 Ladies and gentlemen good afternoon and welcome to this press conference from the fourth day of the 49th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum here in Davos. Thank you for joining us here in the room, thank you for joining us on the live stream, whether you're watching on Facebook, Twitter or our website, we are definitely very happy for you to tune in. So thank you very much. You're joining the press conference here today that tries to answer the question how can business improve inclusion of people with disabilities? I think it's a topic that has admittedly probably been very much underrepresented in previous annual meetings of the World Economic Forum so we're particularly pleased to correct that wrong today here with a fantastic panel and let me introduce quickly our speakers here today. To my immediate left I'm joined by Caroline Casey who is the founder of valuable and the young global leader of the forum as well if I might add. To her left we're joined by Julie Swede, she is the chief executive officer of North America of Accenture. To her left we're joined by Duncan Tate who's the brace yourself for this title president and chief executive officer Europe Middle East India and Africa of Fujitsu so basically ruling the world as far as Fujitsu is concerned and then to his left we're joined by Ashok Vasvani who's the CEO of Barclays in the United Kingdom and if we are lucky we'll be joined any minute now also by Paul Pullman the CEO of Unilever who is in the building already and on his way to join us here. Caroline without further ado thank you very much for being here today I know you have an exciting announcement to make so please the floor is yours. Well it's wonderful to be here and I really want to recognize that this great moment to see disability business inclusion at such a center stage of the World Economic Forum annual meeting and I'm going to give a bit of context around disability there are 1.3 billion people in the world who have a disability 80% acquire the disability between the ages of 18 and 64 which is workforce age 80% of those disabilities are invisible now scary stats are your 50% more likely to experience poverty if you have a disability your 50% less likely to have a job the ILO have reported that disability exclusion is costing countries up to 7% if you're a child with a disability 90% of children with disabilities don't have an education so this is an inequality crisis it is the biggest marginalized group in the world and so how do we solve this it can't be solved by charities and governments alone we need the most powerful force on this planet to be part of this conversation and that's business we've seen business use its huge social muscle in the past we've seen that and if we've seen here in the World Economic Forum because inclusive business creates inclusive societies so why are we not seeing business engage so much right now around disability well there's lots of reasons and here are some one is leaders don't really have the confidence to talk about disability in the way they have other issues we have some great ones today here and later at our main panel but we don't see it and EY did a report saying 56% of board members had never or very rarely seen disability on the board agenda the second issue that we know is causing huge issues is the competing elements of the diversity and inclusion agenda when we see ourselves pitting one issue against another and we have another awful statistic saying that 90% of companies around the world prioritized our vertices but only 4% consider disability the third issue is universal design which we know is profitable has not been taken up as mainstream and fourthly though the economic case and the return on investment for business is is there it's proven whether it's a brand brand differentiation talent acquisition retention of next generation whether it's about the market of 8 trillion we're talking about just under 20% of our global population it's a huge opportunity for business and it's dreadful to see it not be taken but there are social consequences to that and so that gives you a sense of why this is so important and we know that leaders big leaders and big brands and big platforms and change it and so here today am I allowed talk about the valuable 500 what we're doing so we have a solution and well one that we believe kind of captures both the opportunity that exists and the moment so today I am so proud to announce the launch of the valuable 500 it's a very emotional moment for me because it has been a long time coming the valuable 500 with our strategic partners one young world Omnicom and the Virgin Media Group are challenging in 365 days for companies around the world 500 companies around the world to put disability on their board agenda signed off by the CEO make one commitment for change and shout about it externally and internally it doesn't matter if you're just starting if you're scaling or if you're leading you are all welcome you are all included we started this with one young world for hashtag valuable today we launched the valuable 500 and I want to be really positive about something the voices of the next generation have made this happen it was through one young world we found our voice and mindful that this generation the generation that cares so deeply about inclusion in a way that we have not maybe before they have helped us create a film which is being launched right now called hashtag diversity and the world economic form have launched online through our blog or their blog so it's live and for this moment on we are opening for business the valuable 500 website is just gone live 365 days we have to find 500 of you there is a counter clock on it to make sure that we stick to targets this will be the tipping point the tipping point to totally release the economic social and business potential of 1.3 billion people in the world and inclusion revolution that leaves nobody behind and ends diverse inclusion I have to acknowledge