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All U.S.-based companies with at least fifteen employees are legally required to accommodate employees with disabilities (within reason) at the very least. That said, going above and beyond to ensure employees with disabilities are comfortable in their work environment may require a little extra communication and training. And doing so, comes with great rewards.
A new research report from professional services company Accenture, in partnership with Disability:IN, a nonprofit resource for business disability inclusion, found that companies that have met key disability inclusion criteria over the last five years earned 160 percent more revenue than those that didn't, and 200 percent more profit.
Here are a couple of ways to help employees with disabilities thrive at your company.
Keely Cat-Wells, 27, wasn't always so open about her struggles with chronic illness and PTSD. She hid her conditions from her employer for years, which eventually led to her losing her job. "I didn't want to talk about what I had been through and it was like I was hiding a massive part of my identity, which was horrible and difficult," she says.
The experience led her to start Whalar, a talent agency that represents people with disabilities in film, TV, and media. She sold that company in 2022, and this year started Making Space, which trains people with disabilities and helps place them with other companies. She says when it comes to inclusion, “companies should be upfront about accommodations rather than constantly waiting for employees to ask on an individual basis-;or even also to prove that they need it or prove that they have a certain requirement.”
To limit that strain, employers need to focus on training their middle managers, notes Nadia Alaee, Senior Director of HR Business Partners at Deel, an HR platform for global teams, as employees should feel comfortable going to managers about difficult topics. "Not every manager is going to know how to address the situation around giving and making accommodations for someone with a disability or accommodating someone who needs to go on sick leave, but they need to know who to with such an ask and how to have that conversation,” says Alaee.
Employee resource groups are great ways for people with common interests and needs to come together, advocate for themselves, and discuss changes they would like to see in the workplace. Having one for employees with disabilities may seem like a good idea up front, notes Cat-Wells, as it can allow people with similar life experiences to come together. That said, she notes that companies shouldn't rely on such groups to create necessary organizational change and should instead pay and hire consultants and experts to point out such issues.
"Company leaders can not continue to rely on and put the burden on the people who are within those ERGs to advocate for change across the entire company," says Cat-Well. "It's something that I've seen happen frequently in organizations looking to ultimately do the right thing, and it's unfortunate."
As a wheelchair user and a quadriplegic, Alvaro Silberstein, 37, knows what it's like to navigate an array of products that don't adhere to his needs. He's co-founder and CEO of Wheel the World, a travel company for people with accessibility challenges. Seven out of a total of forty employees on his team have a disability, and 20 people are family members of someone with a disability.
"At the end of the day, company leaders need to hire people with disabilities and empower them to make decisions and lead the right initiatives so that products are inclusive and accessible," says Silberstein.
He says that most companies don't consider how their products can or cannot be used by people with disabilities until they get a complaint from a customer, or worse a lawyer in the form of a disability lawsuit-and such cases are on the rise as of late. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed more than 50 percent more employment discrimination lawsuits during the 2023 fiscal year (143) as compared to last year, the agency reports. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, businesses must provide customers as well as employees with disabilities an equal opportunity to access the goods or services that they offer.
It's also crucial to mention the relative cost of retrofitting a product or a service to meet the needs of those with disabilities can be expensive if not contrived from the offset. According to a report by the Centre for Inclusive Design, a non-profit think tank that helps governments, educators, businesses and community organizations design products and services that are accessible, notes that redesigning a product to be inclusive can cost up to 10,000 times more than simply creating it with inclusivity in mind in the first place.
For more information on how to make products and marketing materials more accessible, Dr. Sambhavi Chandrashekar, PHD and Global Accessibility Lead at D2L, an education technology company, recommends founders take a look at the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by the World Wide Web Consortium, a think tank that develops standards and guidelines to companies build a web-based on the principles of accessibility.
A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta
Privacy Policy
How to Build an Inclusive Workplace for People With Disabilities
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15.12.2023
Details Emerge on the SBA's New Small-Business Lending Advisory Committee: Entrepreneurs to Get a Seat at the Table
Michael Mohr Grew Up Watching Movies in His Cousin's Basement With Seth Rogen. Now They Run a Thriving Cannabis Bra...
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Stacey Abrams Was an Entrepreneur Before She Became a Nationally Known Voting Rights Advocate. Meet Her Running Mat...
What You Can Learn From the 2023 List of Top App Store U.S. Downloads
What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Stellar Family-Owned Businesses
How A.I. Fakes May Harm Your Business--and What This Founder Is Doing to Help
All U.S.-based companies with at least fifteen employees are legally required to accommodate employees with disabilities (within reason) at the very least. That said, going above and beyond to ensure employees with disabilities are comfortable in their work environment may require a little extra communication and training. And doing so, comes with great rewards.
A new research report from professional services company Accenture, in partnership with Disability:IN, a nonprofit resource for business disability inclusion, found that companies that have met key disability inclusion criteria over the last five years earned 160 percent more revenue than those that didn't, and 200 percent more profit.
Here are a couple of ways to help employees with........
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