Lucy Wong Hernandez: Good morning, everyone and welcome to the 2009 TACE Center training webinar series. My name is Lucy Wong Hernandez and I am the Project Director for the southeast TACE Center in Region IV. The TACE Center’s mission is to improve the quality and effectiveness of vocational rehabilitation services and enhance employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities in the eight southeastern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The TACE Center is in collaboration with the DBTAC Southeast ADA Center. Both the TACE Center and the Southeast ADA Center are managed by the Burton Blatt Institute of Syracuse University, New York. As part of the TACE Center’s regional activities we are hosting a series of training webinars this year. Please visit our TACE webinar room to see the many training webinars that we are offering. Registration will open one month before the webinar session is scheduled so mark your calendar to sign up for those topics that you are interested in when the registration opens. All instructions and materials for each training webinar are posted on our website. Familiarity with this information will greatly enhance your participation and learning experience.
The online conference system we use is fully accessible integrated data and voice medium that enables us to conduct training webinars over the internet from just about any computer with an internet connection and web browser. Please note that long distance charges may apply. There are many computer issues that are beyond our control, but there are a few things you can do to enhance your learning experience and it is really important to check your computer prior to the session. We are unable to trouble shoot individual computer problems right before the webinar begins. You can only ask questions by typing in the public chat area. I will follow these questions and direct them to our featured speaker at the appropriate time. I will voice the questions for the benefit of all participants, the captioner and the transcript. Another thing to remember is that you should close all other applications and automatic system checks on your computer during the webinar session to eliminate potential interference. Finally, if your computer is connected to a network and has a firewall remember to press the space bar once in a while during the webinar to let the system know that you are still there, sometimes networked computers shut down if the computer is idle for too long.
Today’s format will be as follows, our featured speaker will speak for about 60 to 70 minutes. During the presentation you can type in your questions into the chat area, and the presenter will stop and try to answer as many questions as possible when they come up. At the end of the presentation any remaining or new questions will be answered as time allows.
Today's session is entitled The Principle of Demand-Side in Employment for Persons with Disabilities. We are privileged to be joined today by our featured presenter Dr. Fong Chan.
Dr. Chan is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has contributed to the field of vocational rehabilitation and rehabilitation psychology with numerous important research studies and publications. His bio is posted on the TACE website along with our webinar materials and I hope you had an opportunity, or will have an opportunity to review this information. Now, I will ask Dr. Chan to begin his presentation.
Dr. Fong Chan: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming to join me on this webinar.
Today, I will spend about 60 minutes to 70 minutes with you on the topic of demand-side of employment for people with disabilities. However, if you have questions you can type them into the public chat box, I will look at the box from time to time and I will try to answer the questions while I am making the presentation. I have been interested in demand-side employment research for about ten years. When I was a younger professor in the '70s and '80s I tended to have more of a focus on the supply-side employment research type. This is a change for me, but I think it is a good balance for me to go from supply-side now doing a little bit more on demand-side research.
The downside of doing demand-side employment for people with disabilities is that you actually are doing focus groups and research with employers so you have to learn to dress up a little bit, now and I own two new suits and two ties. I also learned how to eat a big steak dinners when I meet with employers. Because many of the employers in Chicago tend to take me and my team to a steakhouse for lunch or dinner time meetings and I had to learn to eat a big meal with them. It is actually all good and I have learned a lot by working with the employers. I think this experience has enhanced my research, also. OK, now we have slide number 2.
Here are some graphs with statistics on employment according to the National Organization on Disability. These reports indicated that 35% of working age people with chronic illness and disability are employed compared to 78% of those without disability. Of those who are unemployed, people with disabilities that is, 2/3 of them indicated they want to work but cannot find jobs. Employment rates for people with disabilities have been hovering around 35% in the past two decades, even during the robust economy of the 1990s. Even during the go-go years in the ‘90s when everything was going up, employment rates for people from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds went up and actually for people with disabilities, employment rates did not benefit them at all. Their employment did not go up that much even during the good economy of the 1990s. On this graph, if you look at the employment rate of people with disabilities after receiving vocational rehabilitation services, the rates are hovering around 58%. I have reviewed the RSA-911 data in the last ten federal years, and on the average the rates are about 58% to 60%. But it varies significantly by disability types. People with psychiatric disabilities tend to have the lowest employment rate. Next slide please, slide 3.
If you look at the typical way that we do employment services for people with disabilities it is a supply-side type of employment services. We would look at enhancing their specific employability skills, enhancing their general employability skills and enhancing their place-ability skills, in hoping that they will find a job. You will see that the supply-side employment type model tends to have some limitations. The current emphasis of the federal government, like the National Institute on Disability Research and Rehabilitation (NIDRR) and the Rehabilitative Services Administration (RSA) and the Department of Labor (DOL) has changed. They have been begun to place more emphasis in doing more demand-side employment research to see if we can enhance the employment rate of people with disabilities. What is demand-side employment anyway?