at this point my huge huge gratitude to the world economic form and I was a YGL in 2006 and I've been to Davos many times in 2010 I said I would never come back until we got this on the main stage at 530 we have done that it is a moment in history and it needs to be acknowledged I want to also thank our partners this is not about one individual Caroline Casey it's about a global movement of collaboration together and we have expert partners like access chat business disability form rule global we have we have the marketing society we have ILO GBDN and the purple space we will galvanize this we will make it happen and I also need to turn to the great valuable leaders because without them this would not be possible Janet Riccio Richard Branson Mark Weinberger from EY and I am so delighted that the leader who helped me started all has just walked into the room I would not be here if it was not for the leadership and the courage and the absolute tenacity and support of Paul Poeman who seems to do this for everyone but he stood for us for this tribe of 1.3 billion and I need to acknowledge his leadership thank you thank you much thank you very much Caroline wow what a wonderful announcement we could almost close the press conference here because you're such a tough act to follow Julie I don't envy you but nonetheless I'll come come to you now I'm so edict censure you've you've seen the importance of this issue and you joined this you you joined this this pledge but you've also done some research on the topic if you could talk about these two points to our audience please sure well I have no doubt Caroline that with your passion and commitment that we will reach the 500 and I'm very proud to be here today representing Accenture's global commitment to disability inclusion and to join the valuable 500 and I will say that you know the world economic form when people say what it's all about this is what it's all about putting the spotlight on these important societal issues that are good for business and they're good for people and so it's it's very exciting to share this moment with you and with the world economic forum at Accenture we have always believed and we've seen that diversity and our commitment to a culture of equality has been an incredible source of innovation and creativity and we've seen the benefits of that from strong financial performance to relationships we've built with leading companies like the ones here and also becoming a magnet for talent because the best talent in the world wants to work at companies that are committed to diversity they want the excitement of it a few years ago we recognized that we needed to focus more on disability inclusion and we started taking tangible steps as we've done in other areas like gender and LGBTQ we made action plans we focused on hiring on accessibility and on mental health and mental wellness we did things like create programs across the world creating mental health allies we deployed new technologies to allow those with physical disabilities to participate in our very collaborative culture we're only still at the beginning a few years in we have clear action plans and it's been on our board agenda for some time we've seen the benefits and last year we wanted to test whether our experience right was was shared by other companies who are also champions and so we partnered with disability in and the American Association for Persons with Disabilities to look at the hundred and forty companies that participate in the disability equality index in the US to compare their financial performance with those who were not champions and it was a clear yes that the inclusion disability inclusion is an advantage those companies that were champions to return two times the value to their shareholders they were higher in revenue and it was a great affirmation of what we had already experienced today you may have seen that the business round table a group of the top 200 companies in the US issued it issued a report about the importance of innovation well everyone who has diversity and is committed to it knows that you cannot have innovation without diversity so we believe that the business case in the imperative is only growing stronger as companies recognize they have to be continuous innovators so we're really excited to continue on this journey we know that we have a lot more to do and it's great to be able to learn from other companies and I'll just close with a personal story in 1985 I was a freshman in college and it was I did my first volunteer service that wasn't selected by my parents and I happened to volunteer at a local organization for teens with mental disabilities I'd never been connected it just happened to be an opportunity and I learned and got more out of that volunteering than I gave but at that time what made me really sad was these teenagers were soon to age out and they had no path to a life other than living in a group home three years ago I got to partner with Marriott's foundations bridges from called bridges from school to work and we've hired individuals very similar to those I volunteered to help I have an apprentice in my own office and I saw the completion of what it really means to provide a path and of course there's all kinds of disabilities 80% are invisible whatever the disability there is the value of providing a place for real people to be able to you know have a great job and succeed it's it's it's really you know just it's it's life-changing for them but also for us as a company so really excited to be a part of this thank you very much Julie Duncan it's not getting easier for you the second speaker also was fantastic so no pressure please yeah so let's let's hear from you about Fujitsu Fujitsu's commitment and especially I'd like to hear from the how you combine purpose and profit okay good so good afternoon everybody so Fujitsu this is really simple for us you know our customers are going through great change and I see it as our job as our customers are