Demand-Side Employment for People with Disabilities

Fong Chan, Ph.D.

University of Wisconsin- Madison

May 13, 2009

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• A recent National Organization on Disability report (2007) indicated that only 35% of working-age people with chronic illness and disability are employed comparing to 78% of those without disabilities.

• Two-thirds of the unemployed persons with chronic illness and disability indicated that they would like to work but could not find jobs.

• Employment rates for people with disabilities has been hovering around 35% in the past two decades, even during the robust economy of the 1990s.

• Rehabilitation rates for people with disabilities after receiving state vocational rehabilitation services are about 60% varying by disability types.

Demand-Side Employment

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Demand-Side Employment Research

• There seems to be a limit to what the supply-side employment and job placement model can achieve.

• The supply-side approach ignores variables related to employer demand (and the interaction of employer demand/supply and the environment) as predictors of employment outcomes for people with chronic illness and disability.

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Demand-Side Employment Research

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Demand-Side Employment Research

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Demand-Side Employment Research

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Demand-Side Employment Research

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Employment Rates of People with Disabilities- Netherland

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• The focus of demand-side employment models is on the employer and work environment (i.e., occupational shifts and industrial change).

• Demand-driven employment strategies must emphasize the preparation of persons with disabilities for jobs that employers need to fill.

• Rehabilitation counseling professionals must have a thorough understanding of the real concerns of employers about hiring persons with disabilities and be able to address their concerns and needs.

Demand-Side Employment

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• The focus of demand-side employment models is on job placement of people with all types of disabilities and all levels of severity and not just people with significant disabilities.

• The focus of demand-side employment is participation of people with disabilities in occupations representing all levels of complexity from unskilled occupations to professional/technical and managerial occupations.

Demand-Side Employment

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• Does [Wisconsin] have enough workers today?

• Will there be enough workers in the future?

• Do these workers have the skills our businesses are demanding?

• What kind of jobs are in demand?

Demand-Side Employment Research Questions

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• In the event of a skills gap, what are the reasons for the gap and what are the implications?

• What could be done about the skills gap?

• What are employers’ perceptions about people with disabilities as skilled and productive workers who can be a solution to this skills gap?

• How can we, as rehabilitation counselors, help increase the “comfort” level of employers toward hiring and retaining people with disabilities in demand occupations? (Gilbride & Stensrud, 1992).

Demand-Side Employment Research Questions

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Globalization

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• Employment demand is changing and projected to shift due to fundamental structural economic changes.

• What and where lie the greatest and growing areas of employment opportunities.

• What do these changes imply in terms of skill requirements.

• Labor demand must be a key driver of skill development.

• The changing demographic makeup in the American work force will translate into dramatic changes in hiring and work environment structuring. Employers will increasingly have to recruit and accommodate people from the non-traditional labor pool including minorities and people with disabilities just to meet their labor needs.

Demand-Side Employment

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• Drivers of Labor Market Change:

  • Globalization of markets

  • Technological change

  • Changing customer-driven demands

  • Changing patterns of trade

  • Changing demographic trends

  • Public policy

  • Changing skill requirements and requisite job tasks within occupations

Demand-Side Employment Analysis

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• Demographic makeup is changing (e.g., the ageing workforce).

• Structural unemployment may be edging higher in certain countries.

• Occupational employment changes vary geographically (e.g., the U.S. has been losing manufacturing jobs and gaining in services and information technology jobs).

• Employment growth in small businesses—lower wages, higher layoff rates, requiring multiple skills and flexibility.

• Organizational structure is changing—flatter and more team-based.

Demand-Side Employment Analysis

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Components of employment—companies are changing and the use of the following three main interacting components of employment may increasingly become more common:

1. 1. A core workforce of full-time full-year workers within organizations;

   2. A group of skilled, self-employed and professional workers who work mainly on a contract or project basis either chiefly for one organization or a number of different ones; and

   3. A peripheral or contingent group of workers who are involved in part-time, temporary or seasonal work, and who often are low-skilled.

Demand-Side Employment Analysis

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Describing and Quantifying Future Occupational Demand—need to focus research efforts to gather information even more directly upon the demand side in terms of employer needs, their hiring decisions, and their workplace training decisions.

Demand-Side Employment Analysis

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• Focus on the employer and work environment (i.e., occupational shifts and industrial change).

• Emphasize the preparation of persons with chronic illness and disability for jobs that employers need to fill (i.e., demand occupations).

• Provide consulting and training to employers on how to better recruit, accommodate, support, and integrate workers with disabilities.

