Disability Hiring Is Rising in Corporate India. Leadership Inclusion Isn’t.

India’s corporate diversity conversation has long been dominated by gender. But a quieter and arguably more difficult challenge is now coming into focus: the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PwD) in the workforce.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016 pushed disability into boardroom conversations and significantly improved hiring intent. Companies began speaking more openly about accessibility, inclusion, and representation.  

Yet the deeper question remains unresolved: what happens after hiring, when employees with disabilities remain concentrated in entry-level roles with limited presence in mid-management and leadership.

For Shanti Raghavan, Founder of EnAble India, the real challenge lies in how organizations interpret inclusion itself.  The RPwD Act may have strengthened hiring intent, she says, but inclusion cannot be reduced to recruitment targets. Leaders must consciously raise their “inclusion quotient” and recognise the long-term opportunity that meaningful participation of persons with disabilities brings to the workplace. When leadership begins to see value rather than limitation, organizations start identifying and nurturing talent that may previously have been overlooked.

The problem, she explains, is that many organizations stop at fulfilling hiring quotas while systems that enable career progression remain underdeveloped. Unless this changes, India risks missing the broader economic potential of an inclusive workforce.

As Raghavan often puts it, the larger goal is a shift in mindset, from sympathy to economic participation. “We want a parent to confidently say, ‘There is value in my child. This child will take care of me one day.’”  EnAble India’s data reflects this shift: 81 per cent of persons with disabilities supported by the organization now support their families, and 56 per cent are sole breadwinners.

For P Rajasekharan, Founder of v-shesh, an award-winning impact enterprise that prepares job seekers with opportunities and organizations with disability inclusion, however, the breakdown in inclusion becomes visible even earlier, at the point where intent must translate into actual hiring.

Among India’s top 1,000 listed companies that report disability data to the Securities and Exchange Board of India, representation of persons with disabilities remains below 0.01 per cent, notes Rajasekharan, adding that this is neither a pipeline problem nor simply a lack of awareness. It reflects a deeper structural issue.

“Much of it stems from how hiring systems are designed. Traditional selection processes often rely on proxies such as college reputation, CGPA cut-offs, or English language fluency, criteria that frequently measure privilege rather than potential.”

When organizations move beyond these filters and evaluate what a candidate can actually do, and what they are capable of becoming, the talent is unmistakable. The real shift required, he argues, is not discovering talent but redesigning how organizations recognise and unlock it.

Why Disability Representation Thins at Leadership Levels

One of the biggest systemic gaps, says Raghavan, lies in how organizations assess and develop talent. Existing assessment systems, she notes, often privilege communication polish, traditional interview performance, or narrow stereotypes of executive presence, factors that can unintentionally exclude capable individuals with disabilities.

Progress is also slowed by limited access to mentoring, leadership development, and stretch assignments, essential steppingstones to mid-management and beyond.

For Rajasekharan, the barriers are both structural and cultural. The first, he says, is the near-total absence of deliberate investment after hiring. Employees with disabilities may enter organizations, but they are often missing from executive development programmes and leadership pipelines, the structures that build management careers.

A second barrier is accessibility, not just physical but informational and relational. Access to networks, informal conversations, and visibility, elements that shape leadership trajectories, is frequently limited.

The third and perhaps most persistent barrier, according to Rajasekharan, is unconscious bias.  Leadership is often associated with a particular style of presence, communication, or stamina. As a result, managers may hesitate to assign high-visibility projects, while promotion decisions are quietly delayed.

Employees with disabilities are seen as individuals who need support rather than as professionals whose leadership potential should be developed. Without targeted leadership programmes, inclusive promotion criteria, and honest conversations about bias, he argues, the glass ceiling for persons with disabilities will remain not only intact but largely invisible.

Beyond Accommodation: Building Real Career Pathways

Providing workplace accommodations and assistive technologies is critical, but, Raghavan points out, access alone does not translate into advancement.

Accommodation may ensure participation, she notes, but career growth depends on other factors, visibility, sponsorship, upskilling, performance feedback, and opportunities to take on strategic work.

Without these elements, employees with disabilities can remain confined to roles that do not expand their experience or potential.

Accommodations, she adds, give individuals a fair chance to enter the same playing field, but equal access to opportunities must follow from that point onward.

For Rajasekharan, aaccommodation removes barriers, but growth requires deliberate investment in leadership capability.

There is also a deeper framing issue. Accommodation often positions employees with disabilities as individuals whose needs must be managed, Rajasekharan observes.

