1. Measure progress over attendance
One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations make is measuring success by attendance.
Attendance tells you who was in the room. It doesn’t tell you what happened afterwards.
Disability inclusion training shouldn’t leave people knowing everything. That’s neither realistic nor the goal.
Instead, think about learning as a journey.
Training builds awareness.
Awareness builds confidence.
Confidence develops into capability.
Speaking to Max Horton on The Equality Edit, one point really stood out. He talked about understanding where your organisation is today before deciding where you want to go. Rather than trying to tackle everything at once, he encouraged organisations to understand their current level of maturity, identify their priorities and focus on what will make the biggest difference next.
The same principles apply to developing your training session to support your disability inclusion strategy.
Measure where people are now.
Then decide what support will help them keep progressing. When embedding disability inclusion, ask yourself:
- Are managers feeling more confident?
- What conversations have happened since the training?
- What questions are people asking now?
- What progress have individuals and teams made?
- Where do people need more support?
Those answers will tell you far more than a feedback form ever could.
2. Create opportunities for people to keep asking questions
The best questions rarely come up during the training itself.
They usually appear afterwards, when someone has their first conversation about a reasonable adjustment, supports a disabled colleague for the first time or realises they aren’t quite sure how to respond in a particular situation.
Katie Allan’s observation is probably something that every EDI leader can relate to. She explained that many leaders aren’t avoiding conversations because they don’t care. They’re worried about saying the wrong thing. Rather than pretending to have all the answers, she encouraged leaders to acknowledge what they don’t know and create space to keep learning.
I see exactly the same thing with clients.
The questions people ask two weeks after a workshop are often the questions that make the biggest difference.
Create informal opportunities for disability inclusion training for managers to take place.
For example:
- Monthly drop-in Q&A sessions.
- Manager discussion groups.
- Anonymous question boxes.
- Short virtual clinics after major training programmes.
Every question builds confidence and this confidence will build your disability inclusion strategy into a working practice.
3. Embedding disability inclusion by building confidence through practice
Knowledge and confidence are not the same thing.
Someone can leave an inclusive workplace training session or course understanding the purpose of reasonable adjustments and still feel unsure about leading their first conversation with an employee.
Confidence grows through practice.
Eve’s experience demonstrates this perfectly. She spoke openly about becoming overwhelmed during her occupational therapy placement until the support she received became much more manageable. Breaking learning into smaller, achievable goals allowed her confidence to grow step by step.
The same principle applies to disability inclusion training for managers.
Give managers opportunities to practise.
Work through real scenarios.
Discuss recent situations.
Facilitate peer learning.
Run practice sessions where people can explore different approaches before they find themselves in the real conversation.
Practice transforms knowledge into confidence, and confidence develops into capability.
4. Bring lived experience into disability inclusion training for managers
One of the biggest strengths of disability inclusion training is hearing directly from disabled people.
Don’t let that learning end when the session finishes.
Joe shared how becoming a father completely changed his understanding of accessibility and ultimately influenced the direction of his business. His perspective shifted because disability became personal.
Stories have a unique way of changing perspectives.
Policies explain what organisations should do.
Lived experience helps people understand why it matters.
Keep those voices part of your learning throughout the year.
Share podcast episodes.
Invite guest speakers.
Host panel discussions.
Celebrate stories from your own colleagues.
The more people hear different experiences, the more naturally they begin to think differently themselves.
5. When embedding a disability inclusion, aim for progress over perfection
One of my favourite conversations was with Susi Miller from eLaHub
She openly shared a moment where she realised she had unintentionally excluded someone with a speech access need during a training session.
She didn’t defend her decision. She reflected, adapted and improved her approach.
Andrew reinforced this in our conversation when he reflected on Homes for Students’ ambition to “change the world in a day”. As the project developed, they realised lasting change came from prioritising, listening, learning and building over time rather than trying to solve everything at once.
Inclusion isn’t about getting everything right immediately.
It’s about creating an environment where people feel confident enough to learn, adapt and improve.
Celebrate progress.
Encourage curiosity.
Recognise learning.
That’s how capability grows.
6. Make learning part of your culture
The organisations making the biggest progress don’t necessarily deliver the most training.
They create the most opportunities to keep learning.
Andrew made another point that has stayed with me. Strategies shouldn’t stand still. They should evolve as organisations receive feedback, learn more about their colleagues and respond to changing needs.
Learning should work exactly the same way.
Build inclusion into everyday business.
Spend five minutes discussing a recent scenario during a team meeting.
Ask managers to share what’s working.
Celebrate examples of inclusive practice.
Revisit key themes throughout the year.
Keep the conversation moving.
When learning becomes part of the culture, disability inclusion stops being an annual event and starts becoming part of how people think, lead and work together.
Final thoughts
Disability inclusion training is one of the best investments an organisation can make.
It raises awareness.
It challenges assumptions.
It starts important conversations.
But the workshop isn’t the destination.
It’s the starting point.
Real change happens when organisations continue creating opportunities for people to ask questions, practise new skills, learn from lived experience and reflect on real situations together.
That’s how awareness becomes confidence.
That’s how confidence becomes capability.
And that’s how learning becomes part of everyday practice.
Much of the advice in this article came from conversations on The Equality Edit. To listen to more conversations from experts talk about how they embedded inclusion and equality into their workplace, click here to visit The Equality Edit on our website or search for The Equality Edit on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts.