Let me give you an example. I came to this country in 1974, during the 1970s and 1980s, if you were in college at that time and you would look around and ask most of the international students from Asia what were their majors. Most of them, interestingly, would tell you their major was in Computer Sciences. At that time, I was majoring in Psychology. I asked all of my friends from Asia what were their majors when they were in their native countries. Surprisingly, I found out that many of them had all kinds of different majors, although they major in computer science here in the United States. And they would tell me, oh, my major was in Chinese literature, my major was in Sociology, in English Literature, in Psychology, etc. And then I would say, wait a minute, you all have those different majors in your home country and now you all are computer science majors in the United States. Why the change? What happened was that many of those students were interested in finding a job in the United States. You can say that they would have some problems because they may have an accent when they speak, they may not have the kind of writing skills in English like the American students. But they were planning for work, maybe after graduating; they wanted a job in the United States. What they find out was that Computer Science was at that time a highly demanded occupation. There were a lot of openings in Computer Science job market. There were a lot of employers looking for people who are thinking about jobs in the Computer Science field.
In the '70s and '80s there was not a sufficient supply of Computer Scientists. When a specific job is in demand, what will happen is that the human resource managers or the line managers, who are doing the hiring may be less demanding, or may be more willing to overlook certain limitations of the applicant. Therefore, the language accent may no longer be a problem if you can do programming and you can do computer coding, okay. If you are a woman, for non-female traditional jobs, it may not be held against you anymore because they cannot find enough people to do the job. If you are from a different race, cultural or ethnic minority background, it may not be a problem, because if there are a lot of jobs and not enough employees, employers are willing to overlook those diversity issues, or willing to not be biased, or willing to be less discriminatory in employing qualified potential employees. In this sense, demand-side employment is basically looking at whether certain jobs are in great demand, and therefore the employers may be more willing to be fair or more willing to take a chance on people that they feel may have some minor limitation or differences they are not used to. That is what demand-side employment is in a nutshell, from the employer's point of view is. Next slides 4 and 5 please.
Here we have two graphs with different years. Let us take a look at some of the unemployment rate statistics in the United States. You can see that the unemployment rate was kind of pretty high in the early 1990s. And then it comes down in the middle '90s. It comes down also quite a bit in the 2000s up to 2005, around 6% or 7% in the United States. Now with the financial crisis, I think this year we will go back to higher unemployment, the prediction is to around 10%.
Next slide, slide 6.Now when you look at the employment and people with disabilities you can see that employment rate of people without disabilities is about 80% in 1997. And then you see that, for people with disabilities they are significantly lower, and of course on the average are around 30% in 1997. The people with the lowest employment rate will be those using wheelchairs, probably spinal cord injury or other mobility impairments. And then less with be people with sensory disability, the employment rate is lower for those with mobility difficulties or physical disabilities. But they are significantly lower than people with no disability. Next slide, slide 7.
Even if individuals with disabilities are working the number of days they are working, -- the average annual week they work -- compared to people without disabilities is also less. On the average it is about 25 weeks a year. Next slide, slide 8.
I wanted to take a look at Europe to compare to my study in the U.S. When you look at Europe the employment rate of people without disabilities is actually lower than the United States because they have a high unemployment rate. In the Netherlands it is about 65% throughout the 2000 years. You can see that the employment rate for people with disabilities is around 40%. Although the employment rate for people without disabilities is lower than the United States, employment rate of people with disabilities is higher than the people with disabilities in the United States. There may be different factors that could cause this, maybe there is more of a socialist type of society, for instance. Next slide number 9, please.
What is demand-side employment? Demand-side employment is a focus on employers and what they want. Also it has a focus on the work environment. Looking at occupational shifts, industrial change, employers’ needs, employers’ demands, employers’ behaviors, employers’ attitudes, co-workers behaviors, co-workers attitudes, line managers’ behavior, line managers’ attitudes, and much more. So, demand-side employment strategies -- therefore must emphasize the preparation of people with disabilities for the jobs that employers need to fill. Demand-side strategies also require that we have to also look at how we can change the workplace. How can we change or influence the employers? We can talk about some of those concepts also, okay. Rehabilitation counseling professionals therefore need to have a more comprehensive understanding of the real concerns of employers about hiring people with disabilities and be able to address their concerns. They need to understand -- what some of their biases are and what are the myths about people with disabilities? Next slide number 10.
Interestingly, demand-side employment model is not a model that focuses on supported employment or customized employment. Demand-side employment model tends to focus on placing people with all types of disabilities and all levels of disability severity and not just people with significant disabilities. You are looking at placing people with disabilities at all levels of complexity of the job market. The focus of demand-side employment is the participation of people with disabilities in occupations representing all levels of skills and complexities, form unskilled occupations to professional/technical and then the more complicated occupations. Let’s look at slide number 11.
