Are employees with disfigurements discriminated against?

People with disfigurement may still be discriminated against in the workplace despite being protected by the Disability Discrimination Act, says the Head of Professional Development at disfigurement charity Changing Faces.

In an interview with Workplace Law Network, Henrietta Spalding stated that there is still a huge discrepancy between what the law says and what is actually happening:

“Anecdotally we know that people who are trying to apply for work, for example, will often find that if they put that they have a disability on their CV they may not be called for interview. We had a report this morning from an individual who has found that when he doesn’t put disability on his CV, he is called to interview. But he has been to 200 interviews and still doesn’t have a job.

“There is a clear problem, and anecdotally we have a lot of evidence that people are not protected by the law, or at least good practice is not being demonstrated.”

Changing Faces is now carrying out research to find out how people with disfigurement are treated in the workplace, which Spalding believes will reinforce the anecdotal evidence that they have heard at the charity for the last 15 years:

“We will find that people are being unfairly treated at work, that people are not being recruited because of the way they look, that people are being underemployed because of how they look and maybe they are not being retained in the same the way as if they didn’t have a disfigurement.”

To hear the interview with Henrietta Spalding in full, download it from the Workplace Law Network website now  »