Demand-Side Job Placement Models for People with Disabilities

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1. Increase Demand

• • Identify jobs employers have difficulty filling

  • Evaluate essential functions, perform cost/benefit analyses on levels of accommodations and task restructuring

  • Assist employers in developing a recruitment plan and/or training program

  • Inform public rehabilitation agencies on current and future labor requirements of local business

  • Collaborate with employers, public rehabilitation, and training institutions to provide skills training for persons with disabilities

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (Gilbride & Stensrud, 1992)

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2. Consultation

• • Consultation approach, not selling clients

  • RCs offer employers expertise in helping employers to solve their human resources needs.

  • Rehabilitating workplace, not rehabilitating clients

  • Function as organization development and human resource development consultant

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (cont.)

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3. Employer Needs Focus

• • Speak the language of business

  • Understand the real concerns of employers and be able to speak to their needs

  • Understand and know how to help employers get work done

  • Help employers view people with disabilities as resources to get work done

  • Must match people with disabilities carefully for the job

  • Match employers with “qualified” and competent workers with disabilities

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (cont.)

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4. Job Focused

• • Increase the number and range of jobs that people with various functional limitations can perform within a specific organization

  • Work with employers to identify jobs they need to fill, develop accommodation strategies, and then find applicants.

  • Network with rehabilitation agencies (e.g., public rehabilitation agencies, vocational-technical schools, private job placement firms, etc.) to have a pool of people with specific capacities and characteristics ready to fill the available positions

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (cont.)

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5. Private Funding

• • Consultation services provided by RCs should be paid by employers

  • Public rehabilitation agencies will be part of the solution (e.g., paying for the training costs) and not all of the solution

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (cont.)

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6. Consultation is Ongoing

Work with employers and employees to provide on-going OD/HRD consultations so that employees with disabilities can progress from entry-level positions to higher level positions.

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (cont.)

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6. A Business Approach

• • Provide quality services to meet the high expectations of employers

  • Do the best person-job match analysis

  • Find people with disabilities who can do the job

  • Help employers with their bottom line—i.e., to make a profit

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (cont.)

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7. Middle Managers and Line Supervisors Focus

• • View middle managers and line supervisors as the most important customers to help them solve day-to-day problems and to get work done efficiently.

  • Make sure that middle managers, line supervisors, and co-workers consulted, involved, educated, and supported to reduce stress and increase “comfort” level of working with people with disabilities

Demand-Side Job Placement Model (cont.)

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• Changing structure of the workforce and the impact of downsizing.

• Increasing use of on-call workers, temporary help agencies, and independent contractors.

• Rapid advances in technology requiring the need for highly educated, highly skilled workers.

• Employer perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes regarding the employment of individuals with disabilities.

• Employer knowledge and use of incentives for hiring individuals with disabilities.

Demand-Side Employment – Critical Issues

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• The effect of labor market demand policies and economic factors on employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities

• Employer-based hiring practices that influence employment outcomes and employer understanding of the implications of employment practices for individuals with disabilities

• Predictors of return to work and workforce participation.

Demand-Side Employment – Critical Issues

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Meta-Analysis of Employment Skills and Abilities Employers Demand

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Mental ability. Many employers are interested in how well a job applicant can perform mental operations. Mental ability can be categorized into general mental ability, applied mental skills, and creativity. General mental ability is related to the overall ability to learn and process information. Measures of general mental ability have found to be related to performance across a range of jobs (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Applied mental skills refer to the application of mental ability (e.g., judgment, decision making, problem solving, and planning) to solve organizational issues in real-world contexts. Creativity is defined as flexibility of thought, originality, and the ability to see beyond current structures and operations (Cohen & Swerdlik, 1999).

• • Creativity Job performance (r = .58)

  • Applied mental skills Job performance (r = .28)

  • General mental ability Job performance (r = .24)

Taxonomy of Psychological Constructs

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Knowledge and skills.

Knowledge and skills are related to information already stored in long-term memory. Direct measures of job knowledge and skills have been found to predict job performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998)

• • Knowledge and skills Job performance (r = .42)

Taxonomy of Psychological Constructs

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Basic personality tendencies.

Huffcutt et al. (2001) found a growing preference to measure personality traits using the “Big Five” personality dimensions: Extroversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness (basic desire to be liked by and to fit in with other people), Openness to experience, and Emotional stability.

• • Agreeableness Job performance (r = .51)

Taxonomy of Psychological Constructs

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Applied social skills.

The ability to function effectively in social situations may be influenced by both the underlying personality structure and the acquired competencies. Specific applied social skills typically evaluated in employment interviews include: oral communication skills, interpersonal skills, leadership, and persuasiveness.