What are some of the demand-side employment research questions? If I am a Rehabilitation Counselor, what kind of questions would I want to ask? Well, some of the basic questions could be about the state where I live, Wisconsin. 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? For example, in Wisconsin some of the high demand occupations now are in nursing. So, if you are preparing for a job in nursing you may have a higher chance of getting a job. Employers may be more willing to take a risk on people they may not usually hire for this profession. You should ask the same about the state where you live. Next slide, slide 12.
In the event of a skills gap what are the reasons for this gap? And what are the implications? What can be done about the skills gap? Can we as a rehabilitation counselor help fill that skills gap? For example, if you look at the corporation of Walgreens, they have many regional warehouses, in the south I think there is one in South Carolina that is huge; they are always looking for warehouse or distribution workers. Their diversity manager is very keen on hiring people with disabilities. Walgreens has a program that they work with vocational rehabilitation agencies to help them identify people with disabilities that they can train and fill positions in those distribution centers. Those are things you can look at, those are examples of demand-side employment. What are employers' perceptions about people with disabilities as skilled and productive workers who can be a solution to the skills gap? Later on I am going to cover some of my own research that I have done with several focus groups with employers in Chicago and Milwaukee, and you will be surprised that they still have a lot of misperceptions about people with disabilities as workers.
Another interesting study I want to share with you is that in 2003 the Annual Economic Review, which is a pretty good high-level economic journal, two researchers from the University of Chicago, conducted an interesting study. Basically they created an identical resume that was adequate for clerical positions. Basically, the only difference of the resume was, they used very White sounding names and changes it to very Black sounding names. They conducted this study in Chicago and also in Boston. In Chicago they also know what are the areas that the white people live, and the areas that the black people live. For example, in the south side of Chicago the residents are mostly African-Americans who live in that area. The north side of Chicago is the area where most White-European Americans live in that well known areas. So, the two researchers will then used addresses, with Black sounding names and they used addresses that represented neighborhoods that African-Americans live, and for the White sounding names they used a White neighborhood. For two years they sent the resumes to apply for jobs that were posted in Chicago Tribune and posted in local Boston newspapers. Again, the resumes were identical; the only thing that was changed was the Black sounding names or the White sounding names, or the Black neighborhood address or the White neighborhood address. After two years they did the analysis.
The interesting part will be that it does not matter if the company says they are a progressive company, they are all for equal employment opportunities, or whatever. Now remember the research was done in the early 2000s. We would imagine that the racial biases would have significantly reduced in companies human resources practices. But what they found out was that, if you have a Black sounding name, living in a Black neighborhood you have 50% less chance of being called for the job interview. The study is interesting in that sense. After the passage of the Civil Rights Law in the 1960s and the Law of Affirmative Action, in the 2000s when they do these kinds of studies that companies will not think that they have any kind of racial/cultural biases. And they still have this kind of unconscious bias that people with identical resumes but if they identify the race as being African American they have half the change, or 50% less of a chance of being called for a job interview. This is kind of interesting. Later on I will also share with you some of my research on employer bias; against people with disabilities you find that employers actually still have a lot of misperceptions and stigma about disabilities and people with disabilities. More important was to understand what is the best way to change employer’s perceptions, from the Senior Managers from the VP level down to the Hiring Managers to Human Resources Manager levels. How can we as rehabilitation counselors do better -- how can we increase the comfort level of employers to hire and retain people with disabilities in demand occupations? This is very important.
I see someone saying "relationship, relationship, relationship." That is actually very important, yeah. We do actually work very closely with employers. Next slide, slide 13.
To add to the problem now we have globalization. We have jobs being outsourced to different parts of the world. And now with the financial crisis, the question then is how does that effect employment of people with disabilities at the time when there is a high unemployment rate? I also want to share with you a recent study that I did. Some of my doctoral students are interested in knowing what the effect of the unemployment rate on the employment rate of people with disabilities who receive state vocational rehabilitation services. We did it by comparison. We pick up the RSA-911 data a couple of years ago, and again we picked up the RSA-911 data on 2006. That was the most recent data that I could get at that time. The most current RSA-911 data is the 2007 data. So, we basically picked up the 2005 RSA-911 data. I told the students to go to the Department of Labor website to get the unemployment rate of all fifty states in the United States in 2005, 2004 and 2003. We averaged each unemployment rate of each state. And then we tried to correlate it back to the number of 26s case closures for each state’s vocational rehabilitation agency. We find that actually unemployment rate has a small effect, that effect 26s closures in state vocational rehabilitation agencies.
The findings demonstrated that unemployment rate does not affect race. The unemployment rate does not affect African-Americans at all. African Americans have the lowest 26 rate in state VR agencies. Because the race factor is so big, for Blacks, especially for African-American men, unemployment rate has no effect in the states on the unemployment rate of African-American men; because they have the lowest employment rate after receiving VR services, however unemployment rate affects a group of disability type significantly. Unemployment rate in the states affects the 26 closure of people with psychiatric disabilities. If you have a psychiatric disability, the unemployment rate in the state magnifies the difficulty of returning people with psychiatric disabilities back to work. Unemployment rate magnifies even small things significantly because there is a gender effect. Unemployment rates in each state magnifies the difficulty of returning people with disabilities back to work; if you are a person with psychiatric disability and you are a man. Unemployment rate has less effect on women. You can see that unemployment rate at least in 2005 has a small effect, but race has a stronger effect than unemployment rate and then disability type interacts with unemployment rate to affect people with psychiatric disabilities. Next slide, slide 14 please.