disrupted by technology it's our job to help them thrive in a digital world and quite simply what we need to be able to do that is really great talent now Julie mentioned before about about diversity I think it's absolutely right and Fujitsu over the last seven years have taken this really seriously front and center of the way we of the way we do business and when you get great people in front of our customers we end up doing things like we've done for the Royal Bank of Scotland where we've used quantum computing to help them manage 120 billion pounds of high quality liquid assets you can only do that with great people and it means you have to take diversity really really seriously now seven years ago when our journey first began the first step we took was to enable our leaders to be comfortable and confident with the language of disability that was our first step we took the second step was to give our employees evidence that we were also taking it seriously and they could be confident in us so we set up a network called seed it's our disability network and anyone can join it whether you are have a disability or not it's now where I think in the top 10 of disability networks around the world and we've seen a real change in the number of our people who identify as being disabled when we first started it was 3% and the stats that I got this morning it's 13% of our people almost at your one in seven number almost so I think we've made great strides we got so so much more to do our graduate recruitment is is showing this we are forcing I use the word force deliberately the people who provide us with talent including our own recruiters we're forcing them to prove they fish in diverse pools of all of our graduate intake every year 20% of these people now would identify as having a disability and this is great to have inside the company for all the reasons you mentioned Julie and they are really seriously helping our customers the other thing that we've we've done which is in a dynamic organization like us where we form teams to help our customers you can have different line managers regularly and there is nothing worse for disabled people than having to have another conversation with a new boss to say I need adjustments because so in Fujitsu we have cut this out we have a thing called a disability passport when you move from manager to manager the new manager picks up the passport and knows exactly what they have to do to enable you to be productive this is all aimed at us making people's lives easy inside the company so they can be productive for the people we serve and they happen to be our customers so I said we have way way way more to do but it's been a great journey for for us I think our customers are feeling the impact of it and the things that we've just done we had an employee vote in our UK business and our UK business have chosen to partner with Autistica which is an autistic charity about helping to get people into work and live really meaningful lives and we're going to use and develop policies of digital technologies to help that as in our two-year partnership with with Autistica so Caroline we are completely committed to this not only are we going to continue to do it we are also going to go and recruit other companies so we're going to take a target in your top 500 it's a great initiative thank you thank you Duncan I did you wrong you're a great speaker so I think one thing that that might make us optimistic about the the success of the valuable 500 is that we have so many different industries and sectors represented here so Ashok you're you're representing the financial sector and and Barclays as well is joining a valuable 500 share your perspective on the issue with us why is this a key issue for Barclays and I'm feeling the pressure yeah okay so Barclays actually has a relatively long history in dealing with this issue John Wally who was our chairman maybe even 10 years ago signed up Barclays to be one of the founder members for business for the business disability forum which made a lot of progress in the UK I later sat on that forum as a board member and they're doing some really really fabulous work I am the executive sponsor for disability at Barclays across Barclays the whole Barclays group and what I've tried to do is try to really bring this down to very simple business you know a business rationale as to why this is very very important and let me try that message today with this group so I have just three things basically to say the first thing I want to say is that when people talk about disability the usual vision or the usual image that occurs is a lot of extreme you know disabilities I submit to you that when I turned 40 I magically started wearing glasses and at 45 and 50 I'm wondering why restaurants are so dark because it's virtually impossible to read the menu right in that case I am visually impaired and I'm a normal person but I have visual impairment right and therefore when we think about disability we should think about disability in a continuum now thank God I don't have extreme disability but you know a lot of people have some kind of difficulty you know in their in their day-to-day lives without my glasses there's virtually nothing I can do so I think I think normal people kind of you know can relate to that if that is true then it has to be true there are a lot of our customers are going through the same thing and if you're a truly customer focused business and you're trying to get something done for the customer then you must take into account the kind of difficulties that the customer has that is my job that is what I should be doing morning and evening and therefore we said that we must go about designing products for customers who are living with our products along this continuum of disability which brings me to the second point which basically says we cannot think of disability as something at the end of a product design or at the end of a service design this is something that you must do right