1. Accommodation Expenses
2. Changing Attitudes: Top Challenge
3. Job Discrimination
4. Legal Precedents
5. Need for Diversity
6. Performance Standards
7. Self Employment as a Necessity
8. Supervising Employees With Disabilities
9. Unemployment Rates
10. Worker's Compensation Rates
Conclusion
Here are 10 key disability employment findings I have gleaned from study results published as early as 1973 and as recent as September, 2001 -- all selected to address the most common concerns you rightly might have about hiring an employee with a disability.
1. Accommodation Expenses
Most workers with disabilities require no special accommodations, and the cost for those who do is minimal or much lower than many employers believe. Studies by the Job Accommodation Network have shown that 15 percent of accommodations cost nothing, 51 percent cost between $1 and $500, 12 percent cost between $501 and $1,000, and 22 percent cost more than $1,000.
Go to Top of Page
2. Changing Attitudes: Top Challenge
According to a study by Susanne M. Bruyere, director of Cornell University's Program on Employment and Disability, employers who had hired a person with a disability said the most difficult change to make for meeting that employee's needs was "changing co-worker/supervisor attitudes."
Bruyere says that change was rated as "most difficult" by more than twice as many of those surveyed who chose the next most difficult change ("changes to management system") and at a rate of sixteen times greater than those responding who selected "ensuring equal pay and benefits" for employees with disabilities.
Go to Top of Page
3. Job Discrimination
According to Jae Kennedy and Marjorie Olney, both professors of community health at the University of Illinois, almost 10 percent of working adults with disabilities faced job discrimination in the early 1990s, despite ADA protections.
In a September, 2001, article for The Journal Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, Kennedy and Olney estimate that translates to about 1.6 million people who believed they experienced discrimination "due to their health, impairment or disability status."
Their estimates come from a supplement to the 1994-95 National Health Interview Survey, an ongoing survey of U.S. households run by the Centers for Disease Control. The supplement provided "an unprecedented level of detail on disability-related issues," Kennedy said. "And, as far as I'm aware, these are the first nationally representative estimates of workplace discrimination for persons with disabilities."
The authors' study was based on responses from 9,843 adults with disabilities who were currently working or had worked during the previous five years (1989-1994). Respondents were asked if, during those years, they had been refused employment, a promotion, a transfer or access to training programs because of an ongoing health problem, impairment or disability.
Go to Top of Page
4. Legal Precedents
Much of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is already based on legally defined and redefined language. There are already nearly 20 years of legal precedents in disability-discrimination cases, generally stemming from violations of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Forward-looking companies are using the ADA precedents as guidelines for opportunity to profit by hiring the best qualified people and by managing the rising costs of workplace disability. The 1981 "Equal to the Task" study by DuPont revealed that one-third of the study's workers were hired as individuals with disabilities, two-thirds became disabled after being employed and 91 percent of the latter became disabled during off-duty hours.
Go to Top of Page
5. Need for Diversity
The Workforce 2000 Study, researched and written by the Hudson Institute for the U.S. Department of Labor, clearly demonstrates the need for employers seeking a well-qualified workforce to look beyond the prevailing white, male population.
The study shows that qualified workers are becoming more difficult to identify (what DuPont calls "The Great American Manpower Search") and that aggressive employers need to plan for diversity and recruit qualified people with disabilities, if they are to remain competitive.
Go to Top of Page
6. Performance Standards
In 1990, DuPont conducted a survey of 811 employees with disabilities and found 90 percent rated average or better in job performance (in terms of safety, performance of job duties, attendance and job stability/turnover) compared to 95 percent for employees without disabilities.
A similar 1981 DuPont study, which involved 2,745 employees with disabilities, found that 92 percent of employees with disabilities rated average or better in job performance compared to 90 percent of employees without disabilities. The 1981 study results were comparable to DuPont's 1973 job performance study.
Go to Top of Page
7. Self Employment as a Necessity
More than four out of 10 respondents to the first-ever national study of people with disabilities who are self employed said they chose the entrepreneurial route because they "needed to create their own job." A similar number also said they had chosen self employment with its flexible hours and working conditions "to accommodate a disability."
These are just two of the findings from a recent study conduced by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research's Research & Training Center on Rural Rehabilitation Services, connected with the Montana University-affiliated Rural Institute on Disabilities.
"Research has shown that there are nearly as many people with disabilities who own their own business as who work for federal, state, and local governments combined," says Rural Institute director Tom Seekins. "When you consider the extraordinary difficulty that people with disabilities have had finding employment, starting one's own business makes good sense."
Go to Top of Page
8. Supervising Employees With Disabilities
A recent Harris poll found that 82 percent of managers surveys said employees with disabilities are not more difficult to supervise than employees without disabilities.
Marriott, which has long-term experience with employing people who have disabilities, suggests employees with disabilities should be held accountable to the same job standards as any other employee and that supervisors who can successfully manage people can successfully manage people with disabilities.
Go to Top of Page
9. Unemployment Rates
People with disabilities currently have an unemployment rate of about 70 percent, the same level of unemployment for people with disabilities as in 1990, when the ADA became law. Recent research has confirmed that the economic expansion of the 1990s significantly boosted the incomes of most working-age men and women without disabilities.
But men and women with disabilities have been left behind, and did not share in the economic growth of the 1990s. Not only did their employment and labor earnings fall during the recession of the early 1990s, but their employment and earnings continued to fall during the long economic expansion that followed. Many of these people are skilled professionals who are highly marketable in today's economy.
Go to Top of Page
10. Worker's Compensation Rates
The worker's compensation rates for an employer do not rise when he or she hires disabled workers. Insurance rates are based solely on the relative hazards of the operation and the organization's accident experience--not on whether workers have disabilities.
A study conducted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers shows that 90 percent of the 279 companies surveyed reported no effect on insurance costs as a result of hiring disabled workers.
Go to Top of Page
Conclusion
Although this small compendium is by no means an exhaustive look at the issues involved in disability employment, I'm tempted to point out that there are at least six perceived issues (legal precedent, need for diversity, performance, experience in self employment, supervision and worker's compensation) which are not at all negative. In fact, they are positive reasons for hiring qualified job candidates with disabilities.
Accommodation expenses can vary but can also be, in many cases, inconsequential.
Perhaps the two biggest barriers to hiring people with disabilities are these: Lack of workplace experience among job candidates due to a high unemployment rate and the need to change co-worker and supervisor attitudes so discrimination does not take place. Both are tough issues, but they are not insurmountable.
Go to Top of Page
|
