Earlier today Grant Thornton put out a press release about being named to a 2024 “Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion” list so naturally we said “the what list now?” and went digging.
The Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion list belongs to Disability:IN, a nonprofit “committed to empowering business to achieve disability inclusion and equality.”
The Disability Equality Index covers Culture & Leadership, Enterprise-Wide Access, Employment Practices, Community Engagement, Supplier Diversity and Responsible Procurement (unweighted). They explain it more in the FAQ:
The U.S. version of the Disability Equality Index measures a wide range of criteria within the following five (5) categories. A similar scoring framework will be introduced for each of the seven international benchmarks being launched in 2024. Participating companies receive a score, on a scale of zero (0) to 100, with those scoring 80 or higher earning the distinction of “Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion” for the benchmark year.
- Culture & Leadership (30 points total; 20 for Culture, 10 for Leadership) – Businesses commit to and demonstrate a sustained, visible cultural commitment to disability inclusion and demonstrate visible leadership commitment to disability inclusion throughout the organization.
- Enterprise-Wide Access (10 points) – Businesses commit to and demonstrate commitment to workplace accessibility.
- Employment Practices (40 points total, 10 each for the subcategories of Accommodations; Benefits; Employment, Education, Retention & Advancement; and Recruitment) – Businesses commit to and demonstrate commitment to benefits, recruitment practices, employment practices, and accommodation practices that fully incorporate and include individuals with disabilities.
- Community Engagement (10 points) – Businesses demonstrate public-facing engagement practices that celebrate and support individuals with disabilities.
- Supplier Diversity (10 points) – Businesses commit to and demonstrate supplier diversity practices that fully include and utilize Disability-Owned Business Enterprises (DOBEs), including Service-Disabled Veteran DOBEs and Veteran DOBEs.
To make it on the list, an employer needs to score 80 or above on the self-submitted assessment that asks about things like diversity policies, accommodations for people with disabilities, and if anyone in leadership has made a public statement in support of people with disabilities in the last year such as a speech or being quoted in an article. Disability:IN corporate partners do not have to pay to submit for the list — all firms listed below are corporate partners, Forvis and Wipfli are too but either didn’t make the list or chose not to submit — and the fee for non-partners is $900 for the US alone or $2,300 if they want to submit for all eight countries in which D:IN has an index.
All accounting firms on the 2024 list scored 100 with the exception of Crowe at 90:
- Crowe (90)
- Deloitte (100)
- EY (100)
- Grant Thornton (100)
- KPMG (100)
- PwC (100)
- RSM (100)
- Withum (100)
The group notes that “a score of 100 on the Disability Equality Index does not indicate or imply perfection.”
God bless whoever had to fill this questionnaire out because boy, it’s a lot. Here’s the Excel sheet if you want to check it out.
