Creating a truly inclusive workplace for people with disabilities
Creating a truly inclusive workplace for people with disabilities
How can we measure and enhance the extent to which people with disabilities feel included at work? Zalando has set out to address this issue by developing an action plan that sets an example for felt and tangible Disability Inclusion in the workplace.
How can we measure and enhance the extent to which people with disabilities feel included at work? Zalando has set out to address this issue by developing an action plan that sets an example for felt and tangible Disability Inclusion in the workplace.
Zalando has committed to creating an inclusive and accessible environment for all employees, including those with disabilities, by 2025. We spoke to Daniel Motiño, Senior Manager of D&I People and Products and member of Zalando’s new Disability Inclusion Allyship Network (DIAN), about the Valuable 500 (V500) metrics and Zalando’s new action plan for disability inclusion.
Hi Daniel, what’s your role at Zalando?
I’m a Senior Manager People Products with the D&I department. I support my team in different initiatives, for example, creating programs in order to increase the number of women in the top five leadership levels, designing and administering an inclusive leadership learning program, and defining a governance structure for our Employee Resource Groups. But my main focus has been putting together a Disability Inclusion Action Plan.
What D&I challenges are you and your team solving at the moment?
One challenge that’s always on our minds is: How can we measure the feeling of inclusion and support? It’s difficult to define policies that work for everyone - there are many nuances and intersectionalities that influence whether people feel included or supported. We’ve launched a voluntary D&I Survey that helped us identify how people feel, but setting clear targets that actually bring about the desired impact is hard. There are lots of reiterations we have to do. It’s about data and applying best practices and equitable policies - checking in, again and again, so that people can be themselves and shine the same way others can.
What’s your personal motivation for working on Disability Inclusion at Zalando?
For me, it’s firstly a matter of moral responsibility. I’m part of the LGBTQI+ community and have met a lot of allies along the way who’ve supported me. That’s one of the reasons why I’m now an ally of a group that’s still excluded from society and being forced to adapt their ways of working to ours: the disabled community. Only 4%1 of companies with a diversity strategy commit to Disability inclusion. Brands and companies the size of Zalando wield a lot of influence. Shaping a more equitable work environment, where it’s possible for disabled people to thrive and feel included, is my main motivation.
1Quelle: Harvard Business Review, 2020
Zalando can provide a framework to drive inclusion, but it’s really about a culture shift. People need to be willing to acknowledge their privilege and accommodate each other so everyone can feel included.
Daniel Motiño, Senior Manager of D&I People and Products
What did you accomplish in your work towards Disability Inclusion in 2023?
Our biggest achievement was launching our Disability Inclusion Action Plan and identifying four pillars to focus our efforts on going forward: workplace adjustments, leadership enablement, allyship, and improvements to accessibility. Zalando is committed to ensuring that all employees receive equitable support, opportunities, and enablement on disability topics.
As part of our efforts in 2023, we established the Disability Inclusion Allyship Network (DIAN), our new Employee Resource Group to improve the day-to-day working experiences of disabled colleagues at Zalando. The group consists of non-disabled and disabled employees who want to help each other be more aware of the disabled experience in the workplace and to learn how they can support current and future disabled colleagues throughout their Zalando journey. Through peer-to-peer support and community experiences such as volunteering their time to help organize the Special Olympics World Games 2023, we’re supporting our teams to gain more nuanced insights about disability barriers and inclusion. We’ve also devised new metrics in collaboration with Valuable 500 to measure our progress on Disability Inclusion.
What are those metrics and how do they benefit our disabled colleagues?
One of the biggest challenges we face when it comes to providing visibility for disabled people is the lack of data, primarily due to data protection laws in the EU, which makes it difficult to report on “protected characteristics” like cultural background or disability.
Valuable 500 is a global business partnership of 500 companies working together to end disability exclusion. They launched a set of metrics last year to standardize progress reports and challenge businesses to share their metrics publicly. With this standardized process for all companies that are part of the V500, we can learn from each other rather than having stand-alone goals and ways of measuring success (or failure). I was very happy when I saw that the framework of V500 is easy to implement and measure while protecting individuals. The metrics are based on the five pillars of workforce representations, goals, training, employee resource groups and digital accessibility. We used them as a guide when we created the Zalando Disability Inclusion Action Plan, which will enable us to set and track our progress in this area over the coming years.
As Zalando is headquartered in Berlin, can you give some more context on the state of Disability Inclusion in Germany in comparison to just within Zalando?
In Germany, inclusion is one of the principles of the Social Code IX, which means that “everyone, regardless of their background, identity or abilities should have the same rights, opportunities, and access to society as everyone else”. Zalando, as a DAX-40 company, needs to ensure that we comply with this and also, as part of our D&I strategy and vision, we believe we have the capacity and responsibility to hire, retain, and promote everyone as well. With our commitments, we plan initiatives that aim to achieve these goals and embed best practices in our policies and processes.
Zalando can provide a framework to drive inclusion, but it’s really about a culture shift. People need to be willing to acknowledge their privilege and accommodate each other so everyone can feel included. Ideally, this is a two way street: it needs to come from our senior leadership as a top-down approach, and every individual needs to feel empowered so that they can help move this from the bottom up as well - so we all meet in the middle and lead by example. Inclusion is a journey, not something you just do once and then move on to the next goal. And we all need to honor our responsibility as individuals. In German Law, inclusion means that society should adapt to meet the needs of disabled people, rather than expecting them to adapt to society.
What are your hopes and dreams for D&I at Zalando and the world?
I’d like to see a more diverse group of people making decisions, leading teams, acting as speakers, diverse people who inspire me not just because of their characteristics, but simply because they’re genuine and authentic.
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