Barclays is presented the Disability-smart award for Best service provider and Overall winner
London, UK - This week Susan Scott-Parker, CEO and Founder of Business Disability Forum (BDF), presented Mark McLane, Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Barclays, with two Disability-smart awards. Barclays has been rated the most disability-smart organisation in the UK and best service provider.
The Disability Standard is the only UK benchmark for measuring business performance in relation to all aspects of disability. This includes strategic buy-in and commitment, recruitment, retention, premises, customers, information and communication technology and policies and processes for making workplace adjustments.
Barclays have been a Partner of BDF for 23 years; and the global bank has a strong track record of creating internal and external structures that promote accessibility and equality. They are sponsors of the Government’s Disability Confident conferences and Barclays were also the first UK bank to pioneer talking ATMs which allow blind and partially sighted people to easily access their money and have undertaken a range of innovations to encourage accessibility for disabled customers and employees.
Ashok Vaswani, Chief Executive of Barclays Retail and Business Banking, said:
“We are delighted for this recognition because getting it right for our employees and customers is so important. We have firm aspirations to be the UK’s most Accessible Bank, so for us being disability confident is about how we can make access to our business and workplace easier for everyone, whether enabling BSL interpretation via an iPad, or finding ways to recruit outstanding people who have been injured serving in our military.
We were an original founder of BDF in 1991, and we look forward to continuing to work with them in the UK and internationally so we can keep making a real difference to the lives of millions of people with disabilities.”
Brendan Roach, Business Disability Forum Senior Disability Consultant and Information and Advice Manager said:
“We awarded Barclays our best service provider and overall winner award because of their consistent approach to getting it right to how they interact with staff, potential candidates and employees.
Alongside their innovation, they have invested in improving their processes for making workplace adjustments for employees and their disabled staff network. Wanting to be disability-smart appears to be part of Barclays’ DNA.”
Notes to editors
- Disability Standard and details of the other award categories and their winners please visit: http://businessdisabilityforum.org.uk/about-us/news/The-2013-Disability-Standard-award-winners
- Business Disability Forum is a not-for-profit business consortium that represents some 400 organisations that employ 20% of the UK workforce. Formerly called the Employers’ Forum on Disability, the company has more than twenty years’ experience of working with public and private sector employers and service providers. For more information about the Forum please visit: http://businessdisabilityforum.org.uk/about-us
- For more information on Barclays’ accessibility please visit http://www.barclays.co.uk/Accessibility
- For media enquiries please contact Communications & Marketing at media@businessdisabilityforum.org.uk.
