As the late, author, attorney, and disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson reminds us ‘stories are the closest we can come to shared experience’.

The growth of storytelling campaigns over recent years means that it’s increasingly common to hear about the contribution of employees with disabilities and long-term conditions. 

PurpleSpace has supported some impactful campaigns over the years, whether it’s the trail blazers like Shell’s ‘Be Yourself’, Fujitsu’s ‘Be Completely You’, or Barclays’ ‘This is me’ to more recent examples like Unilever’s ‘I am me’ or DHL’s ‘Beyond the surface’. 

At an individual level, we see time and again how offering something of our personal story can often lead the way to a more informed and supportive relationship with our colleagues and managers.

Disability ERG/Network leaders can create impact at scale by supporting employees to develop the confidence and skills to share their stories with managers and colleagues and, if they choose to, the wider organisation. 

‘The house burned in front of them but they wanted the data to prove it...’

We love this opening line from a 2018 Forbes article by Bernard Coleman III about moving beyond the data driven ‘business case’ for inclusion. As Bernard goes on to say, ‘if the smoke doesn't alarm you, the fire certainly should’.

When it comes to disability inclusion, organisations spend vast amounts of time and money on new systems and communication campaigns to encourage employees to share their disability status. 

Yet, most global ERG/Network leaders support their employers to improve policy and procedure based on their members’ lived experiences and stories and the knowledge that between 10-15% of people in any business are likely to have a disability or long-term condition.

As author Brené Brown famously suggested, ‘maybe stories are just data with a soul’.

This month we encourage you to consider:

• Is your organisation prioritising disability self-ID over listening, learning and acting on the experiences of colleagues who already identify as having a disability or long-term condition?
• How can you use your disabled colleagues’ stories to foster understanding that improved disability self-ID is an outcome of inclusive practice, not a precursor to it.
• How will you ensure that a lack of accurate disability workforce data doesn’t prevent action on known issues?

New resource: Learning from expert story tellers

This month we released our new podcast, The Unflinching Art of Storytelling, with four lessons learnt from last year’s conversation between two extraordinary story tellers from the PurpleSpace community; Sophie Morgan (author and presenter)and Damian Riley (CEO of Capita’s Army Recruiting Group).

Peer Leadership Roundtables

One of the most valuable aspects of PurpleSpace membership is the opportunity to build your leadership capacity via quality conversation with other disability ERG/Network leaders.

Each month we convene groups of disability ERG/Network leaders to stimulate discussion on the issues that matter most to our members.

Connect with your peers during these interactive one-hour sessions for disability ERG/Network leaders. These sessions are a great way to share good practice and challenges, swap ideas and build your ERG/Network leadership capacity. 

We have two sessions to choose from to explore how to create change via story telling:

• 8 March 08:00 – 09:00 GMT (19:00 – 20:00 ACT)

• 21 March 16:00 – 17:00 GMT (11:00 – 12:00 AST)

Resources and Recommendations 

Tap into our PurpleSpace know-how and check out some of the external learning that links into this month’s leadership lesson:

• Purple Stories: A guide to why, when and how to share your story of disability or ill-health at work.
• The Power of Storytelling: Publication on how to create authentic, impactful storytelling campaigns. 
• Be Yourself: A ‘how-to’ paper written by Shell offering a 10-step approach to creating a video sharing platform to help disabled employees be themselves at work.
• Spotlight On … Unilever: Video interview with Manisha Mehta and Nakul Gaur who share the principles that made Unilever’s ‘I AM ME’ storytelling campaign so powerful.