Disability Discrimination Training: Are Your Managers Actually Ready?

Most UK employers haven’t trained the people who make the decisions that actually cause discrimination claims.

New research from compliance training provider VinciWorks, based on a survey of 398 HR, legal and compliance professionals, found that 71% of UK employers have not trained managers on disability discrimination, trained staff on neurodiversity, or both. More strikingly, 35% have trained neither group at all.

For a UK SME, that’s not just a training gap. It’s a line manager making a reasonable adjustments decision, a recruitment call, or a sickness absence judgement with no grounding in what the law actually requires — and no idea they’re the one holding the risk.

What is disability discrimination and neurodiversity training?

Disability discrimination training covers a manager’s legal duties under the Equality Act 2010: recognising a disability (including conditions that aren’t visible), understanding reasonable adjustments, and avoiding decisions — in recruitment, performance management, or absence handling — that could amount to discrimination.

Neurodiversity training is related but distinct. It helps staff and managers understand conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia, and how to adapt communication, workload and environment so neurodivergent employees can do their job effectively — without singling anyone out or requiring formal disclosure.

Employers often bundle the two, but the research suggests both are being under-delivered: 50% of employers have not trained managers specifically on disability discrimination, and 57% have provided no neurodiversity training to staff at all.

Why the training gap matters more now

Managers are the point of failure, not the policy

A written policy doesn’t make a reasonable adjustment or handle a sickness absence conversation — a manager does. VinciWorks’ research makes the point plainly: managers are “usually the ones making real-time decisions on reasonable adjustments, recruitment and sickness absence, so an untrained manager is often the point at which a routine workplace decision turns into a discrimination claim.”

An SME with no formal HR team is especially exposed here, because the line manager often is the HR function for that decision, in that moment.

Tribunal claims are climbing

The numbers back up the concern. Neurodiversity-related employment tribunal claims have nearly doubled in five years, rising from 265 cases in 2020 to 517 in 2025 — a 95% increase, including a 19% rise in the most recent year alone.

Claims around protected beliefs have grown even faster: from 6 to 29 cases, a 380% increase. In the research, 60% of HR, legal and compliance professionals said they were concerned that workplace conflicts could escalate into belief-related discrimination claims — an area shaped by recent case law including Higgs v Farmor’s School and For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers.

The compliance calendar is about to get busier

Two changes raise the stakes further for employers who haven’t closed this gap:

• 30 October 2026 — a new legal duty requires employers to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment of their staff by third parties (customers, clients, contractors), not just colleagues.
• The Employment Rights Act’s next stage (from January 2027) — includes a shorter unfair dismissal qualifying period, removal of the compensation cap in some claims, and an “all reasonable steps” standard that raises the bar for what employers must demonstrate they did to prevent discrimination and harassment.

“All reasonable steps” is the key phrase. A business that can show managers were trained is in a much stronger position to demonstrate it than one that can’t.

Whistleblowing policies haven’t caught up either

The research also flagged a related gap: 43% of employers haven’t updated their whistleblowing policies since 6 April 2026, when sexual harassment disclosures became a protected disclosure category. A further 11% either have no plans to update their policy, or have no whistleblowing policy or training at all.

What UK SME employers should do now

1. Audit who’s actually been trained — not who’s had “an inclusion policy circulated,” but who has completed disability discrimination and neurodiversity training in the last 12–18 months, and at what level (all-staff awareness vs. manager decision-making).
2. Prioritise managers who handle absence, recruitment or performance — these are the touchpoints where an untrained decision most often becomes a claim.
3. Review your whistleblowing policy against the April 2026 protected disclosure change, and check staff know how to use it.
4. Get ahead of the October and January deadlines — treat the third-party harassment duty and the “all reasonable steps” standard as compliance deadlines with a training component, not just a policy rewrite.
5. Keep records — if “all reasonable steps” becomes the legal test, being able to show when training happened and who completed it will matter as much as the training itself.

The takeaway

The gap here isn’t awareness that disability discrimination and neurodiversity training matter — most HR professionals clearly know that. It’s that the training hasn’t reached the managers making the decisions, or the policies underpinning it haven’t kept pace with the law. With two significant compliance deadlines landing either side of the new year, that’s a gap worth closing before it closes a claim against you.

How can PeopleFirstHR Help?

See how Astute’s e-learning platform delivers trackable, auditable disability discrimination and neurodiversity training for UK SMEs.