Now I am back to demand-side employment. Employment demand is changing. The projection is also shifting due to the fundamental structural economic changes. As rehabilitation professionals we have to be aware of the employment demand changes when we work with people with disabilities. What and where lie the greatest and growing areas of employment opportunities? What do these changes imply in terms of skill requirements? What kind of skills? And labor demand must be a key driver of skill development. We have to know what the demand-side employment occupations are, and then we would have to help prepare people with disabilities to perform those occupations. So the changing demographic makeup of the American workforce translates to dramatic changes in hiring and work environment structure. Employers will increasingly have to recruit and accommodate people from the nontraditional labor pool, including minorities and people with disabilities, just to meet their labor needs. That is true when you look at the demographic makeup of the American society, according to the census and the Department of Labor, by 2050, which I will long retire from that time by then, but by 2050, we know that the Hispanic population will increase to about over 30% of the population. And African-American will increase slightly from 12% to about 14 or 15%. And Asian Americans will double form 4% to 8%. Native Americans will remain the same, around 2% in 2050. Together individuals from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds will account for about 50% of the American population. The White American population will go down to around 50%. And that will indicate that employers will have to hire more people from a racial/cultural and minority backgrounds. A lot of the baby boomers will be retiring and the birth rate is reducing, employers may also have to search the labor pool for qualified people with disabilities Next slide, slide 15.
What are some of the drivers of labor market change? Globalization of markets, technological change, changing to a customer driven demand, changing patterns of trade, changing demographic trends, changing public policy and also how we do our work may change significantly also. Next slide, slide 16.
I think down the road we may have to live with a higher structural unemployment rate. The 6%, 7% unemployment rate may no longer be achievable and we may have to look at a higher unemployment rate. Occupational changes may vary geographically and employment growth in small business. Now when you have a higher employment growth with small businesses, you may also have to look at small business employers, they may have a different way of looking at their workers. They may pay lower wages, they may have a higher layoff rates, and they may actually want their workers to have multiple skills and flexibility. Organizational structure is also changing. It is a little bit more flat and more they want more to be team-based. This is also an interesting thing; I have been doing focus groups with many employers in Chicago and Milwaukee, in some of our conversations, the conversations shift to what are some of the typical problems of today's young people applying for jobs, especially college students. Line managers and human resources managers will tell me that this group of college graduates; we call them the iPod generation. And the IPod generation is this, they have the IPod and they tend to listen to their iPod music constantly, they also tend to play video games a lot since they were a teenager. According to the human resources managers and the line managers, they will say this group of college students tends to have an “entitlement attitude”, they want this and they want that without thinking. They also tend to have a somewhat less sophisticated or less appropriate workplace socialization skills. That is what they are talking about, the iPod generation, this entitlement attitude and poor workplace socialization skills. Now, the interesting part of this will be if you have a person with disabilities going for a job interview and if team work is highly emphasized, what if this college graduate with disabilities also presented same kind of attributes of the typical college students. That would be that they have the entitlement attitude and they have poor workplace socialization skills. The interesting part will be if the hiring managers or human resources managers may not attribute this to the IPod generation, but if it is a people with a disability they may attribute it to a person with a disability. So, people with disabilities when they look for a job the problem will be or may be double jeopardy. They may look at some of your undeveloped workplace behavior that are typical for most of the young generation and so attributing that is difficult in most of the young generation they will attribute it to disability. Next is slide 17 please.
So, as a rehabilitation counselor, what do we need to look at with demand-side employment? We have to analyze it. What are some of the components of employment? Companies are changing. And the use of the following three interacting components may become more common. Companies nowadays want more flexibility. They may be willing to keep a core workforce of full-time full-year workers within the organization; they may have a group of skilled self employed professional workers who will be working mainly on a contract or project basis, either for one organization or a number of them. They may be actually working for say Manpower, or they may be working for some kind of Information Technology (IT) companies, they will have their own group of information technology workers, but they deploy for different companies on a contract basis. One of the companies I am consulting with and has funded some research is an IT company in Chicago. Within their company they have a division for enablement. The enablement division is a job placement division that they use to place people with disabilities from their company to work as an IT contractor in other companies in Chicago. The third component could be a peripheral or contingent group of workers who are involved in part-time, temporary or seasonal work, and who often are low-skilled. Next slide, slide 18 please.
So, again as a VR counselor we have to be able to describe and quantity future occupational demand. We need to learn how to conduct research to gather information, more directly from the demand-side, in terms of employer needs, the hiring decisions and the workplace training division. Let’s move to slide 19.
