Bondalti sees inclusion as an essential pillar of a fairer and therefore more sustainable society. Alexandra Paiva, Culture Coordinator in the People Department at Bondalti, explains how the company is welcoming and valuing people with disabilities in its workforce.
What led Bondalti to become a signatory of the ‘Commitment to Inclusion’?
Bondalti joined the Inclusive Community Forum in 2019, an initiative of Nova SBE, as part of which it became a signatory of the ‘Commitment to Inclusion’, with the aim of reinforcing the company's active role in integrating and welcoming people with disabilities into the labour market. With this, we are in a better position to contribute to finding structured and continuous solutions that respond to the needs of this community, which is so often invisible in society.
How is the process of welcoming and including people with disabilities carried out at Bondalti?
The integration process at Bondalti has been completely redesigned with a view to full admission and according to the needs of each person.
Since most of the vacancies are for the Estarreja chemical plant, each open position respects a basic principle, which is to guarantee people's safety. We identify all the critical factors for a successful integration, involve the entire team that will be receiving the new member and also define the necessary adaptations in the workplace.
Once these conditions are in place, the whole process is accompanied by an inclusion tutor, who is permanently available to respond to diagnosed needs. Although inclusion is a responsibility shared by everyone at Bondalti, it is the tutor's job to guarantee the best experience throughout the person's stay.
We want to create unique connections that add value to everyone. We always respect the commitment to the well-being of our people and we defend the fact that everyone can contribute to the development of the company, regardless of their condition.
What are the biggest challenges of inclusion in a business context and how do you assess the evolution of this issue in Portugal in recent years?
The main challenges lie ahead of inclusion itself. The contribution of people with disabilities to the labour market is still very much underestimated and we need to overcome generational beliefs and (un)conscious biases that lead us to exclude those who are different for some reason from the equation. If we add to all this the challenge of finding the right person, the lack of public infrastructure (such as transport outside major urban centres) or the absence of timely responses from some organisations, it becomes very difficult to impose a pace that can make a difference.
Eighteen years after the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the work done by the signatory countries is evident, and Portugal is no exception. Although the data we have refers only to the period 2015-2020, Portugal has seen a positive evolution in the employment rate of people with disabilities (PwD), increasing by 7.6 p.p. in those five years. And there are other indicators that confirm this trend:
- In 2020, more than 58 per cent of PwD were employed, slightly above the average for EU countries;
- In the private sector, the percentage of people with disabilities in employment reflects a positive trend: in 2021, growth of 50 per cent compared to 2015 and 10 per cent compared to 2020;
- 74.4% of PwDs working in the private sector had a degree of disability greater than 60%;
- Portugal has the third lowest employment rate among EU countries when comparing the difference between people with and without disabilities (the so-called ‘disability employment gap’).
Today we are better prepared and more attentive to actively growing in diversity, but there is still a lot of work to be done on a cultural level, starting with families, going through training in schools and continuing for life, be it professional or personal.
Portugal still has a long way to go to fulfil the objective of Law 4/2019, which established a system of employment quotas for people with disabilities, with a degree of incapacity equal to or greater than 60%. Currently, 2 per cent of Bondalti Chemicals employees are in these circumstances, in a reaffirmation of our genuine desire to make a difference with our people and the community in which we operate.
*Source: Study ‘People with Disabilities in Portugal - Human Rights Indicators 2023’, conducted by the Disability and Human Rights Observatory (ODDH/ISCSP-ULisboa).
