ITV has today signed up to join the first cohort of employers taking part in Valuable500’s GenerationValuable, alongside Channel 4, Clifford Chance, EY, Enel, ISS/AS and Telefónica.

Generation Valuable – the leadership mentoring programme for Disabled people – will see each participant paired with a mentor at an executive level within their organisation.

The programme is designed to drive disability inclusion, with the aim of getting companies to build a community of disabled talent who can share their experiences and inform leaders about how to make businesses more inclusive.

The first cohort of 75 will be announced on International Day for Persons with Disabilities in December.

ITV recently launched its Diversity Commissioning Fund which ring-fences £80m of the content budget spend over the next three years to drive change in disability equity and equity for people of colour, recorded a 19 per cent improvement of perception from its Disabled audiences in the last two years and began a roll out of Disability Access Passports.

The Disability Access Passports are confidential documents and support conversations with line managers to ensure d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse colleagues get the support they need at work. They are designed to provide non-disabled colleagues with a framework to enable confident conversations about disability, access and adjustments. The passports are transferable across departments and between broadcasters.

The passports are embedded into the recruitment, onboarding and performance review to ensure d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse colleagues have a number of opportunities to discuss their needs and adjustments with their line manager.

Disability inclusion training is also being rolled out to support line managers in this process and embedding disability inclusion into the business.

Carolyn McCall, ITV ceo,  said: “Employers cannot ignore the striking under representation of d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people in their workforce, and we at ITV are committed to taking steps across multiple fronts to ensure our culture is inclusive, attractive and accessible to the best talent out there.

“Senior leaders play an important role in culture, so leadership programmes such as this can have powerful ripple effects.”

Caroline Casey, founder, the Valuable 500, added: “This initiative proves that there is an array of disabled talent within businesses, and that they are more than capable of occupying positions of power and leadership.

“Enabling disabled talent to flourish and reach their full potential by shattering glass ceilings is a game changer.

“The Valuable 500 is striving to radically change the awful results of research conducted by Tortoise Media that found that ‘no FTSE company had a senior leader or above who identified as having a disability.”

 

 

Pippa Considine

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