• • Applied social skills Job performance (r = .39)

Taxonomy of Psychological Constructs

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Interests and preferences.

Interests and preferences in the context of employment interviews has been defined as “the verbal profession of interest in an object, activity, task, or occupation” (Super, 1949, p. 377).

• • Interests and preferences Job performance (r = .24)

Taxonomy of Psychological Constructs

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Organizational fit.

Each organization has its own unique culture or climate, defined by characteristics such as values, goals, norms, and attitudes. The closer that the values and attitudes of an individual correspond to those of the organization, the better the fit between them.

• • Organizational fit Job performance (r = .49)

Taxonomy of Psychological Constructs

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Physical appearance.

Physical attributes. Employers generally assess physical characteristics such as health, appearance, attractiveness and job-related characteristics such as physical ability, stamina and agility.

Taxonomy of Psychological Constructs

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Employers’ Perceptions of People with Chronic Illness and Disability in the Workplace

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Funded by SPR, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA

Focus Group Studies

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Focus Group Participants

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1. Productivity Issues

2. Barrier Issues

3. Strategies for Improving Hiring

Results

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Employers identified the following benefits of Hiring individuals with disabilities (Front-line hiring and C-level):

• • Individual/Personal Attributes

  • Dedication and loyalty

  • Appreciation (of opportunity)

  • Dependability/reliability

  • Work ethics

  • More satisfied with the pay scale

  • Organizational Factors

Benefits

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• Informal educator/ambassador to educating others in the organization

• Helping employees feel comfortable interacting with people with disabilities

• Low turnover

• Less prone to litigate

• Fill the gap of reduced talent pool, especially in the area of IT

• Making the organization a more inclusive working environment

Benefits

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• Low productivity (quantity)

• High error rate (quality)

• Lack of experience (tend to hire people with experience)

• Lack of supply of qualified personnel

• Lack of time to train

• May need special treatment

• People with disabilities may need more training, more supervision, more special needs; can create resentment among co-workers and affect morale.

Productivity Concerns

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• Lower skill sets (technical and applied social skills)

• Reduced physical stamina

• People with disabilities are slow learners

• May need more supervision

• Perception that employers need to lower standards

Productivity Concerns

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• Other employees would be fearful of individuals with disabilities

• Close-mindedness of other employees

• Lack of acceptance

• Cannot see through disability

Attitudinal-Based Concerns

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• Don’t know how to interview individuals with disabilities

• Lack of knowledge regarding ADA resources

• People with disabilities are frequently being screened out before getting a chance to interview

• Risk aversion theory (easy to hire, difficult to fire)

• Lack of familiarity with disability related issues

• Lack of exposure to success stories

• Lack of exposure to people with disabilities

Employer Concerns

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• Do not know how to develop a relationship with individuals with disabilities

• Concern about individual with a disability fitting into the corporate culture

• Lack of acceptance

• Co-workers do not feel comfortable communicating with individuals with disabilities

• Some employees will feel the need to mother their co-workers with a disability

Employer Concerns

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• Lack of maturity

• Poor soft skills

• People with disabilities take things too personally

• Poor grooming and hygiene

• Individual health related issues

• Poor mental health

• People with disabilities lack workplace socialization skills

Myths About People with Disabilities

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• Applicant pool of people with disabilities is small

• Diversity training is offered occasionally and disability is not emphasized.

• Lack of practice/do not interview that many applicants with disabilities

• Do not have enough exposure to quickly learn to communicate with people with disabilities. A similar example will be communicating with immigrant workers (e.g., Asian Indian IT workers).

Barriers

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• Do not know etiquette in communicating with people with disabilities

• Do not know how to discuss disability with people with disabilities

• Disability is not one of the focus of diversity in corporation

Barriers

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• The use of temporary employment as a starting point

• More effective use of internships

• Contract to hire

• Employer consultation services by job placement agencies (e.g., DVR)

Strategies to Improve Hiring

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• Better assessment/better job-matching

• Linking disability explicitly as part of diversity/disability as a culture

• Need to have more success stories/visible/TV and other media

• Better outreach efforts to the disability community

Strategies to Improve Hiring

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A Follow-up Employer Survey

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A Follow-up Employer Survey

On-line survey and collected information from 138 HR and front-line managers about:

• • Diversity climates of their company

  • To what extent disability management is important

  • Knowledge about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

  • Knowledge about job accommodations

  • Perceptions of people with disabilities as productive workers

  • Hiring strategies to increase employment of people with disabilities

  • Efforts to hire people with disabilities.

