Spain: El Corte Inglés offers training  to staff in the appropriate approach when engaging with people with disabilities

On 05 October, Spain’s department store chain El Corte Inglés announced that going forward all of its almost 81,000 employees worldwide would receive training on the best practices to adopt when interacting with people (customers and colleagues) with disabilities. This initiative comes eleven months after the signing of a framework agreement in November 2020 with the ONCE Foundation, which specializes in employing people with disabilities. ‘The aim of this training is so that we all know how to make their daily lives normal,’ explains the company. This training is delivered as an interactive video featuring people with visual, auditory, mental and motor disabilities and asks the viewer to choose one from three attitudes that they would adopt in specific situations. If they do not choose the right attitude, the video explains why and how they should react. The training is not mandatory but instead is recommended and it is available via the company’s intranet. ‘Corporate culture, equality, diversity and commitment’ is one of the five pillars of the group’s CSR policy. Roughly 1.6% of the group’s staff are living with disabilities, which is slightly less than Spanish law requires (at least 2% for a company of this size).