Address: Employers' Forum on Disability, Nutmeg House, 60 Gainsford Street, London SE1 2NY
Country: United Kingdom
Phone: 44 171 403 3020
Fax: 44 171 403 0404
Past position(s): Managing Director of Scott-Parker Associates; Coverdale Associate
Education: BA, Carlton University
The traditional approach to helping disabled people into work has had little success, and it is evident that something fundamental needs to be changed. For example, the official unemployment rates for disabled people are always at least twice that of their non-disabled peers—often higher. The numbers of disabled people not working often approach 70% (in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada). Disabled people are more likely than their non-disabled peers to live in poverty; for example, in the United Kingdom two-thirds of the 6.2 million disabled citizens have only state benefits as income.
These problems are compounded by the fact that rehabilitation services are often unable to meet employer demand for qualified applicants.
In many countries, disability is not generally defined as an equal opportunities or rights issue. It is thus difficult to encourage corporate best practice which positions disability firmly alongside race and gender as an equal opportunities or diversity priority. Proliferation of quotas or the complete absence of relevant legislation reinforces employer assumptions that disability is primarily a medical or charity issue.
Evidence of the frustrations created by inadequacies inherent in the present system can be seen in growing pressure from disabled people themselves for legislation based on civil rights and/or employment rights, such as exists in the United States, Australia, and, from 1996, in the United Kingdom. It was the failure of the rehabilitation system to meet the needs and expectations of enlightened employers which prompted the UK business community to establish the Employers Forum on Disability.
Employers’ attitudes unfortunately reflect those of the wider society—although this fact is often overlooked by rehabilitation practitioners. Employers share with many others widespread confusion regarding such issues as:
The failure to meet the information and service needs of the employer community constitutes a major hurdle for disabled people wanting work, yet it is rarely addressed adequately by government policy makers or rehabilitation practitioners.
Deep-Rooted Myths that Disadvantage Disabled People in the Labour Market
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments, indeed all those involved in the medical and employment rehabilitation of persons with disabilities, tend to share a set of deep-rooted, often unspoken assumptions which only further disadvantage the disabled individuals these organizations seek to help:
The consequence of these assumptions is that:
We are beginning to see an international trend, typified by the development of “job coach” services, towards acknowledging that successful rehabilitation of disabled people depends upon the quality of service and support available to the employer.
The statement “Better services for employers equals better services for disabled people” must surely come to be much more widely accepted as economic pressures build on rehabilitation agencies everywhere in the light of governments’ retrenchment and restructuring. It is nonetheless very revealing that a recent report by Helios (1994), which summarizes the competencies required by vocational or rehabilitation specialists, fail to make any reference to the need for skills which relate to the employers as customer.
While there is a growing awareness of the need to work with employers as partners, our experience shows that it is difficult to develop and sustain a partnership until the rehabilitation practitioners first meet the needs of the employer as customer and begin to value that “employer as customer” relationship.
Employers’ Roles
At various times and in various situations the system and services position the employer in one or more of the following roles—though only rarely is it articulated. Thus we have the employer as:
And at any time during the relationship the employer may be called upon—indeed is typically called upon—to be a funder or philanthropist.
The key to successful practice lies in approaching the employer as “The Customer”. Systems which regard the employer as only “The Problem”, or “The Target”, find themselves in a self-perpetuating dysfunctional cycle.
Factors outside the Employer’s Control
Reliance on perceived employer negative attitudes as the key insight into why disabled people experience high unemployment rates, consistently reinforces the failure to address other highly significant issues which must also be tackled before real change can be brought about.
For example:
A legislative system that creates an adversarial or litigious environment can further undermine the job prospects of disabled people because bringing a disabled person into the company could expose the employer to risk.
Rehabilitation practitioners often find it difficult to access expert training and accreditation and are themselves rarely funded to deliver relevant services and products to employers.
Policy Implications
It is vital for service providers to understand that before the employer can effect organizational and cultural change, similar changes are required on the part of the rehabilitation provider. Providers approaching employers as customers need to recognize that actively listening to the employers will almost inevitably trigger the need to change the design and delivery of services.
For example, service providers will find themselves asked to make it easier for the employer to:
Attempts at significant social policy reforms related to disability are undermined by the failure to take into account the needs, expectations and legitimate requirements of the people who will largely determine success—that is, the employers. Thus, for example, the move to ensure that people currently in sheltered workshops obtain mainstream work frequently fails to acknowledge that it is only employers who are able to offer that employment. Success therefore is limited, not only because it is unnecessarily difficult for the employers to make opportunities available but also because of the missed added value resulting from active collaboration between employers and policy makers.