Again, a typical demand-side job placement model for people with disabilities will have a focus on the employer and the work environment. We would have the emphasis on preparing people with chronic illness and disability for jobs that the employers need to fill. We need to provide consulting and training to employers on how to better recruit, accommodate, support and integrate workers with disabilities. Again, another thing I would want to share with you is I also conducted several studies on the EEOC complaints. Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1992, I have data from 1992 to 2005, between 1992 to2005 there is about half million EEOC complaints. Of those EEOC complaints, the top four complaints that are filed by people with disabilities against employers are hiring, firing, workplace harassment and accommodation and so you can kind of say wait a minute, with the ADA, employers know not to do those kinds of things but basically the top four complaints would be hiring, firing, accommodation, and workplace harassment. Of all those complaints, the success rate for those complaints is about 20%. Within that you still have to know that employers still would concerned about ADA complaints because the success rate is 20%, that can cost them money. Employers are always concerned about lawsuits and expenses. I think as a rehabilitation counselor, those are also areas we can help employers better manage those expenses. Let’s do the next slide number 20.
This is according to Dennis Gilbride and Bob Stensrud. Dennis Gilbride is a demand-side researcher at Syracuse University and Bob Stensrud is a demand-side researcher at Drake University in Iowa. They are actually two of the pioneers in the demand-side employment research. In their demand-side model that they published in 1992, it is a little bit old, they have some newer research. What they identify is still pretty relevant in today's environment. They think that we have increased demand, identify jobs employers have difficulty filling, evaluate essential functions, and perform cost/benefit analysis and identify levels of accommodations whether we can do task restructuring like job modification, job restructuring, and other related issues. Assist employers in developing a recruitment plan or training program. Then help them link it back to public VR agencies. Help collaborate with employers and agencies and training to provide skills and training people with disabilities for those demand occupations. Now we have slide 21.
Consultation is important. Provide consultation to employers, not just selling consumers for those jobs. Rehabilitation counselors who offer employers expertise in helping them to solve human resource issues. Help them change the work place and not necessarily change the consumers. Help function as an organization developer and human resources development consultant. We now have the next slide number 22.
Every employer needs individualized focus. Speak their language of business. Understand the real concerns for employers. The social responsibility is good, but you have to speak to their bottom line and you have to help understand and learn how to help employers get work done. Help employers view people with disabilities as resources and not as a burden. Do a better job of matching people with disabilities to the job -- so that they can perform appropriately for the job and so that you will not continue to be forced to view people with disabilities as a sub-part-performer. Match employers with “qualified” and competent workers with disabilities. Next is slide 23.
You have to be job focused. Increase the number and range of jobs that people with disabilities can perform. Work with employers to identify jobs they need to fill, help them develop accommodation strategies and then help them find applicants. Network with other VR professionals and their agencies, so community resources become very important and also have a good relationship with vocational technical schools that are now very keen and sensitive to demand occupations in helping them modify their curriculum. Next we have slide 24.
Looking at different funding to help pay for those solutions. Diversify funding and initiatives to spand your employers network. Next, slide 25.
Making sure that you provide follow up services, the consultation is ongoing. Next slide, slide 26
Most importantly when you talk about a demand-side placement model, it is a business approach, by providing quality services to meet the expectations of the employer, to do the best person job matching analysis, finds the best person to do the job, and help the employers with their bottom line – business and productivity. Next, slide 27.
This is also a very interesting area. I consult for a company in Chicago called STR Inc. It is a midsized information technology company. The CEO of the company has a child with a disability. He is very disappointed with the job placement rate and the job placement approach of the community rehabilitation agencies and also public rehabilitation agencies. He decided to use his own money to develop a division, called N-Ablement division, in his IT Company, using his business model to help people with disabilities find jobs in the IT industry. He hired a couple of job placement professionals, and then he gave them all sorts of resources in the company to do job placement. He is very active in Chicago and active in the Chicago Chamber of Commerce. He knows a lot of the big companies like, Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Chicago, Allstate, State Farm, and all those companies that are hiring IT professionals in Chicago. With his connections his job placement persons have access to all of the "C" level people within those midsized and large sized companies in Chicago.
The “C” level will be what, the CEO, the COO, the CFO, and the CIO, the Chief Information Officer, et cetera. So when they go do job development, the door is quite open from the senior management level, from the “C” level people. However, all those companies may be very positive about hiring qualified people with disabilities, unfortunately as it moves down to midlevel managers, Human resources managers and line supervisors nothing happened. The CEO of STR Inc. was very frustrated, he has all of the connections, he has a better model that most people use, once he identified qualified people with disabilities with computer skills he actually can put that person in his own company and allow them to develop appropriate workplace socialization skills and workplace behaviors, like being on time, being punctual, having the appropriate physical stamina and things like that before he would send them out to his contracts to other companies. Hopefully as a contract worker for other companies, then hopefully over time they can place that person as a permanent worker in those other companies. However, he has not been that successful, even though with all this structure and with this analysis of the demands for IT works in Chicago he was not successful because the barrier is with the middle level managers, the line managers’ level the line supervisor or hiring manager levels and the human resources manager level.
