Removing Barriers to Work 

What young people, disabled people and employers told us about starting work, and what needs to change 

A Keys Training research report | August 2026

Executive summary 

Many people who face barriers to work want to work and employers want to give them the chance. This research set out to understand why, too often the two still fail to meet: for young people trying to get a first foothold and for disabled people trying to get a fair one. 

Between February and June 2026, Keys Training spoke with 338 young people and disabled people through direct conversations, job fairs, Jobcentre consultations, polling and structured discussion, and collected 58 qualitative stories about their experiences of looking for and starting work. We contacted 60 businesses and spoke with 26 of them: HR managers, recruiters, directors and owners across nine sectors. We also held learning conversations with the leads on two national employment support programmes: Connect to Work at Worcestershire County Council and Leeds City Council, and Pathways to Work at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council. Given the depth of what we heard, we shared our findings with the DWP’s Connect to Work evaluators, including its’ Supported Employment Research Team. We gathered qualitative evidence through interviews and stories and quantitative evidence to assess volume, trends and crossover.

Three findings stand out. 

• The gap is behavioural, not technical. 72 per cent of the people we heard from named confidence as their biggest challenge, and 89 per cent of employers said young people’s difficulties come down to confidence and social skills rather than technical ability. Both sides describe the same gap, and it is not one that qualifications fix. 
• The modern route into work is creating distance. Application processes and the lack of workplace experience are leaving people who face barriers to work feeling shut out and devalued: 67 per cent named lack of workplace exposure as a major barrier, and one applicant described 70 online applications in a year without a single reply. The same challenge of distance to the workplace is reflected by the businesses trying to provide opportunities. One national employer told us: for every young person they take on, ten to twenty equally strong candidates miss out. 
• On disability, fear from employers is doing more damage than cost. Employers told us repeatedly that fear of legal risk and uncertainty about compliance hold them back from employing disabled people and signing up to the Disability Confident Scheme had become a ceiling rather than a benchmark: 73 per cent of the 19,281 employers on the register remain at Level 1. The Government’s January 2026 reform of the scheme responds to exactly this; our evidence shows what will decide whether it works on the ground. Worcestershire’s Connect to Work approach, which demonstrates the business case and builds a peer network, shows what that looks like. 

The final section sets out five practical changes this evidence points towards, for employers, for those who prepare young people for work, and for the local systems that connect them. 

Why we did this research 

Most research and commentary on barriers to work focuses on the supply side: the young people themselves. Far less looks at the interplay between young people and the businesses that will actually offer them their first experiences. We wanted to examine both sides at once: why do these barriers persist, what is being done about them, and does what is being done address the concerns businesses and organisations face? 

We could also see the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) becoming a growing concern, now the subject of the Government’s Milburn review into young people out of education and work. And it is personal for us. Three of our own staff are under 26, and two of them experienced firsthand how hard it is to get established in the job market. That experience shaped how we connected with employers, HR teams and recruiters throughout this research: we were not asking abstract questions.

What we did 

This was practical, first-hand research rather than a formal academic study, and we present it as such. We gathered evidence through five channels: 

• Direct conversations with young people and disabled people at job fairs, through Jobcentre consultations, polling (direct and on social media) and structured discussion, reaching 338 people in total. 

• Individual stories. We collected 58 qualitative stories from young people about their experience of looking for work, applying, interviewing and starting jobs. 

• An employer questionnaire and consultations. We contacted 60 businesses and spoke with 26 HR managers, recruiters, directors and owners across construction, creative and media, sport, digital and technology, education, financial services, health and social care, manufacturing and engineering, and retail, based mainly in Greater Manchester with further responses from the Northeast of England and London. We asked what challenges new starters face, what separates someone who is work-ready from someone who might struggle, and what preparation would genuinely make someone more employable. 

• Focus on disability and accessibility. We asked employers specifically about the barriers disabled young people face in recruitment and early employment, what holds businesses back, and what realistic adjustments look like. 

• System conversations. We held learning conversations with the Connect to Work leads at Worcestershire County Council and Leeds City Council, and the Pathways to Work team at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council and shared our observations with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) evaluators on the Connect to Work scheme, including a Senior Research Officer in the Supported Employment Research Team, part of DWP’s Work and Health Analysis Division (WoHAD). 

We collected qualitative data through interviews and stories, and quantitative data to assess volume, trends and crossover between participants. The percentages in this report come from that quantitative strand: a polled base of 338 young people and disabled people, and 26 employers. Respondents could name more than one challenge, so percentages sum to more than 100. Employer respondents are described by role and sector; named attribution is used only where the individual and organisation have given written permission.

What young people and disabled people told us 

Across 338 conversations and 58 stories, the same barriers came up again and again. When we measured them, three dominated.

