Challenger to Watch: Beco
Beco is a soap company; a Better Considered soap company. Launched in 2018, it uses only natural ingredients, it’s environmentally friendly, and 80% of its staff are disabled. And that’s where it gets interesting. Because Beco doesn’t just hire people with disabilities – it wants everyone else to as well.
There are 1 million disabled people that want to work in the UK, but can’t get employed – that’s approximately 95% of disabled people. And the disability employment gap (how many disabled people are employed compared with non-disabled people) has barely changed in 10 years - mainly because many people think that hiring disabled people is more complicated, time-consuming, or expensive. A YouGov poll found that 50% of HR decision-makers believed it was easier to hire a non-disabled person.
About 100 of Beco’s staff are disabled, so it’s doing much better than most companies at hiring disabled people. But while it can pat itself on the back for being an inclusive employer, 100 people aren’t that many when 999,000 more disabled people are looking for work.
So Beco is asking people to steal its staff.
The soap company encourages businesses to hire more disabled people by pinching someone that already works at Beco (because it’s nobody’s dream to work in a soap factory). Beco can then continue to hire & train more disabled people who are struggling to enter the workforce.
Through the ‘Steal our Staff’ campaign, Beco isn’t just challenging the idea that disability is an obstacle to employers. It’s challenging how we present & talk about disability in the first place.
Not only are the CV’s of staff available for hire on the Beco website - featuring personal recommendations, key achievements, and qualifications - but they’ve been plastered to packs of soap too, now stocked in supermarkets across the country.
These are devoid of the worthiness you may expect from a campaign about disability – instead of focusing on how it has hindered their employment prospects, each CV highlights all the brilliant qualities they bring to their job and their career ambitions for the future.
While the campaign launched in September 2019, momentum has been growing slowly, with a TV ad airing in December (through Channel 4’s ‘Disability Works’ initiative). The spot features Beco staff and playfully mocks some of the tropes of disability – including an awfully judgmental audio description, and a nod to the fact that no one knows what sign language actually looks like.
With at least one disabled employee already hired (but whispers of more), we look forward to seeing how many staff have been stolen in 2020.
