Workforce Plans Must Include Workers With Disabilities

A year living with COVID-19 has shaken each of us to our personal and professional cores. The pandemic has also prompted leaders at all organizations to think about short- and long-term impacts. How they conduct business, develop plans for the future and protect the vital asset that is their workforce have all been reexamined.

It is especially imperative that executives and human resources teams include individuals with disabilities on their list of populations to target for talent acquisition and development. As the need to build a flexible and at least partly remote workforce became clear, opportunities to accommodate and add employees with disabilities should also have become obvious.

Such individuals can make incredible contributions, and employers who are on the hunt for solid talent need to be thoughtful about how to reach these workers. Once individuals with disabilities come on board, managers and HR teams must ensure those workers can grow within the organization.

Overcoming Misconceptions

Historically, false beliefs about people with disabilities have led hiring professionals to overlook these workers. It is far too common to view people with disabilities as less-skilled and less-driven than other employees or job applicants.

A harmful myth about people with disabilities not even wanting to work also persists. My own Social Security Administration-authorized Employment Network, Allsup Employment Services, debunked this with a survey that revealed that more than half of applicants for federal disability benefits want to return to work as soon as they are able to do so. One factor driving the desire to work is that Social Security disability benefits average just $1,277 per month.

Another problem is that many managers who have moved past the mindset that discourages recruiting and hiring people with disabilities tend to continue making two other mistakes. They either put individuals in roles that offer little opportunity for promotion, or they pass over the workers when deciding who to promote. Little to no consideration may be given to whether an employee who has a disability could be a good candidate for a position with greater responsibilities or managerial duties.

Supervisors often express concerns about senior roles being too much to handle for people with disabilities. For their part, executives may assume that making accommodations for promoted employees would come at too high a cost. Abundant evidence that more inclusive organizations enjoy greater productivity and better financial performance do not dispel those fears.

Any lingering doubts about what individuals with disabilities can deliver to organizations should be removed by looking at a list of great leaders. Take, for instance, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was left paralyzed by polio. Another U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, dealt with chronic back pain. More recently, current and former CEOs for Ikea, Tommy Hilfiger and Apple publicly shared their struggles with dyslexia.

In the public sector, Cyrus Habib, the former lieutenant governor of Washington state, has beaten cancer three times and been fully blind since age 8. Habib was also elected to the state House of Representatives and state Senate.

Crunching the Numbers

Concerns about accommodation costs are understandable to an extent. For instance, installing a wheelchair lift in a building that lacks elevators would certainly be expensive and logistically difficult. But executives must bear in mind that the Americans with Disabilities Act specifies that making an accommodation should not cause “undue hardship” for an employer.

The reality is that many accommodations can be made for free or almost free. Smaller organizations with fewer than 30 employees and annual revenues of less than $1 million can also take a tax credit for making an accommodation for a worker with a disability.

Last, dealing with COVID-19 has, in several ways, made granting certain accommodations easier than ever. Working from home has become a norm, and videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom have proven that frequent, face-to-face meetings are not needed to ensure client satisfaction and interdepartmental coordination. Working throughout the pandemic has also proven that people can be productive from anywhere—sometimes even more productive than they would be if they were in an office.

Ensuring Diversity and Driving Results

Failing to include individuals with disabilities in workforce and succession plans can hurt the organization. Diversity encompasses more than race, age and gender, and study after study confirms that organization with more diverse workforces do better financially.

The benefits accrue from accessing the lived experiences and differing abilities of many individuals from a variety of backgrounds. Work teams that are more diverse have a greater diversity of thought, which leads to the creation of innovative products and services that meet the needs of a broader population and fill gaps that have gone unaddressed.

A 2018 Accenture report titled Getting to Equal: The Disability Inclusion Advantage presents analyses showing that employers that prioritized the inclusion of individuals with disabilities realized revenues that were 28 percent higher than those for other companies. The employers identified as champions of disability inclusion also enjoyed double the net income and 30 percent higher profit margins.

Higher employer retention boosted the bottom lines of champion employers even further. Keeping employees reduced spending on recruitment and training.

A key to benefitting from all that employees with disabilities have to offer is getting their unique thoughts and talents in front of key decision makers. Another strategy is to put individuals with disabilities in key decision-making roles. Ensuring that happens requires HR teams to start planning for a worker’s success upon their hire.