at the start in fact I would submit to you that if you design a product or service keeping this in mind and thinking about the extremes the outcome that you get out of it is much much much better right I'll give you a very simple example you know all of us in banks of course issue a whole bunch of ATM cards now our ATM cards our brand colors are blue so our ATM cards are dark blue now a lot of people have difficulty with dark blue as a color a young a young person literally you know in our bank and you know he met somebody in the branch the customer told him that dark blue really doesn't work for him so he says okay what color works for you and he said yellow and he said okay I mean if you are printing dark blue can I just print yellow and he printed yellow and that particular person's card turned out to be a yellow card which that person used and loved and so he came and told us and he says you know what why don't we allow customers to choose color and somebody says if you're just talking them from using color why don't you just allow them to put whatever photograph you like and therefore on my debit card and you know I can show it to you I've got a picture of me and my daughter now think about it what a phenomenal product differentiation now when I take out my wallet guess which card I love right right absolutely not gonna love any other card I'm gonna love the card which is got a photograph of me with my daughter this all started because some customer found it difficult to deal with dark blue right and therefore my second point is in designing products and services think of the extremes right and if you think of the extremes you'll get a better product out anyway which then leads to my third and last point my third and last point is look again don't think of disability as something which is a permanent kind of situation right mental health is a classic case right there are times when you go through a lot of stress you feel very overwhelmed I feel overwhelmed at times right at that point in time I'm going through a very difficult time at that point in time it could be that my judgment is impaired because I'm under so much pressure but it's a temporary thing I find ways to get over it I do something about it but temporarily I have a disability and therefore getting our colleagues and thinking about them and making sure that they are in good mental health in this instance is so important to Duncan's point all our businesses are undergoing so much change there is so much pressure right it is not unusual that these things would happen and so we designed the campaign which was called this is me we're senior leaders and anybody else who had the courage to come up and say look this can happen to me so I have this issue my photograph this is me and we kind of you know put this all over the bank to say that this is not this is not restricted to any kind of level grade hierarchy age this could happen to everybody the mayor of London loved it and they were adopted that this seemed this is me campaign all across London for example so we are very very committed to this program we would love to learn from other organizations because I think this is something where we can commonly take it on I think you laid out Caroline the case very strongly hopefully the three points that I make tell you that you don't need any further business case it just makes sense to do it so just let's do it thank you I should thank you very much for your commitment Paul you were late to the press conference but you were on the other hand very early and supporting this costs as Caroline pointed out so eloquently so we would like to hear from you about the importance that you see in business leadership here and of course also about what you never is doing in that important space please I apologize but we were working actually with some countries trying to have them pass legislation that would actually deal with these issues like we succeeded in some countries in the world I'm very passionate about that I work myself for my foundation that I have was my wife for blind people we have for 25,000 blind kids in Africa that we support and the biggest issue that we have is advocacy especially in regions where I'm very difficult to have normal education for for anybody then the disability gets pretty quickly excluded I'm pretty humbled by what I hear and I would learn like to learn more like his fiduets who is already 13% that's pretty impressive I think you'll hold the world record on that one and what you're all doing Barclays yourselves and Accenture it's so so pleasant to to hear that we're amongst like-minded but that's not the case if you really go outside of this room I think that's why we have to place on the podium we'll get the 500 without any doubt we've been able to attack the issues of gender equality we haven't made the progress we want but at least we talk about it and we have to publish and some countries put legislation in place the same with AIDS IV or LGBT now with mental health and yet it's very very difficult to get disability on the agenda and it's surprising to me if you look at the sustainable development goals which we work a lot this week in Davos and where we're falling behind the objective of the goal is actually to leave nobody behind there you're talking here about a population of 1.3 billion you'd think you'd focus on that anybody who has common sense and if you didn't look at the purchasing power I'm sure Caroline has talked it of about 8 trillion you'd be stupid not to deal with that from a purely economical point of view let alone the moral compass with some people might or might not have I leave that up to anybody else but anywhere you look in terms of statistics you have to be worried and only 20% of the people are in employment it's a sure way to leave a lot of people behind and I don't like to talk disability because I don't believe in disability actually and I don't believe that there are normal people and disabled people I actually believe