Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) has released its Global Accessibility Maturity Matrix (Matrix) to provide a step-by-step guide to help organisations improve accessibility in the industry.
CCEP has created the Matrix in partnership with AccessAble as a resource for other companies to utilise as it seeks to improve disability inclusion across the sector.
Currently, only 4% of businesses are focused on making their workplaces disability inclusive, with disability often being overlooked in comparison to other factors like ethnicity, gender and sexuality, the company noted.
The FMCG and manufacturing sector has been particularly challenged as there are misconceptions that accessibility is particularly difficult to address in this sector.
ESM: European Supermarket Magazine spoke to Julie Thomas, director of inclusion, diversity and equity at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners about disability inclusion and how the Matrix could benefit the whole industry.
ESM: CCEP is among the 4% of companies that focus on making their workplaces disability inclusive. Why do you think so few companies focus on this aspect?
Julie Thomas: A lot of it is around perception, around complexity and cost of making the workplace inclusive for people with disabilities. So, I think that's one of the biggest challenges but honestly that's a little bit short-sighted because the World Health Organisation estimates that 16% of the global population has a disability and actually they reckon that's going to double by 2050 and over 80% acquire their disability while in the workplace.
So, if companies aren't focusing on disability inclusion now, they're missing out on hiring great talent and potentially losing people if and when they do acquire a disability and that's why we designed the Matrix to help kind of counteract some of that complexity and remove those myths and perceptions.
We really hope it helps other companies find a place kind of to start on the journey so they can they can benefit and also the whole society benefits from that as well.
How can organisations create a more inclusive workplace environment for individuals with disabilities?
Firstly, to start in terms of creating the inclusive workplace, I think you need to start with awareness and understanding of all of those different disabilities, both visible and non-visible and create the space where people feel safe to share and talk about their different abilities.
We've seen a significant increase in comfort in sharing sharing disabilities in CCEP. In 2023 we had an inclusion survey and 12.6% shared that their disability status with us, that was up from 7% in 2021 and I think that says a lot about how psychologically safe they feel.
The Matrix has helped with that by providing kind of clear steps to create that sense of safety and some of those examples will be things like establishing a local senior sponsor for disability, performing a network of employees to share and inform on their experience or even focusing on inclusive communications like we've mentioned in the white paper or the audio access tool or subtitling videos.
Really practical steps that our colleagues tell us make a difference so that they then feel more included and more engaged with the wider organisation as a whole.
What aspects are crucial for better disability inclusion in areas like manufacturing, packaging and distribution?
There will always be some nuances with manufacturing, and I think people tend to want to go towards physical workplace adjustments, but I kind of want to bring it back, if I can, to say I think the most critical thing is attitude. Attitude is the first thing we talk about in the Matrix and the critical thing is the 'can do' attitude from the senior leaders.
Think about what can be done rather than focus on what you perceive as being too difficult. So, we can listen to employees and act on their feedback. We can make sure that disability inclusion is talked about as one of our priorities. We can make change. It might be small, but it can be done.
I think for me, it's around the practical steps. Focus on your leaders first and creating that 'can do' attitude no matter what industry you're in because if you if you do look at like physical workspace, it looks big and complex and that's why with the Matrix we've given it a whole section just to that.
We've looked at other areas like attitudes and communications because what our colleagues tell us is those are actually more important than anything else.
Feeling like you can come into a workplace and you belong and feeling like you can understand and hear what's going on in the business and then physical comes in addition to that.
CCEP seeks to have 10% of its workforce represented by people with disabilities by 2030. How is it progressing?
I would always say that whenever we ask someone to share their disability status with us, it is a very sensitive and very individual decision and we never mandate that anyone has to share that information with us.
So, it's always voluntary and we do that through our Global Inclusion Survey, which we run into every 18 months and we ask people if they feel comfortable to share their disability status with us and we include a full definition of disability, a visible, non-physical disability and neurodiversity as well.
When we first asked our colleagues back in 2021, 7% said that they felt comfortable sharing their disabilities with us and in 2023 that rose to 12.6%.
And that really has been down to some of the most amazing things that have been driven across our organisation led by an excellent senior sponsor and our employee networks who do great work every day.