What young people said about workplace barriers

The biggest challenges respondents said they face. Keys Training research, 2026, base 338. Respondents could name more than one challenge. 

Confidence, knocked out of them one application at a time 

72 per cent of respondents named confidence as their biggest challenge, and the stories showed how it gets eroded. One young person told us they had made 70 online job applications in a year without a single response. They described it as a real knock to their confidence: the process felt impersonal, they felt increasingly distant from the world of work, and they did not know which way to turn. 

Never having seen the inside of a workplace 

67 per cent named lack of workplace exposure. Young people described feeling removed from workplace activities and not knowing how to get a foot in the door. Without exposure, everything employers describe as basic, how to speak to a manager, what a normal working day feels like, when it is fine to ask for help, is genuinely unknown. 

Not knowing what employers expect 

65 per cent named uncertainty about employer expectations: what is expected in different roles, and how they would be guided once in post. This lands hardest on the youngest group, going into full-time work with no prior workplace experience at all, which is the chicken-and-egg problem at the centre of this report. 

Not knowing what employers expect 

Disabled young people: the disclosure dilemma 

Disabled young people told us about a further layer of anxiety: how to disclose and manage a disability in a workplace with expectations and targets, and whether that could be done in a fair and equitable way. The question was rarely whether they could do the job. It was whether the workplace would deal fairly with them once they said so. 

Practical barriers 

Alongside these, young people raised interview anxiety, travel, accessibility and the absence of personal networks into work. A job a young person cannot reach, or an application process they cannot access, is not an opportunity. 

Practical barriers 

The employer responses were strikingly consistent across sectors as different as engineering, home care, travel, media and food manufacturing. Five themes emerged, and two of them we could measure. 

Figure 2: What employers said lies behind those challenges.

Employer views on young people’s challenges. Keys Training research, 2026, base 26. Respondents could name more than one factor.

1. The gap is behavioural, not technical 

89 per cent of employers said young people’s challenges come down to confidence and social skills within the workplace rather than technical ability. Almost every employer told us the hardest part of a first job is not the job. It is adjusting to the expectations of a workplace: punctuality, reliability, communicating with managers, working with different personalities, and knowing when to ask for help. 

“Often, technical skills can be taught relatively quickly, but adapting to the workplace culture and expectations takes more time.” 

Recruitment partner, construction and property services group 

 A franchise development manager in logistics described young people struggling to pick up “the unwritten rules of the workplace”. A training and development manager made the same point from a different angle: some school leavers do not realise “their learning has not finished just because they’ve finished school”. And a charity training manager reminded us how long the adjustment really takes: 

“There’s usually a lot to learn. It takes a good 6-12 months to get to grips with a new job properly.” 

Training manager, national charity 

2. Communication and confidence decide outcomes 

An apprenticeship provider described interviewing its talent pool and meeting “one-word answers, no eye contact”. A recruitment resourcer told us plainly that presentation and confidence matter more than skill for most entry-level roles. A charity HR and learning lead put it simply: if a candidate does not believe what they are saying in an interview, they will struggle. What employers meant by work-ready was consistently about attitude rather than qualifications: turning up reliably, taking feedback well, asking questions early, and staying organised when things get busy. 

3. The experience paradox 

Employers were honest that the system asks young people for something it rarely helps them get. 

“Experience is often a circular requirement: young people cannot build it unless employers provide structured entry points such as internships, placements, shadowing, project briefs, and supported first roles.” 

Careers and employability adviser, Greater Manchester University (written response) 

“For every one person we take on there’s 10-20 equally amazing people who don’t get the opportunity.” 

Recruitment partner, national travel company 

A senior learning and skills manager at a sports foundation in the Northeast described working with young people from families with third and fourth generations of unemployment, where worklessness has become “a self-fulfilling prophecy”, and where lack of confidence, self-esteem and resilience compounds the shortage of entry-level openings. 

4. Recruitment itself is a barrier 

69 per cent of employers said young people’s applications lack clarity: generic CVs with no specialism, underselling the person behind them. Several respondents pointed at their own front door too. Interviews are often a young person’s first ever formal conversation with an employer. One national employer flagged a very current problem: a growing number of applications written by artificial intelligence tools, with no personality in them, and in some cases with the prompt still left in the text. A charity HR lead noted that in a saturated market, interpersonal skills and a strong interview are often what let a young person without qualifications stand out, which makes interview preparation a matter of fairness, not polish. 

5. Disability: fear is the barrier employers named most 

When we asked employers about disabled employees, one answer came back again and again: fear of legal risk, and a lack of understanding around compliance. Some business owners told us outright that this fear is a direct reason they would choose a non-disabled candidate over a disabled one: they do not know how best to support a disabled employee, they worry about getting it legally wrong, and they see few local employers doing it well. There was no trailblazer to follow. 

