Our results show significant negative implicit attitudes towards disabled and older people, and suggest unconscious bias may still be a significant barrier to employment. Whilst both the UK workforce shortage and the disability employment gap persist, creating workplaces that are more inclusive for disabled and older people should continue to be seen as a key policy priority. Indeed, neither working for a large company nor being involved in HR have a significant effect on implicit attitudes towards disabled people or older people. However we found that the significant efforts of large companies in the EDI space, especially relating to disability, are ineffective at reducing unconscious bias. People involved in recruitment and retention decisions – especially HR professionals – are also often specifically trained in EDI issues given their remit of ensuring compliance with relevant legislation such as the Equality Act 2010. Similarly, there has been a substantial increase in the number of diversity and inclusion-based job roles over recent years, with LinkedIn suggesting a global rise of 71% from 2015 to 2020. This is despite the amount of money large organisations spend on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and unconscious bias training (UBT) – up to $8 billion each year in the USA. Our findings show that there are no differences between those who work for large compared to small companies. We found that both large firms and SMEs are failing at inclusivity. Our research found substantial levels of implicit bias against both disabled people and older people pictures of disabled and non-disabled people) together with positive or negative stimuli (i.e. The IAT is the most popular method for measuring implicit attitudes, and gives a measure of (positive or negative) implicit associations towards a particular group of people based on reaction times in assigning various stimuli (e.g. The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission says the test is “effective at raising awareness of unconscious bias”. In addition to surveying more than 100 businesses, we used the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a tool established in 1998 at Harvard University for measuring implicit attitudes and beliefs to reveal an individual’s hidden or subconscious biases. Our work brought together research from the European Centre of Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter in collaboration with partners disAbility Cornwall and Age UK Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. Our research was carried out in Cornwall, selected because it is similar to the national average and has a population shift that will be emulated across Britain’s cities in the next decade.Ĭornwall’s levels of bias are consistent with elsewhere in the UK. The purpose of our research has been to generate a better understanding of some of the challenges and opportunities facing employers in creating inclusive places to work, particularly for people who are over 50, disabled, or have a long-term health condition. We also collected responses to an age IAT from the same community to explore the attitude towards recruitment of older people within SMEs the first to look at a potential effect of firm size on implicit bias. While attitudes towards race and gender have both been studied in workplace and employment settings, the disability IAT (implicit association test) has not yet been examined specifically with a cohort from the business community. Unconscious bias can even be present in job descriptions and roles, influencing who applies in the first place. This is especially likely to be the case in small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who don’t have dedicated Human Resource departments or budgets for engaging in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) activities. There are many key decision points in the process that involve choosing among potential candidates, such as choosing who to interview, who to hire, who to promote, and, on occasion, who to fire. The recruitment and retention of employees involves many stages where a range of unconscious/implicit biases can enter decision making processes. At the same time older workers and those workers with disabilities or long-term conditions are underrepresented in the work force. By way of example, the employment rate for disabled people in the UK is 28% lower than for non-disabled people. It has been reported that many businesses across the United Kingdom are struggling to recruit the staff they need.

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