Two years ago he gave me and another professor a small grant to study why his approach is not working. I will share with you some of my findings once I finish the demand-side job placement model. Anyway, the middle level managers are the key for hiring people with disabilities. Without their buy-in I do not think you can get a lot of movement in increasing employment of people with disabilities. We have to make sure that we work with middle managers, line supervisors and co-workers as a consultant to help them to be more involved and educated about workplace support and how they can reduce stress and increase comfort level of working with people with disabilities, and have a better understanding of productivity levels of people with disabilities. Next, slide 28.
We also have looked at the critical issues of demand-side employment, the changing structure of the workforce and the impact of downsizing, increasingly use of on-call workers, temporary help agencies, independent contractors, rapidly changing technology, employer perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes regarding the employment of individuals with disabilities. In the early 2000s, the Department of Labor conducted several focus groups across the United States. And also their research support before you can do anything changing employer perceptions of people with disabilities as productive workers is actually the first step in demand-side employment. Employer knowledge and use of incentives for hiring individuals with disabilities. So those are critical issues. Next we have slide 29.
The effect of labor market demand policies and economic factors on employment outcomes for people with disabilities. Employer-based hiring practices that influence employment outcomes and employer understanding of the implications of employment practices for individuals with disabilities. We have to look at what are the predictors of return to work and workforce participation. Next slide, slide 30.
When you look at the demand-side employment we have to know skills and abilities that the employers demand very well as priority. Interestingly, not too long ago there was a meta-analysis of employment skills and abilities that employers expected. A meta-analysis is basically you would average out several hundreds of studies on say employer expectations of skills and abilities. Once they average that out and look at how the skills correlate with supervisor ratings of performance. Then you know what the expectations of employers are. Those employer expectations also translate to the questions, or the factors that a human resources manager or immediate Line manager will be looking for in a job interview situation. You can also prepare people with disabilities to kind of proactively identify their strengths in those factors that employers demand. Let us take a look at a meta-analysis of employment skills and abilities that employers expect a person (disabled or not) to have. Next slide, slide 31.
The taxonomy of psychological constructs that are frequently being asked by job interviewers. First will be mental abilities. Many employers are interested in how well an applicant can perform mental operations. Mental abilities 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. It will be similar to many of the IQ tests that will look at your general ability to learn and your general ability to perform. Applied mental skills refer to the application of mental abilities. It will not just be IQ but it will be application of IQ. It will be whether you make good judgments, make good decisions, whether you solve problems, and whether you can do quick planning. Creativity is defined more as your cognitive flexibility, flexibility of thought, originality, and the ability to see beyond current structures and operations.
Meta-analysis is averaging out hundreds of applied psychology research, human resources research. We find that creativity is actually highly related to job performance with a relationship of .58 it is a pretty high moderate relationship. And applied mental skill and general mental ability has a more low direct correlation but still a significant relationship with job performance in the 20’s. Now is the next slide 32.
Knowledge and skills is not as important as mental ability. Knowledge and skills correlate with job performance at .42 correlations. It is because job performance ratings have many other factors, like your social skills will affect your job performance ratings also. Interestingly in a job interview situation a job interviewer does not pay that much attention to knowledge and skills. By the time of the interview they already know, at least on paper, that you already have the knowledge and skills to perform the job. Next slide 33.
Then they are looking at basic personality tendencies. In human resource type testing they tend to look at a generic personality test that measures the "big five" personality dimensions. That is the popular personality test used by human resource managers. The “big five: dimensions are Extroversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness Openness to experience, and Emotional stability. Human resource managers tend to have a strong focus on agreeableness. Agreeableness is your basic desire to be liked by and to fit in with other people. That kind of workplace socialization skills is highly valued and that skill can affect your job performance, it is positively related to your job performance, and at a pretty high level of a correlation of .51. Now we have the next slide 34.
Applied social skill. It is the ability to function effectively in social situations. They are like oral communication skills, your interpersonal skills, your leadership skills, and the ability to persuade. They correlate at about .39. Next slide, slide 35.
Interests and preferences, it is not that important in a job situation really. It has a moderate correlation; it is significant but a low correlation. Next slide, slide 36.
Organizational fit is very important. In a job interview situation also, you have to demonstrate that you have a strong fit to the organization culture for that company. It will be whether you fit the values, goals, norms, and attitudes. Next slide, slide 37.
Physical appearance. At least in the IQ studies, the Industrial and Organizational studies of people without any disabilities, physical appearance have a very low relationship with job performance. Now, I think we have to look at studies that deal with people with disabilities. My hypothesis is that physical appearance may affect job performance ratings and may affect job interview outcomes for people with disabilities. I think we have to conduct more research in this area to better prepare people with disabilities to proactively manage the potential bias of employers. Next slide, slide 38.