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Sample Characteristics

• 62% are men

• 91% are white

• Average age of 45 years old

• Employed predominantly in the:

  • health-care industries (19%),

  • finance (16%),

  • information technology (15%),

  • manufacturing (14%)

  • other services (except public administration) (12%), and

  • professional/technical (10%).

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A Follow-up Employer Survey

The majority of these participants are employed by companies with 501 or more employees (64%), followed by companies with employees between 15-100 (16%), companies between 101 and 500 employees (12%), and companies with less than 15 employees (7%)

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• Companies support diversity

• The emphasis of diversity is on gender and race but not disability

• Hiring people with disabilities is not in the diversity plan

• No incentive or quotas to hire or retain people with disabilities at the departmental or unit levels

• Hiring managers are not trained in diversity management related to individuals with disability

• Resources for recruiting people with chronic illness and disability are limited

• Disability sensitivity training for line managers is less than adequate

• Hiring managers have no problem hiring and retaining people with disability in their department.

Employers in the Midwest

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• HR and line managers believe that people with disability have workplace socialization skills; are reliable; can perform essential tasks; and meet productivity standards

• Hiring people with disability help promote an inclusive workplace

• Hiring people with disability provide opportunity for employees to learn to work with people from diverse groups

Employers in the Midwest

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• HR and line managers indicated that they are not as familiar with ADA as they should

• There are in-house resources to help with employment-related ADA issues

• HR and line managers indicated that they are familiar with government resources for ADA and employment technical assistance

• There is no in-house job accommodations experts for consultation

Employers in the Midwest

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• Companies are concerned about disability issues in the workplace related to work injuries, alcohol and drug abuse, and mental health issues (M=3.77, SD=.74).

• Modest but positive rating of people with disabilities as a productive and reliable worker with appropriate workplace socialization skills (M=3.54, SD=.32).

• Close to neutral rating to their knowledge about the Americans with Disabilities Act and job accommodation (M=3.22, SD=.64)

• Inclusion of disability in the company’s diversity efforts (M=3.20, SD=.50)

• Use of innovative strategies to recruit and retain people with disabilities (M=3.09, SD=.40).

Employers in the Midwest

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Knowledge about the ADA and job accommodations in the workplace is positively related to:

• • including disability as part of the company’s diversity efforts (r = .67, p < .01)

  • commitment to hire people with disabilities (r = .64, p < .01), diversity climate of the company (r = .51, p < .01),

  • strong concern about managing disabilities in the company (r = .50, p < .01),

  • perceptions of people with disabilities as productive and reliable workers (r = .28, p < .01), and

  • the use of innovative strategies to recruit and retain people with disabilities (r = .28, p < .01).

Employers in the Midwest

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• Managers who rated themselves as having good knowledge of the ADA also rated themselves as having less negative perceptions about people with disabilities as productive workers in the workplace (r = -.32, p < .01).

• Negative attitudes toward people with disabilities is negatively related to perceptions of people with disabilities as productive workers (r = -.35, p < .01), inclusion of disability in the diversity effort (r = -.34, p < .01), and commitments to hire people with disabilities (r = -.35, p < .01).

Employers in the Midwest

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• Diversity climate of the company is related to the inclusion of people with disabilities. Companies with a strong commitment to diversity have a higher propensity to:

  • include disability as part of their diversity efforts (r = .67, p < .01)

  • a stronger commitment to hire people with disabilities (r = .44, p < .01).

• Inclusion of disability as diversity efforts of the company is also significantly related to knowledge of ADA and job accommodations (r = .67, p < .01).

Employers in the Midwest

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A multiple regression was conducted with ADA knowledge, concerns about disability management, negative attitudes, positive perceptions, diversity climates, inclusion of disability in diversity efforts, and hiring strategies were used as independent variables to predict the commitment of the company to hire people with disabilities.

Multiple Regression

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• The result was significant with R2 = .58, F(7, 125) = 24.13, p < .001. (Large effect size)

• An examination of the beta coefficients revealed that only knowledge of ADA and job accommodation (b = .23, p < .05) and inclusion of disability in diversity efforts (b = .56, p < .01) are significant in predicting commitment of the company to hire people with disabilities.

Multiple Regression

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• Job development efforts must be expanded to:

• work with companies to incorporate disability as part of their diversity plans;

• incorporate incentives to hire and retain people with disabilities at the unit/departmental level;

• provide disability sensitivity and stigma reduction training, to provide ADA and job accommodation training;

• help design innovative recruitment and retention strategies such as the use of private job placement firms and state vocational rehabilitation agency and resources, internship programs, work trails, and mentoring.

