversity, equity and inclusion. And I, I have enjoyed working uh talking discussing about this with my colleagues. So thank you very much and thank you for listening.

Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. You can find our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com and our social media accounts.

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.

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