At The Wildlife Trusts, we firmly believe that nature needs to be accessible to everyone. It is important that everyone gets the benefits of nature, due to the impact spending time in nature has on our well-being. This is just as vital for The Wildlife Trusts as employers as it is to us as supporters of our local communities. 

Earlier this year, we launched A Space For Everyone, an intersectional guide for how to make places in nature accessible and inclusive, and we have also been working behind the scenes on our support for disabled members of staff.

20^th November to the 20^th December marks UK Disability History Month, and we wanted to use this occasion to reiterate our commitment to being disability inclusive. That is why The Wildlife Trusts have been becoming Disability Confident. 

Disability Confident is a government scheme that started in November 2016, and aims to support employers in:

• Challenging attitudes towards disability
• Removing barriers to people with disabilities and long-term health conditions
• Ensuring that disabled people have opportunities to fulfil their potential. 

Marianne West - Equity and Emerging Talent Lead, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust

Our path to becoming Disability Confident wasn't about checking boxes – it was about fundamentally reimagining how we, as an environmental organisation, could work for everyone. Gone are the days when we posted jobs and hoped the right people would find them. We now actively seek out diverse talent, partnering with specialist job boards like Evenbreak and attending career fairs at local colleges.

But recruitment was just the beginning. The real transformation happened in creating a workplace culture where everyone could thrive. We've trained over ten of our staff members as Mental Health First Aiders, established comprehensive reasonable adjustment processes and created an active Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Network where our employees can voice ideas and drive change from within.

Our regular pulse surveys, lunch-and-learn sessions featuring lived experiences and quarterly staff engagement sessions ensure that voices are heard and acted upon. We frequently talk about workplace adjustments, their purpose and their importance. We do this throughout the recruitment process and with staff collectively. We have produced personalised action plans to support employees with new or ongoing health conditions throughout their career with us.

For us, achieving Level 2 status isn't a destination – it's a platform for even greater impact. We already have plans underway for enhanced training schedules, improved procurement processes that enable us to deliver inclusive practices and greater transparency in our recruitment processes to help candidates understand what to expect.

To us, this commitment makes us better at our core mission of enhancing the natural environment and ensuring its recovery. When we remove barriers for people, we strengthen our impact on developing green skills and getting people closer to nature.

We believe that meaningful inclusion requires commitment, creativity, and continuous effort. Our journey to Disability Confident Employer Level 2 status has shown us that when organisations start where they are, remain genuine in their commitment, and remember that small changes can create transformational impact, real progress becomes possible.

Sarah Coleman - Human Resources and Volunteering Manager, Gwent Wildlife Trust

In 2021, Gwent Wildlife Trust embarked on a journey to make the Trust inclusive and diverse, in line with our belief that everyone has a role to play in society and nature’s recovery. In order to shape the culture, all staff received EDI training and new processes and policies were embedded. One of our core values is inclusivity, and we believe that ‘all is for nature and nature is for all’.

By becoming a Disability Confident employer, we want to challenge the barriers that disabled people face, and work to create an inclusive, equitable workplace. This commitment means ensuring that recruitment processes are accessible, interviews are offered to disabled applicants meeting essential criteria and reasonable adjustments are anticipated. For the last three years we have given applicants time to look through interview questions in advance of the interview.

Internally, Gwent Wildlife Trust supports staff with policies and guidance, training and development, reasonable adjustments, a staff EDI group and a supportive culture. These efforts are embedded within the Trust’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy, which aims to ensure that everyone can benefit from nature and contribute to its protection. 

For Gwent Wildlife Trust, being Disability Confident Committed is not just a badge: it’s a statement of leadership in the conservation sector. It widens the talent pool, strengthens organisational culture, and sets a standard for others to follow. As we continue our journey toward Level 2 and beyond, we remain committed to removing barriers and enabling disabled people to thrive within the workforce and within our community in Gwent.

Sarah Hobbs and Flavia Moffat - Operations Team, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust

Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust signed up to the Disability Confident Scheme in February 2025 and in June 2025 progressed to Level 2: Disability Confident Employer. The Disability Confident scheme supports our vision of creating a more inclusive and supportive workplace: ‘Creating a more inclusive workplace, aligning to our strategic objective of Thriving Together and our values of being Inclusive, Supportive and Ambitious.’ 

Since joining the Disability Confident scheme, we have been focusing on our recruitment practices and supporting a diverse workforce. 

We’ve taken a number of steps in our recruitment process. We now:

• Advertise our jobs in disability focussed channels
• Promote our job roles using the Disability Confident logo on all recruitment communications and email signatures
• Guarantee interviews to any disabled applicant who meets the essential criteria of the job
• Ensure that we have a recruitment process that provides support and adjustments whenever needed.

Thanks to being part of the Disability Confident scheme, we’re building a supportive culture and helping to increase diversity and awareness of diversity. We have:

• Launched our Employee Health Passport to support existing employees with new or ongoing health conditions
• Provide disability awareness training for staff and ensure managers are aware of how they can provide support
• Actively promote the Nature For All and Nature In Mind staff networks that are available across The Wildlife Trusts federation, which are for colleagues with disabilities and colleagues with mental health conditions.

We are committed to removing any barriers to development and progression of disabled staff, and through our relationship with the Job Centre Plus, we have also joined a local network group connecting other local business on the scheme to share our experiences and learnings.