Recommendations

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• Hiring managers are still ambivalent about people with disabilities as productive and reliable workers in the workplace and the potential negative impact of accommodating people with disabilities on the reactions of other workers in the workplace.

Recommendations

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Exemplary Demand-Side Job Placement Services

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Introduction and Overview
January 1st, 2008

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nAblement Contents

• MPS Partners/ nAblement Mission

• MPS Partners/ nAblement Overview

• nAblement Channel Strategy

• nAblement Initiatives

• nAblement Internship

• nAblement Solution Summary

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NAblement’s Mission

nAblement is focused on partnering with our clients to help them achieve greater diversity as it relates to making a commitment to hiring professionals with a disability in their IT organization.

• • Provide cost-effective / entry-level through transitional skilled IT professionals with disabilities to local businesses.

  • Provide candidates with qualities consistent with the ability to succeed in a career in the IT industry.

  • Provide application & infrastructure support positions for skilled IT professionals with disabilities.

  • Provide IT solutions that address real business problems while improving access for all professionals, with or without disabilities.

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Vision- Mission- Opportunity

Vision – Positively impact the employment profile among qualified individuals with disabilities in the Information Technology sector.

Mission – By 2011 place 150 individuals with disabilities in local Information Technology positions.

Opportunity – nAblement believes that professionals with disabilities can be productive members of the IT community and fully integrated in every facet of society.

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Goal

The nAblement goal is to increase the overall employment among professionals and aspiring professionals with disabilities in the IT industry, and to influence the employment of qualified PWD into other industries.

nAblement aligns the following four core efforts in order to structure an integrated approach to achieve this objective.

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Four Core Efforts

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Mission

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nAblement Initiatives

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nAblement Initiatives

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nAblement Process

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Goals of nAblement

• nAblement and its partners will build awareness and recruit qualified people with disabilities

• Corporate Partners will donate hardware and software for classroom training supplies and materials

• Robert Morris college will hold instructor led classes for Microsoft System Center Network Support and SharePoint/MOSS administration and Development.

• Corporate and Foundation partners will provide financial sponsorship for student interns

• DOE and other aligned grants will be applied for to assist in offsetting internship program costs and preparing candidates for hire

• Students will participate in 12 week training class consisting of;

• classroom training, hands on product certification, industry awareness, local business onsite mentoring

• Corporate partners will hire certified graduates for 6 month internship with opportunity to hire at the end of training

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Solution Overview

nAblement goes to market with the specific objective of selling and staffing projects with teams IT professionals with disabilities. nAblement believes that by effectively leveraging the abilities of IT professionals with disabilities, many IT functions can be successfully accomplished. The solutions that nAblement has defined and markets address specific opportunities that fortune 1,000 companies are facing today. nAblement’s unique understanding and perspective of the challenges facing professional with disabilities enables them to focus on the solutions required in today’s marketplace.

1. 1. 508 Compliance Solution Audit, Assessment, Remediation, Maintenance

   2. Data Validation & Testing Solution Data Preparation, Scripting, Validation

   3. Helpdesk & Desktop Support Solution Help Desk Integration, Staffing & Out Sourcing

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Questions?

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Fong Chan, Ph.D.

University of Wisconsin- Madison

Email: chan@education.wisc.edu

Contact Information

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THANK YOU!

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TACE Center: Region IV

Toll-free: (866) 518-7750 [voice/tty]

Fax: (404) 541-9002

Web: TACEsoutheast.org

My TACE Portal: TACEsoutheast.org/myportal

Email: tacesoutheast@law.syr.edu

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Education Credits

Participants may** be eligible for CRCC and CEU credits.

CRCC Credit (1.5)

• • By Tuesday, May 19, 2009, participants must score 80% or better on a online Post Test and  submit an online CRCC Request Form via the MyTACE Portal.  

CEU Credit (.10)

• • Site Coordinators must distribute the CEU form to participants seeking CEU credit on the day of the webinar.

  • Site coordinators must submit CEU form to the TACE Center: Region IV by fax (404) 541-9002 by Tuesday, May 19, 2009.

My TACE Portal: 

**For CRCC credit, you must reside in the 8 U.S. Southeast states served by the TACE Region IV [AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN]. If beyond TACE Region IV, you may apply for CEU credit.

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Disclaimer

This presentation was developed by the
TACE Center: Region IV ©2009 with funds from the U.S. Department of Education, Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) under the priority of Technical Assistance and Continuing Education Projects (TACE) – Grant #H264A080021. However, the contents of this presentation do not necessarily represent the policy of the RSA and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government [34 CFR 75.620 (b)].

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Copyright Information

This work is the property of the TACE Center: Region IV.

Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the authors. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the authors.