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03 February 2025

Professor Kim Hoque teams up with leading business group to make detailed recommendations on the government's plans for disability reporting

Professor Kim Hoque’s new report with the Institute of Directors and Disability@Work warns that the government must get the balance right on mandatory disability reporting reforms.

a woman sits at her desk in a wheelchair

The Institute of Directors and Disability@Work have backed the government’s plans to introduce mandatory disability pay gap reporting in the upcoming Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

However, they caution that these reforms will be undermined unless employers are required to put their pay gap figures in context by also reporting the percentage of their workforce that is disabled (known as disability employment reporting).

In the 2024 King’s Speech, the Government committed to tackling the UK’s persistent disability pay gap by introducing mandatory disability pay gap reporting for large employers.

IoD and Disability@Work argue in their report ‘Progress through transparency: the case for mandatory disability employment and pay gap reporting’ that for the full benefits of mandatory disability pay gap reporting to be realised, employers should also be required to report the percentage of their workforce that is disabled.

Professor Hoque explained the importance of this:

If employers report very small disability pay gaps, yet they employ proportionately very few disabled employees who happen to be in relatively senior positions, this should not be seen as a clear indicator of success. Conversely, where employers have a relatively large disability pay gap, this might be due to noteworthy efforts to hire large numbers of disabled employees into entry-level roles, with a view to promoting them later on. Hence the need for mandatory disability employment reporting as well as pay gap reporting in the draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

Professor Kim Hoque

It is essential that disability workforce reporting requirements are carefully designed and implemented, to ensure that the compliance burden for business is minimised while engendering real change in disability inclusion in the workplace and expanding the talent pool to which employers have access. We believe that the detailed recommendations in our paper with Disability@Work regarding how mandatory disability reporting should be implemented provide an excellent foundation for getting that balance right.

Alex Hall-Chen, Principal Policy Officer for Employment and Skills at the Institute of Directors

Lord Shinkwin, Chair of the IoD’s Commission into the ‘The Future of Business: harnessing diverse talent for success - Recommendations to government’ added:

As Chair of the IoD commission I am delighted that the IoD has collaborated with Disability@Work to produce this excellent document. Mandatory employment reporting is a top recommendation of the commission, given the importance of disabled people having equal opportunities to develop their career on merit and realise their potential.”

Lord Kevin Shinkwin

About Disability@Work

Disability@Work was founded in 2013 by Victoria Wass and Melanie Jones of Cardiff Business School, Kim Hoque of Kings Business School and Nick Bacon of Bayes Business School, with the aim of conducting high quality policy-relevant research on disability in the workplace and the labour market, and to then encourage governments and employers to use this research to inform workplace practice and labour market policy.

About Institute of Directors

The Institute of Directors is a non-party political organisation, founded in 1903, with approximately 20,000 members. Membership includes directors from right across the business spectrum – from media to manufacturing, professional services to the public and voluntary sectors. Members include CEOs of large corporations as well as entrepreneurial directors of start-up companies. For further information, visit: www.iod.com.

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Kim Hoque

Professor of Human Resource Management

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