Many of the same businesses felt they were already doing enough on disability confidence. The national picture suggests otherwise. As of July 2026, 19,281 employers were on the Disability Confident register, covering an estimated 11 million workers, and 14,084 of them, 73 per cent, remained at Level 1 (Committed). The DWP’s 2022 survey of participating employers found the same share at Level 1, so that ceiling has now held for four years. The scheme had become a ceiling, not a benchmark. The Government reached the same conclusion. Following Sir Charlie Mayfield’s Keep Britain Working review, it announced reform of the scheme in January 2026: cutting the time employers can stay at the entry level from three years to two, and removing the option to renew at that level, to push employers up the ladder. Our evidence suggests that reform addresses the right symptom. Whether it succeeds will depend on the barriers employers actually described to us: fear of legal risk, no visible local trailblazers, and no clear route to support.

The employer responses were strikingly consistent across sectors as different as engineering, home care, travel, media and food manufacturing. Five themes emerged, and two of them we could measure.

Disability Confident membership by level, July 2026

Disability Confident register by level, July 2026: 14,084 of 19,281 employers at Level 1. Source: Keys Training analysis of the DWP register, Employers that have signed up to the Disability Confident scheme – GOV.UK. 

The access barriers sit alongside the fear. A diversity, equity and inclusion manager at a national retailer gave a detailed picture of retail work: physically inaccessible staff areas and stockrooms; unreliable or inaccessible transport; induction and training materials offered only verbally, in small print or in formats that do not work with screen readers; and sensory environments, bright lighting, loud music, crowded shop floors, that can be overwhelming, particularly for some autistic employees. Long shifts and extended standing add further strain for people managing pain or fatigue. 

The adjustments that work were described as realistic and inexpensive: adjusted shift patterns and modified breaks, training in accessible formats with extra time to learn, clear written and verbal instructions, assistive technology where needed, regular manager check-ins, and changes to lighting, noise and seating where possible. The same respondent’s view of training for disabled young people was telling: it should be the same programme as for anyone else, with the right adjustments in place so they can access it. Inclusion is mostly about removing friction, not creating parallel provision. 

What we learned from the system 

The access barriers sit alongside the fear. A diversity, equity and inclusion manager at a national retailer gave a detailed picture of retail work: physically inaccessible staff areas and stockrooms; unreliable or inaccessible transport; induction and training materials offered only verbally, in small print or in formats that do not work with screen readers; and sensory environments, bright lighting, loud music, crowded shop floors, that can be overwhelming, particularly for some autistic employees. Long shifts and extended standing add further strain for people managing pain or fatigue. 

To place all this in context, we spoke to the people tasked with addressing it: the Connect to Work leads at Worcestershire County Council and Leeds City Council, and the Pathways to Work team at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council. Connect to Work sits within the Government’s Get Britain Working plan and is intended to support 300,000 people into work, so how it lands locally matters well beyond the areas we visited. We shared our observations with the DWP evaluators on the Connect to Work scheme, including a Senior Research Officer in the Supported Employment Research Team within its Work and Health Analysis Division.

What is working 

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council showed us how to sell an employment programme to businesses. The team marketed Pathways to Work as a benefit to the business signing up, not a favour asked of it, which broke down the sense that this was an abstract scheme not meant for organisations like theirs. Bringing in professional videographers to document success stories was a particularly effective part of that. 

Leeds City Council showed us clean handovers. There was a seamless transition between the employability provision the council delivered in-house and the areas it outsourced to external providers, with a clear demarcation of which services each provider owned, understood by everyone involved. 

Worcestershire County Council, which has had particular success with Connect to Work, showed us how to move employers beyond box-ticking on disability. The approach did not lecture businesses; it demonstrated, from a business point of view, the advantages of taking on disabled staff and preparing properly for them. And by building a network around it, bringing businesses together and celebrating the practice as normal, it took away much of the fear. 

The gaps our evidence revealed 

Responsibility for supporting employers is dispersed. Businesses did not know where to go for support on disability employment. Some assumed the Jobcentre would help on an individual-by-individual basis; others thought it sat with growth hubs and councils; others assumed it was handled nationally. The support businesses actually receive is patchwork, varying from authority to authority, and no one owns the question. 

National reform is not reaching the front line. The January 2026 Disability Confident changes do not yet appear to have filtered consistently through to the people advising employers. In our engagement, some Disability Employment Advisers within Jobcentres were unaware of the changes or unclear what they should now be advising employers. That points to the same wider gap: a lack of clear local leadership and ownership around disability employment support.  