Obviously, we still have a long journey to go on, but that's why the Matrix for us is so important because no matter which country you're in, and we have a large global footprint, as I said, it will give everyone a roadmap to get to start with.
I always say, start small but start, and that's what we're looking at with the Matrix. It gives you somewhere to start, something to focus on.
What are some of ways the Matrix has helped CCEP accelerate accessibility in the workplace?
I see the Matrix as being a really successful tool to help countries make progress on accessibility. I would say in the last 12 months we have seen the number, for example, the number of manufacturing sites that have been making accessibility improvements grow from one to 10.
So, we started with one at the beginning of the year in GB, and now we have ten across Europe who are all making accessibility improvements, which is fantastic. We've also seen an increase in hiring of people with disabilities.
In Spain, we've tripled the number of people with disabilities in France, we've doubled it, and I think we've had many local disability employee networks.
We now have a global disability in neurodiversity working group that acts as our sounding board for our disability inclusion approach and it represents all of our regions.
So, I think those are three things in terms of physical spaces, hiring of people with disabilities, and also giving our employees a voice and a platform to be heard and for their ideas to be developed, that the Matrix helped us with.
What are some of the salient features of the Matrix that make it applicable across various industries?
From my perspective when we created the Matrix internally, we asked that as well because as an organisation we have corporate headquarters as well as manufacturing sites and field sales team and we are quite diverse in the way we operate and that's why we came to three areas of focus that are the threads that run through the whole Matrix, which is attitudes, communications and physical and they are applicable in every industry. [...]
There was definitely my own peers in other industries saying share with us what you've got because we don't know. It's an internal tool but we're happy to share it externally, to share our learnings and I think they wanted to know more.
We really hope that through the Matrix we can help other industries to accelerate disability inclusion because ultimately that means more talent in the workplace, more diverse talent and a better economically viable society as a whole.
Is the Matrix only for like visible disabilities or does it also addresses invisible disabilities?
It absolutely addresses both visible and invisible disabilities and neurodivergency and that for me was absolutely critical because the vast majority of the disabilities are not visible.
And a couple of examples in the Matrix include ensuring access to quiet rooms in workplaces, or investing in way-finding signage so that people, no matter where they are in whatever office environment or plan environment you're in, they know where they are and where to go, or investing in digital accessibility tools to help those that are neurodivergent.
It is really a critical topic for us – visible and non-visible disabilities – because it needs to be as inclusive as it possibly can be.
What are some of the challenges faced by companies in achieving disability inclusion goals?
It's really important that companies don't consider disability inclusion as 'a nice to have initiative' and that they really understand that it's critical to future proofing their sustainability and their growth.
Companies really need to take this seriously and invest in disability inclusion. And investment isn't just about the cost of physical changes to workplaces.
It's about investing in an inclusive mindset, investing in inclusive communication and truly embedding accessibility into your business, so that it's not 'a nice to have' but it's actually like a fully embedded internal programme. And that's what we hope the Matrix can help with.
Is there any particular example that was implemented in CCEP to propagate the idea of inclusion as a first step?
I think one of the very first things that we unlocked when we started our journey, we have been on this journey for a number of years, was to have a really committed leader who put disability inclusion within their top three priorities every time they talked within the organisation.
And the reason I say that is because not only did it demonstrate to the business that it was not just 'a nice to have' but it was imperative, but it also demonstrated to all of our employees that we were taking this really seriously, that this wasn't 'a nice to have', as I said, but this was a long-term investment and a long-term commitment. We know accessibility inclusion.
It's challenging, it's complex, but that's why for us, the Matrix is so important. We want to help to unlock some of the barriers that we've learned from as we go along the way to help other organisations accelerate on this path even quicker.
Is there anything else that you would like to like share with us?
We just really hope that this is something that we can really help with removing the barriers that currently exist towards people with all disabilities and different disabilities working.
This is very close to my heart and it's just something I think will massively improve economic inclusion of people of different abilities as well as societal inclusion.
So, I'm really proud of the work that CCEP and we have done on this, and I really hope that other organisations can take a look and learn, or start their journey on the path.
