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The bdi Charter
The bdi Charter sets out a clear strategic agenda which enables any global business to identify priority areas for action and start their journey towards global disability confidence.
It acts as a road map for any global HQ setting out to enable their colleagues worldwide to enhance the experience of every customer and colleague by delivering consistent best practice.
The ten fundamentals of disability confidence:
Delivering on the ten fundamentals which comprise the Charter, will help organisations improve their performance for the 1 billion+ people with disabilities worldwide and those who become disabled as they age.
- Communicate our intention to define and deliver best practice globally
- Appoint senior ‘executive’ sponsors at global, regional and national levels
- Expedite this crucial cultural and operational change programme
- Collaborate with other bdi Members and key stakeholders to determine how to deliver best practice for disabled customers, potential colleagues, colleagues and stakeholders
- Monitor performance and deliver continuous and sustained improvement
- Invest in ongoing, respectful dialogue with disabled people worldwide
- Form a collective business voice, in collaboration with disability thought leaders, to pioneer a new conversation between business, governments, disabled people and civil society
- Communicate widely how improving our disability performance worldwide will benefit business and the societies and economies in which we operate
- Equip senior leaders to speak with confidence about this commitment, and enable and liberate the engagement and active support of our employees
- Learn from, and interact directly with, people with disabilities in order to transform how we view disability and how we adapt for our colleagues, our potential colleagues, our customers and our stakeholders
- Map and remove the obstacles disabled people encounter as they aspire to employment, to access our goods and services, and to collaborate with us as valued stakeholders
- Aspire to deliver excellence for every customer, including disabled customers
- Encourage best practice worldwide in how we research customer requirements, adapt products and services, and measure performance
- Make our channels to market attractive to, and barrier free, for disabled and older customers
- Deliver a consistent and exemplary global ‘gold’ standard of accessibility across our built environment
- Our built environment to be acknowledged as truly accessible and usable by disabled and older colleagues, customers, potential colleagues and stakeholders in every country in which we operate
- Ensure that our use of technology enhances customer experience, talent acquisition, productivity, colleague well-being and engagement worldwide
- Deliver a consistent and measurable high standard of accessibility performance worldwide
- Design a better, sustainable experience for all by adhering to the principles and methodologies of inclusive design with user testing integral to the design process
- Address the requirements of specific groups who use our products and services, creating better experiences for everyone
- Encourage specific disability-related know how, expertise and performance standards from suppliers who have a direct impact on our ability to deliver best practice
- Work with suppliers who share our values, and with businesses which are run by people with disabilities
- Ensure fair and consistent treatment worldwide of colleagues and potential colleagues
- Become attractive to the widest pool of talent, to be barrier free for groups of people as they seek to join us, and to routinely and expertly adapt for individuals, so that they can contribute to business success
- Create an efficient, consistent, business-led process which delivers cost effective adjustments that enable colleagues to realise their potential
- Treat individuals differently (via adjustments) in order to treat them fairly, and communicate how treating people fairly in this way benefits the business
- Focus on the capability and potential of individuals
- Ensure our Corporate Social Responsibility investment enables the economic and social inclusion of people with disabilities as valued citizens of the communities in which we do business
- Disabled people will have equal access to the community programmes we support and we will encourage initiatives which are led directly by people with disabilities and/or which promote their leadership potential
- Encourage community and public sector partners to themselves become disability confident and to work to the spirit of this Charter
Resource Toolkit:
The charter provides the practical framework within which bdi will continue to co-create the enabling products and tools, and establish peer-to-peer functional Taskforces.
A culture of continuous improvement:
Best practice, legislation and social trends are always evolving.
We are committed to ongoing development, co-creation and review of our practice and our suite of tools. Collaboration with our members ensures that our maturity models, assessments and guidance remain relevant, and that these tools make it easier for our global members to achieve consistent global policy and practice.
bdi will make it easier for global leaders to drive enhanced business performance while benefiting the societies and economies in which they operate.
What the Charter means for our Founders:
The bdi Charter was developed in conjunction with bdi’s Founders GSK, Barclays and Infosys, whose ultimate aim is to become ‘disability confident’.
They strive to continuously improve how they enable every customer, colleague, shareholder and stakeholder to contribute to business success, to economic growth and to the sustainability of the communities in which they operate.
Our Founders monitor their progress against this Charter and share their learning and experience with bdi’s fellow Members and their wider stakeholders, bdi‘s Board and Associates Worldwide.