Susan Scott-Parker OBE
Susan Scott Parker is the founder and Chief Executive of the Employers’ Forum on Disability. The Forum is the world’s first employers’ organisation established by business to mobilise business behind the economic and social inclusion of disabled people.
Launched in 1991 by HRH Prince of Wales, the Forum now has some 400 members who employ nearly a quarter of the UK workforce. The Forum’s 120 global members employ circa 8 million people worldwide.
The Forum makes it easier for employers to become ‘disability confident’ and to employ disabled people, to welcome disabled customers and to develop partnerships with disabled people as valued stakeholders.
Susan has an international reputation as a persuasive and authoritative advocate for the advantages for global business linked to realising the potential of the15-20% of the world’s population who have a disability. She and her president John Varley (CEO Barclays) are building a unique leadership team – the President’s Group - from across the Gold group membership to be launched January 25, 2007.
In 2005 Susan led the development of the world’s first standard to measure an organisation’s performance on every aspect of disability as it affects a business. The Employers’ Forum Disability Standard, launched in 2005 with the Financial Times, involved 80 organisations, including B&Q, Cisco Systems, Merrill Lynch and Royal Mail in this, the first ever detailed benchmarking exercise on disability. TDBank in Canada and Starbucks in California are now piloting the Standard for tailoring for companies head-quartered in North America.
Susan works with her members to advise governments and bodies such as the EU, ILO and UN on how they can help more disabled people into work by positioning the employer as the valued customer and potential partner of government funded training and employment services.
The Forum under Scott Parker’s leadership has become the world’s leading publishing house on disability as it affects business and has sold more than four million educational publications to employers. She has written and edited numerous publications and led the development of ‘Disability Confident’, the definitive e-learning package. Her publication with Simon Zadek on the business case (Realising Potential) has been published in 3 European languages and Mandarin.
Forum publications / toolkits help global companies to expedite their journey to disability confidence from country to country: for example Barclays Capital recently tailored the Disability Communication Guide for the USA and Cisco are piloting Disability Confidence in the UK for global roll-out.