The issue is not the scheme itself so much as the absence of support once an employer is on it, and whether it answers the hesitancy businesses actually feel. The outcomes data underlines the point. Despite 19,281 employers holding Disability Confident status on the July 2026 register, the unemployment rate for disabled people rose to 9.2 per cent in late 2025, its highest comparable level since 2019, with 218,000 fewer disabled people in work than a year earlier and the disability employment gap widening to 29.5 percentage points. A scheme of that scale sitting alongside worsening outcomes is the incongruence our employer evidence helps explain. 

Political change knocks programmes off course. Our own work with a metropolitan borough council was derailed by local elections and the political change that followed. Support for businesses and young people needs continuity and political consensus, or long projects keep getting reset before they deliver. 

Connect to Work is not reaching SMEs. Key providers delivering Connect to Work in Lancashire reported a limited ability to reach small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and create real buy-in, and this was fed back to the DWP. One put it plainly: 

“Yes, we are struggling with connecting to SMEs and finding ways to get them involved with the Connect to Work. We just don’t have the contact and outreach at this point.” 

Manager, Connect to Work provider, Lancashire 

The organisations engaging with Connect to Work overlap heavily with those the Jobcentre already reaches: big employers, local colleges, the NHS. Yet SMEs employ 16.9 million people, three fifths of UK private sector employment, and generate around half of its turnover. They are largely locked out of the very programmes they would be most receptive to, since they are the businesses with the least in-house capacity to support disabled employees on their own.

SMEs’ share of UK private sector employment

SMEs’ share of UK private sector employment: 60 per cent (16.9 million people). Source: Federation of Small Businesses.

What needs to change 

Drawing the two sides of the evidence together with what we saw in the system, five practical changes stand out. 

• Structured first exposure, at scale. 67 per cent of young people named lack of workplace exposure as a barrier, and employers named the circular experience requirement themselves. The fix is entry points that do not require experience: shadowing, workplace visits, short project briefs and supported first roles, offered in a way that respects employers’ time, safeguarding and administrative constraints. 

• Build preparation around confidence, communication and application clarity. The numbers on both sides point the same way: 72 per cent of young people named confidence, 89 per cent of employers named confidence and social skills, and 69 per cent of employers see applications that undersell the candidate. Preparation programmes should be built around these behaviours, with repeated interview practice, application support and real employer contact throughout. 

• Replace employers’ fear with demonstration. Fear of legal risk is stopping businesses employing disabled people, and lecturing does not shift it. Worcestershire’s model does: show the business advantages, prepare employers properly, and build peer networks where employing disabled staff is visible, normal and celebrated. The January 2026 Disability Confident reform pushes employers up the ladder; this is the ground-level support that will determine whether they climb it. 

• Give employers one clear way to approach to reach SMEs. No business should have to guess whether disability employment support sits with the Jobcentre, the growth hub, the council or a national scheme. Local areas need a single, known route in, and programmes like Connect to Work need engagement approaches designed for SMEs rather than the employers the system already reaches. 

• Fix the recruitment front door and make it accessible by default. Plain-language adverts, clear essential requirements, interview formats that let inexperienced candidates show who they are, adjustments stated up front, and application and induction materials that work in accessible formats. These remove barriers employers themselves identified in their own processes. 

Sources 

Department for Work and Pensions, Disability Confident: list of employers that have signed up, July 2026 edition, GOV.UK: gov.uk/government/publications/disability-confident-employers-that-have-signed-up (level analysis by Keys Training) 

Department for Work and Pensions, Disability Confident scheme: findings from a survey of participating employers, GOV.UK: gov.uk/government/publications/disability-confident-survey-of-participating-employers-may-2022 

Federation of Small Businesses, UK Small Business Statistics: fsb.org.uk/media-centre/uk-small-business-statistics 

Department for Work and Pensions, Disability Confident Reform Delivery Plan December 2025 to December 2026, GOV.UK: gov.uk/government/publications/disability-confident-reform-delivery-plan-december-2025-to-december-2026 

Work Foundation at Lancaster University, analysis of ONS Labour Force Survey, October to December 2025 (disabled unemployment rate, employment levels and disability employment gap) 

All other figures: Keys Training research, February to June 2026. 

About Keys Training 

Keys Training® is a UK business services provider delivering instructor-led training, coaching and workplace development for public, private and voluntary sector organisations, with a specialism in disability inclusion, reasonable adjustments and inclusive recruitment. This research was led by Jonathan Tiley, whose background includes interview-based research at the University of Oxford, a Masters in Psychology, evidence collation and reporting for the national charity GamCare, and policy work in the House of Lords alongside Crossbench Peer Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson. 

We are grateful to every young person, employer and programme lead who gave their time and honesty.

To talk to us about this research, contact:  

Jonathan Tiley  

[email protected]