We are delighted to announce that NELFT won two RIDI (Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative) awards on Friday 3 December 2021 for our work on disability initiatives at NELFT.

We were nominated by RIDI themselves for the category: ‘Public Sector: Making a Difference’. This award highlights those who have excelled in levelling the playing field for disabled candidates in the recruitment and retention processes. Identifying and implementing appropriate reasonable adjustments at every stage and working hard to swiftly remove any barriers.

We were highlighted for the following (and more):

• Health Passports
• Calibre Programme
• Disability Confident Scheme
• Staff Networks
• Reasonable Adjustment processes
• Recruitment and Retention for staff with disabilities

We also beat all winners in every other category to win the biggest impact award in which our peers voted us best out of all category winners. This means we are now invited to be part of the RIDI executive board for a year and are part of their pioneer programme advising others how to be better disability employers.

Our Head of EDI, Harjit Bansal, said:

“Thank you to all the people who voted for us. We feel really honoured to have proof that we are moving in the right direction and advancing our goal to eliminate discrimination and to received recognition of how crucial it is to give opportunities to those with disabilities to work within the NHS. Our staff with disabilities help us continually improve our service delivery for both patients and colleagues, through assisting them, we positively contribute towards the inequality agenda and more importantly, are able to have a real impact on those within our organisation and beyond.

"Obviously, we could not have won without the support and partnership of our HR teams, IT, Staff Disability Networks, Health and Safety, Executive Leadership teams, and everyone who has engaged with  our supported our initiatives. We still have loads more to do; our impact is just a small percentage of what we want to achieve. ‘Aint no stopping us now!’"