Now I will close my presentation by sharing with you some of my studies with employers on current employer ways of thinking. Current Employers’ Perceptions of People with Chronic Illness and Disability in the Workplace. I am sorry to tell you that, interestingly employers still have a lot of misperceptions and stigma about people with disabilities as productive and effective workers. Next slide 39.
I want to share you the study I have conducted with funding for STR Inc. in Chicago. Next slide is slide 40.
I have many, many marketable corporation names in Chicago and Milwaukee. The Chicago Tribune, Allstate, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Northern Trust, Baxter, Harley-Davidson in Milwaukee, Kohler, American Cancer Society, GE Financial, Discover, Goodwill Industries, among many. I conducted three focus groups, one in Milwaukee, one in central Chicago and one in the suburbs of Chicago. The focus group in Milwaukee was conducted at Harley-Davidson University. That was really neat. We got to see some of their interesting pieces in their museum. That was the highlight of this study with Harley-Davidson. Our focus group participants are hiring managers, line managers, with hiring authority, and also human resources managers and of course human resources specialists. Next slide, slide 41.
Our talk with them resulted in three things, what do they perceive as productivity issues? What do they perceive as barriers of hiring and retaining people with disabilities? And what they see as success strategies for improving hiring. Next slide, slide 42.
We asked them if they see benefits of hiring people with disabilities. They said there are some benefits of hiring people with disabilities because, they will be more loyal, not quit their job as often, they may be more appreciative of the opportunity, more reliable, they may have better work ethic, they may have more satisfaction with the pay scale, and they may be better for organizational factors like diversity efforts and EEOC. With this kind of response you will still see that some of those are positive, there could also still be some misperceptions or things you might not what them to have in particular that kind of “not so good” perceptions. It is better for hiring managers to treat people with disabilities as though they have no disability and not stereotyping them as having a certain kind of quality that they all should have like, they should be more appreciative of the job opportunity. Now we have the next slide 43.
They also think that it will help employees feel more comfortable interacting with people with disabilities. They may have a lower turnover rate, they may be less prone to litigations, and they can fill in the gap of the reduced talent pool and they can make the organization a more inclusive environment. So those are some of the benefits that they see as having people with disabilities in the workplace. Next slide, slide 44.
Conversely they also have productivity concerns that are negative. Some of those again will be misperceptions perceive by the co-workers or by some of the line managers in their company may perceive, that people with disabilities may have lower productivity, higher error/mistake rate that is a quality problem, lack of experience, lack of supply of qualified personnel and many of the human resource managers. The interviews in the focus group would tell me that actually for the high level jobs this is really not a good supply of qualified people with disabilities. The employer expressed lack of time to train them. They have a perception that if I they hire people with disabilities; they have to spend more time to train them. That many of them need special accommodation and treatment and that may create resentment among co-workers. They may affect morale and productivity. Next slide, slide
They have the perception that people with disabilities may have lower skill sets, poor applied social skills, reduced physical stamina, that they are slow learners that they need more supervision. They may have to lower their performance standards just to hire to people with disabilities. Next slide, slide 46.
They also think that there are some attitudinal-based concerns. Other employees would be fearful of individuals with disabilities behaviors, especially people with psychiatric disabilities; other employees may be more close-minded and therefore they may not be able to accept them and they may not be able to get along with people with disabilities by seeing them through the disability to engage them just like any other person. Next slide 47.
Some employers feel that the people in the company may not know how to interview people with disabilities; they may lack knowledge regarding ADA or ADA resources. People with disabilities are frequently being screened out before even getting a chance to have an interview. And then there is also the Risk Aversion theory that they worry about. They may be easier to hire but very difficult to fire. Other things would be lack of familiarity with disability-related issues, lack of exposure to success stories, lack of exposure to people with disabilities. The interesting thing about ADA is in the 1990s right after the passage of the ADA; companies were keen on training their hiring managers, human resources Managers and Line Supervisors on ADA issues. However, they do not remember that hiring managers, Line supervisors, human resources managers also turn over, they have retired, move to other companies and so on. By now, you are looking at maybe a third or fourth generation of hiring managers since the passage of the ADA. Many of them are not as well trained as they were back then because the companies do not provide that many ADA training workshops and information anymore. Therefore, this generation of hiring managers may have less knowledge about ADA and less familiarity with job accommodation issues as they relate to people with disabilities. Now we have the next slide number 48.
The truth is that most people do not know how to develop a relationship with individuals with disabilities. They have more concern about individual with a disability fitting into the corporate culture. Lack of acceptance by co-workers on the job. Co-workers do not feel comfortable communicating with individuals with disabilities. Some employees will feel the need to mother or patronize their co-workers with a disability Next slide, slide 49.
Some of the myths about people with disabilities would be lack of maturity, lack of soft skills, tendency to take things to personally, poor grooming and poor hygiene. Those are typical things we know are only stereotypes and biases about persons with disabilities. Some may be indeed true for some people with disabilities but they are also true for people without disabilities. Let’s move to the next slide number 50.