Potential for Employer Involvement
Employers can be encouraged to contribute in numerous ways to making a systematic shift from sheltered employment to supported or competitive employment. Employers can:
Employer as Customer
It is impossible for rehabilitation practitioners to build partnerships with employers without first acknowledging the need to deliver efficient services.
Services should emphasize the theme of mutual benefit. Those who do not passionately believe that their disabled clients have something of real benefit to contribute to the employer are unlikely to be able to influence the employer community.
Improving the quality of service to employers will quickly—and inevitably—improve services for disabled job-seekers. The following represents a useful audit for services wishing to improve the quality of service to the employer.
Does the service offer employers:
1. information and consultancy regarding:
2. recruitment services, including access to:
3. pre-screening of applicants as per employer expectations
4. professional job analysis and job modification services, able to advise on job restructuring and the use of technical aids and adaptations in the workplace, both for existing and potential employees
5. financial support programmes which are well marketed, appropriate to employer requirements, easy to access, efficiently delivered
6. information and practical help so that employers can make the worksite more physically accessible
7. training for employers and employees regarding the benefits of employing people with disabilities generally, and when specific individuals have been employed
8. work-experience services which provide the employer with relevant support
9. work habituation or employee-orientation services to include job coaches and job-sharing schemes
10. post–job offer support for employers to include advice on best practice in the management of absenteeism and presentation of work-related impairments
11. advice for employers on career development of disabled employees and on meeting the needs of underemployed disabled employees.
Practical Steps: Making it Easier for the Employer
Any system of services which aims to help disabled people into training and work will inevitably be more successful if the needs and expectations of the employer are adequately addressed. (Note: It is difficult to find a term which adequately encompasses all those agencies and organizations—governmental, NGOs, not for profit—which are involved in policy making and service delivery to disabled people seeking work. For the sake of brevity, the term service or service provider is used to encompass all those involved in this entire complex system.)
Close consultation over time with employers will in all likelihood produce recommendations similar to the following.
Codes of practice are needed which describe the high quality of service employers should receive from employment-related agencies. Such codes should, in consultation with employers, set standards which relate both to the efficiency of the existing services and to the nature of services offered—This code should be monitored via regular surveys of employer satisfaction.
Specific training and accreditation for rehabilitation practition-ers in how to meet the needs of employers is required and should be a high priority.
Services should recruit people who have direct experience of the world of industry and commerce and who are skilled in bridging the communication gap between the not-for-profit and profit-making sectors.
Services themselves should employ significantly more disabled people, thus minimizing the numbers of non-disabled intermediaries dealing with employers. They should ensure that disabled people in various capacities have a high profile in the employer community.
Services should minimize the fragmentation of education, marketing and campaigning activities. It is particularly counterproductive to create a milieu characterized by messages, posters and advertising which reinforces the medical model of disability and the stigma attached to particular impairments, rather than focusing on the employability of individuals and the need for employers to respond with appropriate policy and practice.
Services should collaborate to simplify access, to services and support, for both the employer and for the disabled person. Considerable attention should be given to analysing the client journey (with both employer and disabled person as client) in a way that minimizes assessments and moves the individual speedily, step by step, into employment. Services should build on mainstream business initiatives to ensure that disabled people are given priority.
Services should bring employers together routinely and ask their expert advice regarding what has to be done to make services and job candidates more successful.
Conclusion
In many countries, the services designed to help disabled people into work are complex, cumbersome and resistant to change, despite the evidence decade after decade that change is required.
A fresh approach to employers offers enormous potential to transform this situation significantly by radically altering the position of one key protagonist—the employer.
We see business and government engaged in a wide-ranging debate regarding the way in which relationships between stakeholders or social partners must inevitably change over the next 20 years. Thus employers launch the European Business against Social Exclusion Initiative in Europe, major companies join together to re-think their relationship with society in the UK in “Tomorrow’s Company”, and the Employers Forum on Disability becomes only one of various UK employer initiatives aimed at addressing issues of equality and diversity.
Employers have much to do if the issue of disability is to take its rightful place as a business and ethical imperative; the rehabilitation community in turn needs to take a fresh approach which redefines working relationships between all stakeholders in a way that makes it easier for employers to make equal opportunities a reality.
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