Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative (RIDI)

The Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative (RIDI) has one purpose: to break down the barriers faced by the millions of disabled people who are entering or progressing through the job market. RIDI believes more needs to be done to build disability confidence into recruitment and employment strategies and campaigns actively to achieve this. We help recruiters and employers to become disability confident and offer more job opportunities to people with disabilities. Our joint initiative started in 2011 when we realised that things had to change to improve the poor job prospects for disabled people. At the time, eighty five per cent of disabled people felt that their condition was holding them back from getting a job. And eighty per cent of recruiters agreed with them and thought their companies needed to do more to attract disabled jobseekers. So we sat out to transform recruitment and improve job prospects for disabled people. The aim was to work with the industry, not against it, and to give recruiters and employers the information and tools they need to change things. In 2014 we came together for the first time to celebrate progress on disability in recruitment at a spectacular RIDI Awards ceremony. We recognised the need to celebrate the great strides being made in the industry and the RIDI Awards are now becoming a regular fixture on the recruitment industry calendar.