How to Guide: Attracting, Retaining & Addressing Barriers to Employment for Disabled Persons

How to Guide: Attracting, Retaining & Addressing Barriers to Employment for Disabled Persons

TWIG
2 August 2024

This guide aims to help employers attract and retain disabled persons, addressing common barriers in employment. This approach is crucial in a tight labor market and can significantly contribute to a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Changing Employer Attitudes and Perceptions

1. Understand the Benefits: Recognize the improvements in profitability, competitive advantage, and inclusive workforce that hiring disabled persons brings, as evidenced by systematic reviews.
   
   Systematic review of the Benefits of hiring people with disabilities, completing a comprehensive search of 7 databases spanning from 1997 to May 2017 found:
   
   Results of the 6,176 studies identified in the search, 39 articles met the inclusion criteria and found that, the benefits of hiring persons with disabilities are as follows_^[1]:
   
   Improvements in profitability (profits & cost effectiveness, turnover, retention, reliability, employee loyalty & company image)
   Competitive advantage (diverse customers, customer loyalty & satisfaction, innovation, productivity, work ethic & safety)
   Inclusive workforce
   Ability awareness
   Increased GDP with less reliance on social security
   
   Secondary benefits for people with disabilities include: improved quality of life & income, enhanced self confidence, expanded social network, sense of community_^[2]
   
2. Awareness and Education: Promote ability awareness and the economic benefits, such as increased GDP and reduced reliance on social security.

Reviewing and Adapting Hiring Processes

1. Accessibility in Recruitment: Ensure your application process is accessible. This includes having websites and job boards with good accessibility features.
2. Diversity-Friendly Signaling: Advertise positions broadly and indicate your commitment to diversity, including disability, in policy statements and recruitment materials.

Implementing Policies and Training

1. Disability Hiring Policies: Establish formal policies focused on hiring and retaining workers with disabilities.
2. Diversity Policies: Implement organization-wide and disability-specific diversity policies to attract qualified disabled applicants.
3. Managerial Training: Provide training for managers and HR on disability issues and inclusive practices.

Building Partnerships and Resources

1. Partner with Vocational Agencies: Collaborate with agencies and organizations specializing in supporting the employment needs of disabled persons.
2. Utilize Resources: Make use of free resources and networks like EARN, JAN, and other local organizations.

Inclusive Strategies and Practices

1. Active Listening: Adopt strategies like asking candidates what they need to succeed in your organization.
2. Employee Resource Groups: Create groups within the organization to support disabled employees and facilitate discussions, especially for those with invisible disabilities.
3. Flexibility and Accommodations: Offer telework as a facilitator of employment like removing transportation barriers to get to work and for workers with mobility impairments, modified or flexible hours, and consider the specific needs of disabled workers.
4. Supportive Employment Practices: Ensure your workplace practices support all employees, facilitating the employment of people with disabilities.
   Modified or flexible hours are the most needed accommodations, remote & hybrid are best or beneficial for many disable employees because their homes have all the equipment necessary and supports needed, without the need to navigate a world not designed for them.

Addressing Socio-Economic Barriers

1. Work-From-Home Support: Provide necessary resources like high-speed internet, text to speech software and accessible technology for remote work.
2. Flexible Scheduling: Maintain flexibility in work schedules and core hours, and offer flexibility beyond core hours.

Training and Leadership Development

1. Disability-Focused Training: Offer training and leadership development programs that teach how to address disability and remote working issues.
2. Common Accommodations: Ensure that accommodations like modified hours and job flexibility are readily available.

Reporting and Accountability

1. Disability Data Gap: Require reporting on disability inclusion to create business accountability.
2. Standardized KPIs: Adopt and publicly report on standardized disability inclusion KPIs. Disability inclusion are absent from standardized KPIs, metrics or targets through which organizations measure their impact, performance and the value they bring to society.

Workplace Interventions for Young Adults with Disabilities

1. Multi-Dimensional Strategies: Include workplace modifications, health care, support job placement, and work-related training.
2. Supported Employment: Implement interventions like competitive employment placements, job coaching, and changing workplace attitudes.

Specific Approaches for Disability Recruitment

1. Job Restructuring and Affirmative Policies: Adapt job roles and implement affirmative hiring policies.
2. Agency Partnerships and Accessible Job Postings: Partner with agencies and ensure job postings are accessible.
3. Utilize Diverse Recruitment Sources: Explore sources like schools for the deaf and specialized job boards.

By adopting these strategies, employers can effectively attract, retain, and support disabled employees, contributing to a diverse, inclusive, and productive workforce. This approach not only addresses labor shortages but also enhances the overall work environment and company culture.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10926-018-9756-z

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10926-018-9756-z