The importance of disability representation to address implicit bias in the workplace.

Introduction:People are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment. Barriers can be physical or be caused by people's implicit and explicit attitudes towards people with disabilities. Methods:We utilise the Implicit Association Test to investigate implicit attitudes towards people with disabilities among Human Resource professionals and people involved in making hiring decisions. Results:We find no significant differences between people who work for large companies or Small- to Medium-sized Enterprises. Similarly, working in Human Resources (or making recruitment decisions) has no effect on implicit bias. We supply the first evidence linking a person's own health status (measured using EQ-5D-5L) to their implicit bias. We find that a worse health status is associated with lower implicit bias towards people with disabilities. In addition, we find women have lower implicit bias than men. Discussion:The discussion reflects on the need for greater disability representation within the workplace - especially in making hiring decisions.