Travis Perkins makes formal commitment to disability inclusion

Travis Perkins plc, which is the UK’s largest supplier of building materials and owner of the Travis Perkins builders’ merchants, Toolstation and many specialist trade businesses, today formally announced its commitment to disability inclusion after joining The Valuable 500 last year.

Building a great place to work for people with disabilities is an integral part of the Group’s broader Equality, Diversity and Inclusion agenda, and this targeted disability inclusion commitment has been developed as part of the wider strategy to build a fully inclusive workplace for the 20,000 colleagues who work across the Group. It also extends to the Group’s customers and suppliers:

1) Build our partnership with the Business Disability Forum to become disability confident and ensuring that our colleagues, especially our leaders, have the skills and knowledge they need to be inclusive of people with disabilities.

2) Establish a colleague Ability network which brings together colleagues from across the business to give our colleagues with disabilities a stronger voice in shaping an inclusive working environment and ways of working for themselves and our customers.

3) Work together across our business to develop a consistent process for making adjustments for colleagues with disabilities and to enable them to thrive with us.

“We acknowledge that creating a more inclusive environment which celebrates and nurtures diversity will be crucial to our future success as a business and as an industry.

Signing up to The Valuable 500 initiative was an important first step for us in articulating our aspirations and putting disability on our leadership agenda.

“Today’s formal commitment will help us realise our ambition through some practical steps, so we continue to change mindsets and make our business fully accessible to colleagues with disabilities, both seen and unseen, over time.

We look forward to working with our colleagues to deliver on these objectives and to build a thriving workplace for everyone,” explained James Mackenzie, who is Managing Director for Toolstation and Ability sponsor for Travis Perkins plc.