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A theme that underpins our company is outlined by our employer brand strapline; Be Yourself, Be Leonardo. Not only is DEI good for business in creating happier teams and guests, it’s also the right thing to do. There are no downsides. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to be their authentic selves whilst working at or visiting our hotels. We believe that diversifying our workforce enriches its culture, supported by our CEO’s objective to employ one person living with a disability to a ratio of 100 bedrooms; we are exceeding this by employing one person with a disability to a ratio of 34 bedrooms.
We’re passionate about offering a fully inclusive and accessible environment, allowing all employees to flourish at work. As our team grows, it’s important for us to be aware of the terminology that is associated with DEI, individuals and groups. We have a glossary of definitions in our DEI Policy to share best practice and strengthen knowledge. To engage and educate employees, we celebrated our “Leo Cares about People with Disabilities” month in March 2024 as part of our ESG calendar. This involved a webinar (guest-hosted by Shaw Trust) on Disability Confident for all employees, promoting Neurodiversity Celebration Week and Sign Language Week, reinvigorating Access Statements and auditing our accessibility equipment.
In 2023 we completed our self-assessment to attain Disability Confident Employer status with support from Shaw Trust. We offer performance-based work trials in place of formal interviews for operational employee roles and work with external providers (Shaw Trust, Team Domenica and Disability Action to name a few) to actively promote careers to people with disabilities.
Once someone has started working with us, it’s important we offer accessible development opportunities. Our training uses a blended approach with imagery, text, videos and face-to-face offerings. We use the ATBar accessibility tool on our L&D platform, allowing font to be increased, colours to be changed, a text-to-speech option and application of colour tints over the screen.
Our commitment to disability inclusion also influences our guest care. We provide emergency aides, such as vibrating pillows, and have accessible fire evacuation processes.
‘Be Yourself Be Leonardo’, reflects our encouragement for employees to bring their whole selves to work. We have created a policy that encourages everyone to be themselves by actively supporting diversity, equity and inclusion. This ensures that our employees are valued, and treated with dignity and respect.
We have over 100 Mental Health First Aiders across the business, who are supporting our employees in times of need and for disabilities that are not visible. Additionally, we have implemented an Employee Assistance Programme which allows unlimited, 24/7, 365 days a year access. This includes an online GP service as well as a range of other health and wellbeing experts. Our current charity partnership is with the mental health charity Mind, which brings awareness of our employees to their excellent work and allows us to raise funds for a great charity.
We are an equal opportunities employer and always employ the best candidates based on their individual merits. We proactively advertise our roles to people with disabilities by working with charities and social organisations supporting people with disabilities to gain employment, and are a Disability Confident Employer. We offer reasonable adjustments to all candidates at interview stage, and continue any required support into employment to allow someone to carry out their work comfortably and effectively.
We are considering how a peer support group of employees with disabilities could work, as this would allow a greater voice within the business to advise on how we could make improvements towards disability inclusion. Currently we are assessing how and when the group would meet, the agenda, the name of the group and any accountabilities they should have.
We have generated an action from our most recent employee survey. Of participants who shared that they have a disability, they reflected a 74% overall engagement score. The engagement score across the full organisation was 75%, so we aim to achieve parity between the two scores.
Finally, we are aiming to achieve Disability Confident Leader status. This would help to build recognition of our disability inclusion work, encouraging more people with disabilities to join us, and allow us to further represent the Disability Confident scheme to other organisations.
It would be great to see wider representation of what employers are doing to promote disability inclusion; perhaps on social media. It’s always valuable to share best practice and learn from each other.
Within our portfolio of hotels we have some listed buildings that makes certain reasonable adjustments, such as step-free access, a bit more difficult to realise. We adapt as far as we can, however the buildings’ legal protection can prove challenging for offering a fully-inclusive employee experience at times.
We do need to change some attitudes within the business, which we’ll strive to do through continuing unconscious bias training and diversifying perceptions of how candidates feel or present themselves when they come in for interviews.
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