Celebrating a significant milestone in our journey towards being a disability confident leader

We’re delighted to share that we have been awarded the Disability Confident Employer certification, which recognises the progress we’re making in becoming an accessible and inclusive employer for those with a disability. This is an achievement we have been working towards since 2021, when we first committed ourselves towards becoming a Disability Confident workplace and marks an important milestone in our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging journey.

This UK government scheme exists to support businesses by encouraging them to review how they think about disability, and to act on how they attract, recruit, retain, and develop employees with disabilities. The Disability Confident framework sets out definitive actions to increase recruitment opportunities for people with a disability and ensure that there are no barriers to their development and progression.

Reaching the milestone

We have taken significant steps to create a more accessible and inclusive workplace for our colleagues with disabilities.

We have a new colleague network called dh Enabled, which aims to raise awareness, provide support, and advocate for colleagues with disabilities and those who care for them. The network also provides a safe and supportive space for colleagues to connect and network.

We’ve started collecting self-reported disability data from our colleagues in the US, UK, Canada, India, and Brazil. The data will help us understand the representation and needs of our colleagues with disabilities and help us improve our policies and practices on disability inclusion. The data collection is voluntary and confidential, and colleagues can choose to disclose or update their disability status at any time. We also launched the Disability Fundamentals training on Degreed, a 30-minute online course that covers the basics of disability awareness, etiquette, and accessibility.

We introduced our reasonable adjustments passport, a document that records the adjustments agreed between an employee with a disability and their manager, to detail any support they need at work. The passport helps employees communicate their needs and preferences and transition to a new manager or role. Managers are also provided with guidance on how to support their colleagues with disabilities.

As part of the Tesco Group, we’ve been able to enrol some off our people on their Diverse Talent Communities, and launched our own Catalyst Inclusive Sponsorship Programme, two initiatives that aim to develop and advance our colleagues from under-represented groups, including individuals with disabilities and neurodivergence. The initiatives provide the participants with tools, support, and visibility to drive their career forward, as well as exposure, access, and advocacy from senior leaders.

How we ensure a fair and accessible hiring experience

Our Talent Acquisition process has also been improved. In September 2023, in partnership with Evenbreak, we completed an end-to-end review of our recruitment processes, focusing on accessibility. This included a review of the content, tone and structure of our adverts and application questions, interview and assessment criteria and review of the accessibility of our careers pages on our website. This has helped us with our continuous improvement of all the steps in our process.
We also offer reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, provide inclusion training to all our hiring managers & recruiters, and use tools like Textio to ensure our adverts appeal to the widest group of individuals.

In terms of assessments, we take a balanced approach between structured interviews with set questions and scorecards for every candidate and work-based activities such as case study presentations for Commercial roles and Coding tasks for our Engineers. This allows the opportunity for people to be assessed in different ways, so they can bring out their best. We have updated our advert wording to highlight that we will make reasonable adjustments for individuals. This now includes a named recruiter for individuals to contact and discuss any needs. Search our dedicated careers site for your new career.

We must go beyond a label to be truly disability confident

The Disability Confident scheme provides a framework to measure and improve our inclusion efforts for people with a disability. However, we also recognise that being truly disability confident goes beyond a label. It requires us to continually implement inclusive actions and embed accessibility in everything we do. Although the Disability Confident scheme is a UK government programme, we find it a globally relevant framework which we are applying as a benchmark across all our markets.

Continuing our work toward being a Disability Confident Leader

While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made so far in becoming a Disability Confident Leader, there is more that we want to achieve. While we are working on this commitment both within and outside our organization promoting inclusion, diversity, and accessibility issues, it is our commitment to create a sense of belonging for all dunnhumbians. Take a look at how our employee networks help us harness the power of belonging.