Leadership development, in contrast, positions them as individuals whose potential should be invested in and unlocked. That shift, from managing needs to investing in capability, ultimately determines whether employees with disabilities remain at entry level or move into leadership roles.

Organizations serious about disability inclusion, he argues, must therefore look beyond assistive technology and accessible infrastructure to ensure that high-potential programmes, managerial coaching, and opportunities for visibility and networks are truly open to employees with disabilities.

The Hidden Bias in Performance Management

Performance management frameworks can disadvantage employees with disabilities when traditional indicators prioritise visibility, speed, or physical presence over outcomes.

According to Raghavan many conventional performance systems equate visibility, pace, and continuous physical presence with competence. Such criteria, she notes, can unintentionally disadvantage employees whose strengths may be expressed through quality, innovation, problem-solving, collaboration, and strategic thinking rather than constant visibility.

Raghavan argues that organizations need to rethink how performance is evaluated. Frameworks should shift toward assessing outcomes, impact, and contribution, rather than relying heavily on traditional visibility metrics. This, she says, is how organizations can truly recognise the value of diverse capabilities and derive competitive advantage from inclusive talent.

Rajasekharan adds that the bias embedded in many performance systems is often unintentional but deeply structural. Most appraisal frameworks, he notes, were designed around a “default employee”, someone who is physically present, visibly active, quick to respond, and comfortable in group settings.

He points to visibility as one example. In many organizations, being seen in meetings, leadership forums, or informal conversations is equated with effectiveness. Employees who communicate differently, including neurodivergent professionals, can therefore find themselves at a disadvantage in systems that reward presence over output.

The solution, he argues, is not to lower expectations but to ensure organizations are measuring the right indicators. “The fix is not to lower the bar,” he says. “It is to ensure the bar measures the right things, outcomes over optics, impact over presence.” Without auditing performance frameworks through a disability lens, he warns, organizations risk losing talented employees not because they cannot perform, but because the system fails to recognise their contribution.

What Organizations Should Measure to Know Inclusion Is Working

According to Raghavan, companies need to track a wider set of indicators that reflect not just access but long-term equity and career growth.

These include retention and attrition rates for employees with disabilities, representation in promotion and leadership pipelines, and participation in leadership programmes and stretch assignments.

Organizations should also monitor engagement scores specifically from employees with disabilities, along with skills development and internal mobility outcomes.

Together, these measures, Raghavan says, help organizations understand whether employees with disabilities are not only being hired but also being supported to grow and advance.

Rajasekharan adds that hiring numbers alone can be deeply misleading if treated in isolation. An organization may report improved disability hiring while still failing comprehensively at inclusion.

“The first metric that matters is representation across career levels,” he says. Organizations need to examine how many employees with disabilities are present at junior, mid, senior, and leadership levels. If representation drops sharply after entry-level roles, it signals an inclusion problem hidden behind hiring statistics.

A second, often overlooked dimension is the diversity of disability type within the workforce. Many organizations, he notes, default overwhelmingly to hiring candidates with mobility impairments, often because the accommodations are more familiar. Meanwhile, deaf talent, blind talent, neurodivergent individuals, and those with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities remain largely absent.

True inclusion, Rajasekharan argues, requires tracking representation across the full spectrum of disability.

“Aggregated engagement scores will never surface what a targeted disability-specific pulse survey will,” he says.

From Inclusive Hiring to Inclusive Careers

The first step is redesigning evaluation frameworks so assessment and performance systems focus on real work output and capability.

Inclusion, Raghavan emphasises, must be embedded into the organization’s strategic priorities, with leadership accountability clearly defined. Disability inclusion should form part of organizational KPIs and broader business goals, rather than being treated as a standalone HR initiative.

Another key shift lies in building career development infrastructure. Mentoring, coaching, sponsorship opportunities, and accessible leadership training programmes are necessary to ensure employees with disabilities can advance.

Disability inclusion, she says, must be viewed as a strategic growth lever, not a CSR obligation.

Rajasekharan says the shift from inclusive hiring to inclusive careers requires rethinking how organizations manage talent.

Organizations must rethink hiring filters and focus on assessing real skill and potential. “At every stage of hiring, the question should be: are we selecting for what this role actually requires?”

The second shift is institutional commitment. They require policies, processes, and accountability structures. “Development programmes, promotion criteria, and mentoring frameworks need to be explicitly designed to include employees with disabilities, rather than assuming they will find their way in.”

The third non-negotiable, according to Rajasekharan, is relentless and honest measurement. Organizations must track disability representation not just at hiring, but across every career level. They must also monitor diversity of disability type because defaulting to mobility impairment alone, he notes, is not inclusion; it is the illusion of it.