Employment: Disability
(asked on 24th February 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of SMEs employing staff with disabilities between 2015 and 2020.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are defined as businesses which employ less than 250 employees.
In 2019, there were 5.82 million small businesses (0 to 49 employees) and 35,600 medium-sized businesses (50-249 employees) in the UK. 4.46 million of these do not employ anyone. 1,155,385 had 1-9 employees, 211,295 had 10-49 employees, and 35,585 had 50-249 employees.
Source: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (2020). Business population estimates for the UK and regions: 2019 statistical release.
While there are currently no robust estimates of the total number of businesses that employ staff with disabilities, DWP research does provide evidence of the proportion of establishments who have recruited employees who are disabled or have a long-term health condition in the previous 12 months.
The 2015/2016 DWP Employer Experience Survey and the 2018 DWP Employer Engagement Survey collected data from 4,200 and 4,201 telephone interviews of GB employers respectively. The surveys only considered workplaces with at least two members of staff.
The fieldwork periods for the two surveys were October 2015 to February 2016 and February to June 2018.
The surveys asked those employers who said they had tried to recruit in the last 12 months whether they had recruited someone who is disabled or who has a long-term health condition:
Establishment size | % of establishments that had recruited in the last 12 months | Of those establishments that had recruited, whether they had recruited someone who is disabled/has a long-term health condition | ||||||
Yes | No | Don’t know | ||||||
2015/16 | 2018 | 2015/16 | 2018 | 2015/16 | 2018 | 2015/16 | 2018 | |
2-9 employees | 43% | 38% | 12% | 11% | 86% | 82% | 2% | 7% |
10-49 employees | 82% | 76% | 15% | 19% | 81% | 74% | 4% | 6% |
50-249 employees | 96% | 96% | 31% | 31% | 57% | 51% | 11% | 18% |
250+ employees (2015/16 only) | 97% |
| 55% |
| 22% |
| 23% |
|
250-499 employees (2018 only) |
| 99% |
| 44% |
| 35% |
| 21% |
500+ employees (2018 only) |
| 100% |
| 53% |
| 25% |
| 22% |
Sources: Department for Work and Pensions (2019). DWP Employer Engagement survey 2018. Research report 977.
Department for Work and Pensions (2017). DWP Employer Experience survey 2015/16. Research report 948.