Disability Confident: P&G’s Inclusive Workplace Grows Innovation, Careers and Business

At Procter & Gamble, we serve billions of people with products and services, including the estimated 1 billion people around the world with visible and invisible disabilities. This International Day of People with Disabilities (#IDPwD) — and everyday — we focus efforts on removing the barriers that inhibit their access within society, through inclusive representation and accessible design.

Our ability to effectively design products that everyone loves is enabled by a workforce and culture that understands, respects and reflects the uniqueness of everyone — a culture where we can all be our authentic selves. We’re committed to creating a more inclusive workplace for all and inspire a Disability Confident culture, where inclusive and accessible workplaces are norms that drive how we serve our consumers and lead.

Growing a #Disability Confident Culture

Here we grow a #DisabilityConfident culture where People with Disabilities can thrive, and everyone’s unique talents and experiences contribute to the following:

1. Growing Successful Careers and Businesses
When people belong, they grow. We aim to expand our ability to source, develop and retain the talent of People with Disabilities, further driving diversity as a competitive advantage. From recruits on their first job interview, to Day 1 of employment, to employees who have been with P&G for decades, our Disability Confident culture is creating a workplace where everyone can meaningfully contribute and grow their careers.

One way we do this is through our Employee Resource Groups. People with Disabilities and with Disabled Dependents Employee Resource Groups create spaces to connect with others, share experiences and foster allyship to grow our inclusive workplace.

This support grows through P&G’s interactive process for accommodations to identify creative ways to ensure both the needs of the employee and the business are met and through programs like Reverse Mentorship, which enables leaders to assist and remove roadblocks for employees with disabilities when possible.

Such programs help us to support employees throughout their careers and as they advance. Our representation enables us to uniquely see and reflect all the people we serve.

LEARN MORE: Three Ways We’re Growing Our #DisabilityConfident Culture and Our Company

2. Igniting Inclusive Product Innovation
We’re working to make people’s everyday lives better by designing accessible products and packaging that are easier to use and more convenient for everyone. Accessible products enable everyone we serve to use the products they love.

Product innovations like Gillette’s packaging design with less plastic, and Herbal Essences’ shampoo and conditioner with tactile symbols, enhance consumer experiences. Ariel’s ECOCLIC® laundry pack, the brand’s first to be both certified child-safe and designed to be inclusive and intuitive to use for all adults, helps ease use for people with dexterity disabilities. These brands and more were recognized for accessible packaging design that also drive sustainability.

Listen as Company Accessibility Leader Sumaira Latif shares how her experiences as a blind mother and leader inspired her “vision to make P&G’s products, services and the workplace the first choice for the 1.3 billion people in the world with a disability.”

3. Activating Creative Accessibility
We’re ensuring that People with Disabilities not only are represented in our advertising but also can access our ads. In Australia, P&G has launched the #Shift20 initiative, which aims to increase representation in advertising from 1 percent to nearly 20 percent, to more accurately represent the 20 percent of Australians living with a disability. Through its brands, including Pantene and Oral-B, P&G is helping to widen our view of people with visible and invisible disabilities, showcasing the strength, resilience and talent within the disability community throughout its advertising.

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Bringing gold medal impact to its advertising, Oral-B engaged 2016 Rio Paralympic record breaker Tiffany Thomas Kane to the screen “Born with Hypochondroplasia.” Thomas Kane showed what it really means to “Brush Like a Pro.” To redefine beauty standards, Pantene worked with upper extremity amputee Deb Roach, an International Pole Sports champion who was born without a left arm. A beacon of confidence in the arts and entertainment industry, this collaboration with Roach is another example of #Shift20’s efforts to shift perceptions and open doors for People with Disabilities to be cast in more ads in the future.

To ensure everyone has access to the same information and enjoys the same creative experiences, P&G brands are introducing creative accessibility tools like adding audio descriptions. Audio description is a separate audio track that includes a description of the visual aspects of a video to enable a blind person to “see” the information being displayed. Today, audio description runs across most of our ads in the United Kingdom, U.S. and Spain, making them accessible to 30 million blind or visually impaired people.

From workplace inclusivity to product and advertising accessibility, we are steadfast in our mission to grow an inclusive workplace where everyone belongs and to creating innovative products for all. Learn more about how we grow our careers, our business and a Disability Confident culture.