in disability it's a small change in two letters but disability says actually we're all different I'm a very bad basketball player I cannot sing my wife has made that clear to me many times but nobody has accused me of having a disability we all have disabilities and if we come if we want to solve the world's problems at large or inside of a company leverage the the full power of diversity which we all well know then we have to embrace this disability everywhere that we are including people that what we now conveniently called disability interestingly technology is developing so fast in this world also with people with visual impairment for example that a lot of the people that we will call disabled and have unconscious bias against are actually able to do much more than us with the people that have visual impairment that I work with I can tell you the majority I meet first of all they know how to operate in a FUKA environment and are a little bit better prepared for the world we're going to see but secondly also and if you look at purely technology they're often ten miles ahead of where we are because for them it's just a normal way to live their lives so if we can just harness that disability that we all have then we will also be able to quicker close the the gaps that we have on the sustainable development goals I don't want to talk about Unilever because I'm very humbled was other companies are doing but we've now as my retirement I was very pleased that the company wanted to step up and and I think it's a wonderful retirement present when they committed that they were going to hire another 8,000 people with disabilities in the company and that's probably the best present I could get after 10 years working there so 500 is a minimum that we have to set with the 500 valuable campaign I know that is doable but that's not really the ultimate goal the ultimate goal is just to be sure that this is addressed in any company in the world and that we ultimately leave no one behind and that's what I'll be fighting for until the day I move on to better pastures but again thanks for the passion as you can see that Caroline exhibits I thought it was a setup when I came to one young wealth in Columbia and I had jet lag so I thought I'll go to this room where all these young people are was enormous energy just to stay awake and as I came in there was a panel on disability and Caroline was leading that panel was the normal passion that you've seen just now and he said they've only the business community would stand up and leaders like ourselves and she mentioned my name would have the guts to come up I thought it was the biggest set up that I've ever entered to in my life and I still can't believe it today but anyway I went on the podium and we got another 10 business people that were in the audience pledging it then we asked people to stand up who were fully behind this campaign everybody stood up you'd be stupid to sit down and you know and there we go it was Helen Keller who was blind and deaf who said that the worst thing is not to be blind the worst thing is to have eyes and not see and unfortunately we still live in a world where too many people have eyes and don't see and that's the mindset that we need to change and this campaign is the first step of that and my final word will be a word of gratitude towards the web because they've put four or five major events on in this week around disability and I'm very grateful for that thank you Paul I'm tempted to ask you to sing now that you mention it but I'll ask you something else instead and I guess the question goes to everybody on the panel you mentioned the commitment to hire 8,000 people Duncan you spoke to basically the that the task you give your your HR department how well our HR department prepared for disability inclusion I don't think it's only the HR department that you have to look at you have to look at how well as a company prepared and that goes way beyond that the go that really goes into the culture of inclusion in a company and there is a lot of unconscious biasness that is around amongst around many areas of diversity talking disability now so you have to prepare not only the candidates you have to not only take care of unconscious biasness in the recruiting process but you also have to prepare the organization itself but you can only prepare that under a principle not that people come in because and they have limited abilities no you have to prepare an organization that we're all God's children and have capabilities that we all need to harness and treasure I don't believe that you know if a person comes in in a wheelchair we tend to think that they are worse accountants than if they walk in that's an unconscious biasness that we need to get rid of that's the essence of the issue that we have and so recruiting is one thing but working the culture in the company is far more important thank you please Duncan so I think it's really really important for companies to understand what the business case is because if you're not careful you end up in tick box diversity and jet in the world of gesture politics so it's important to understand the business case and how organizations like ours build being responsible into our business models to how we make money it's really clear in Fujitsu we need great talent and people great talent in front of our customers will grow and make more money so it is therefore sustainable and I think Paul's example is great which is unally refigured out this is part the business model and therefore it will be sustainable beyond beyond Paul and I think we see the at the at the evidence of that so so figure out how it makes your company money and then it will be sustainable forever thank you Julie do you want to add to that only that I wholeheartedly agree and so you know as we looked at this it's a holistic transformation from you know training HR really to support the business leaders in their commitment as opposed to making this something that is about HR