Disability-inclusive workspaces are a tremendous benefit for both businesses and employees. Studies show that disability diversity increases productivity and decreases turnover.
Though most of the 1 in 4 adults with disabilities in the United States report a desire to work, people with disabilities still face significantly lower employment rates than those without disabilities. Disability-inclusive hiring processes can play a significant role in a positive shift in this statistic.
Still, it's important to note that hiring people with disabilities is only the first step. When an employee with a disability joins a team, they must also be accommodated appropriately.
Disability inclusion is about cultivating a work environment that fosters support, decreases stigma, and promotes education around different abilities in the workplace.
Here we provide valuable strategies to a disability-inclusive work environment.
An accessible hiring process
Though employers cannot ask disability-related questions during the hiring process, accommodations for candidates with disabilities can still be made.
An inclusive hiring process should be available from the job posting page to new hire onboarding procedures. Job descriptions should clearly state what's expected of an employee, excluding irrelevant requirements that may exclude viable candidates, such as the need to own a car for a desk job.
Candidates with disabilities can be helped during the interview process by appointing an objective accommodation specialist who can implement helpful tools like larger print copies of interview documents for visually impaired candidates or alternative interview rooms for candidates sensitive to noise.
Changes as simple as a shorter overall interviewing process or making the first round of interviews virtual can greatly benefit candidates with disabilities. These subtle shifts in accommodation show candidates that accessibility is essential to a company, further building company culture.
Building an inclusive culture
Disability-inclusive workspaces provide employees with disabilities, apparent or invisible, the equal opportunity to thrive. The best way to encourage inclusion is through company culture.
An organization's mission statement, beliefs, attitudes, policies, procedures, and work ethic are part of its culture. So it's paramount that accessibility and inclusion be foundational pillars to any inclusivity initiative.
Inclusive cultures require everyone from executive staff to employees to be on the same page. Inclusion training and DEI programs can be a great way to help current and future staff comprehends accessibility and inclusion as core company values.
Useful benchmarks for businesses
Disability activists and organizations help companies learn new ways to make their businesses more accessible and inclusive.
The DEI Initiative
A prime example is the Disability Equality Index (DEI), a joint initiative of Disability: IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). DEI uses benchmarking tools to assist businesses in developing measurable frameworks to achieve disability inclusion and equality.
The DEI initiative makes its scoring process, which is worth a total of 100 points, public:
Culture Leadership (30 points) requires businesses to demonstrate a long-term, visible commitment to disability inclusion through their culture and leadership.
Enterprise-Wide Access (10 points) represents a company's willingness to make their workplaces more accessible.
Employment Practices (40 points) show commitment to benefits, recruitment practices, employment practices, and accommodation practices inclusive of people with disabilities.
Community Engagement (10 points) indicates that people with disabilities are celebrated and supported.
Supplier Diversity (10 points) shows commitment to practices that fully include and utilize disability-owned, veteran–disability-owned, and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses.
Each year hundreds of companies with more than 500 full-time employees in the U.S. submit their DEI scores to be evaluated. While DEI scores under 80 remain confidential, the top scorers like HP, All-State, and Verizon are listed in an annual Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion list.
Maturity Models
All companies, regardless of size, can benefit from the core values of the DEI initiative. Maturity models are a smaller scale tool that offers a comprehensive plan for businesses to implement accessibility.
Maturity models utilize actionable best practices to help executive teams and HR leaders measure their current disability-inclusiveness, and make valuable plans for the future.
Like the DEI initiative, the maturity model sets out distinct scoring criteria that allow companies to track progress. A model example might look like a detailed chart presenting levels 1 through 5.
If Level 1 indicates the early stages of planning accessibility practices into an organization, Level 5 reflects best practices that have been applied in the workplace, from performance data sharing to frequent staff consultations to determine progress.
When all employees are held to the same standard of accountability for change, disability-inclusive workplaces become a reality.
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