this is about business leaders and then the company coming behind those leaders to help enable the goal thank you Caroline you mentioned a number in your statement and you said 80% of the disabilities are invisible I think it's important for our audience to understand what that means maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that well well I am registered legally blind I can't see anybody here on the panel and I certainly can't see the cameras and so that is an example of somebody who it's and I I hid my disability actually Accenture were my very first employer so this is a big moment for me and I hid it from them fearful that they wouldn't want to have me as an employee and actually that was not true and but people who have mental health dyslexia and people who have motor newer like motor neuron diseases a lot of the acquired diseases that we see or conditions are invisible and I think it's very important to know right now in organizations if we were to run a confidential campaign and ask people do they experience disability you would most likely find that 13 to 15% of your sitting current population within your business has a disability so I just want to say one thing I am so extraordinary touched and I have massive admiration for these leaders where have you been and in the sense that this is the voice I don't think this is a HR issue this is a leadership issue and I want to acknowledge because just before we came into this room we have eight companies signed up for the valuable 500 before we set the button Paul wanted me to have a thousand but I have eight right now and I want to acknowledge Accenture and Fujitsu and Barclays and Unilever Omnicon Virgin Media Group and we have Microsoft and Sinopolis in Mexico can I just say that is the best start in the world and it's a brilliant moment so thank you well that's that's fantastic and I think you mentioned already we should definitely come back here next year and see where we are and and see how far we surpassed the 500 I want to also at this point because Paul you mentioned how much the forum has done to put it on the agenda also want to give a shout out to my colleague me listen to here who's done a great work here to to make this possible so we shouldn't forget about that I know we are running out of time already but let's see if there's any questions from the audience here there's a question from the lady in the last row the microphone is on its way there you go thank you thank you very much Sophie Edwards from DevEx question because we write about low and middle income countries what are the extra challenges of achieving this in companies based in the global south will they be experiencing extra difficulties and is there anything that maybe Unilever or other companies can do to encourage them or help them no for sure I had in I was in Kenya about two months ago and as I do on any of my visits I we will always visit schools for the blind or the deaf blind but I asked a group of business people because at least we have a confining power a little bit and so we had about 20 companies and what was most satisfying to me was that and this is positive so take my comment positively that most companies that were there had not thought about it and when we had the discussions and the potential they all made commitments to do something about it so whilst we might say our legislation doesn't help me or the buildings are not adjusted or we don't have enough money to put everybody in school it at the end of the day we're dealing here first and foremost with an issue of human willpower like on so many issues in life and whatever part of the world you live in if we unlock that human willpower to do something about it we can make major inroads everywhere we might not achieve utopia but we certainly can make major progress we have 10 blind students that we sponsor at Kenyatta University who first had to get into elementary school then fight their way into secondary school often fight for a braille or keep up with text and books that were not available and then being able to go to university I tell you if these people would have had the luck to be cited they would have all been presidents of the country you know and it's those people that we need to celebrate a 12 year old girl that I asked the other day what she wanted to be and she was blind and had gotten blind at the age of six and she said she wanted to be the minister of education because she wanted to change the system for people with disabilities those are the people that we need to champion and these people you need in every country in the world you might be surprised but in the UK for example if you look at the employability rate it's 80% amongst the people with disabilities but only 40% with disabilities in the US people that are blind only have a 15% employment so the issue is not one of our their poor countries are developing countries the issue is a global one that we need to address and this campaign and the tools that we put behind it sure you need local adoption but you need to take a global mindset here we're talking here about the basic essence of humanity on which our system and the world functions and frankly any time that that is being challenged in whatever way we as business leaders need to stand up and fight for that that's why I'm here fighting for the ones that are left behind because they don't have a chance to be on this panel thank you Paul and thank you for this for this powerful expression of support here I'm afraid I have to close the press conference now because all of the panelists are quite busy my last request would be if you're talking about this press conference if you're talking about the issue if you're talking about the panel later today use the hashtag valuable on social media to get the word out to everybody and inspire more companies to sign up to this thank you very much for being here thank you very much for watching and a special thank you to all of my panelists today thank you very much