Barriers are very significant. Barriers would be applicant pool of people with disabilities is too small. Diversity training is offered at the work place only occasionally. Many companies do not include disabilities as part of the diversity plan; therefore do not include disability in the diversity training and outreach efforts. Next slide, slide 51.
They do not use etiquette in communicating with people with disabilities which we can provide consultation and advice on those kinds of things. Do not know how to discuss or talk about disability with people with disabilities. Disability is not a focus of the diversity plan of the corporation. Next slide, slide 52.
What are the strategies for improving hiring? The use of temporary employment as a good starting point because it will allow for employers to test out employees without making a long term commitment. More effective use of internships, they feel internships will provide the same kind of benefits of checking them out without committing to them on a long term bases. Contract hire is a good way and then employer’s consultation services will be a good way also to inform and educate the employers. Next slide, slide 53.
Better assessment and better job matching. Linking disability explicitly to the diversity efforts in the corporate culture and in the diversity policy plan of the corporate culture. Also they need to see more successful stories and more stories about how workers with disabilities can be accommodated. And better outreach efforts to the disability community. Next slide, slide 54.
It is important to have a follow-up plan with employers to strengthen relations-relations with them. We will move to the next slide 55.
Based on the focus group study, I then converted these issues into a large-scale study. A group of 150 employers were recruited to respond to this survey. I also look at perceived productivity, benefits, barriers and whether they are well trained in ADA and disability issues. I basically collected information from 138 Line managers and asked them about the diversity climate in the company, to what extent disability management is important, their knowledge about ADA, their knowledge about job accommodations, their perceptions of people with disabilities as productive workers, their hiring strategies to increase employment of people with disabilities, and efforts to hire people with disabilities. Next slide, slide 56.
My sample was 62% men, 91% white, average age of 45 years old and employed predominately in the health care industry, finance, IT, Manufacturing, Public Administration and Professional and Technical. Next slide, slide 57.
The majority of the participants were employed by companies with 500 employees or more. These are companies in the Midwest. Next slide, slide 58.
Companies in general said they support diversity. Their emphasis on diversity is on gender and race and ethnicity but not disability. Hiring people with disabilities is not in the diversity plan, no incentive or quota to hire or retain people with disabilities, hiring managers are not trained in diversity management related to people with disabilities, resources for recruiting people with disabilities is limited, diversity sensitivity training for line managers is not adequate, hiring managers say they have no problem hiring and retaining people with disabilities in their department. Let’s see the next slide 59.
Line managers believe people with disabilities 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 opportunities for employees to learn to work with people with disabilities. Next slide, slide 60.
Corporation Line managers do indicate that they are not as familiar with ADA as they should be. They feel that the in-house resources do help with employment-related ADA issues. They indicated that they are familiar with ADA resources in the community; however they have no in-house job accommodations experts for consultation. Next slide, slide 61.
Companies are concerned about disability issues in the workplace related to work injuries, alcohol and drug abuse and mental health issues. This is a door opener for your job development. Companies are not as concerned about hiring people with disabilities in general; they are more concerned initially about work injuries, alcohol and drug abuse and mental health issues. If you can help them deal with those issues you have a door opener. Promote in a modest but positive way qualified people with disabilities as productive and reliable workers. Close to neutral rating to their knowledge about the ADA and for this group of hiring manager they do not feel they are very familiar with ADA and job accommodations. Next slide, slide 62
In my analysis, knowledge about ADA and job accommodations, if a hiring manager has a good knowledge about ADA and job accommodations they are working for a company that includes disability as part of their diversity plan. They are more committed to hire people with disabilities, they have more concerns about managing disability for their company, they have better perception of people with disabilities as productive and reliable workers and they are more open to the use of innovated strategies to recruit and hire people with disabilities. This part we can control as VR counselors. We can provide ADA training; we can provide job accommodations training or consultation for employers. Next slide, slide 63.
Managers who rated themselves as having good knowledge of the ADA also had less negative perceptions about people with disabilities as productive workers. People who have negative attitudes towards people with disabilities in the workplace tend to actually have negative perceptions about people with disabilities as a productive worker. Next slide, slide 64.
Diversity climate. The diversity climate of the company is related to the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace. So if a company has a strong commitment to diversity they have a higher change of including disability as part of their diversity effort. Then they have a stronger commitment to hire people with disabilities, they are more willing to include people with disabilities in their diversity effort and human resources policies. Next slide, slide 65.
I did a conducted a multiple regression. And I found that two factors are already highly correlated with the hiring decision. Basically they will be, if they have good knowledge of ADA and if disability is included in the diversity effort the companies are significantly committed to hiring those with disabilities. Those are the things we can influence as VR professionals. We can change companies by working with them to change the diversity climate to include people with disabilities as part of the diversity efforts. We can help train their hiring managers to increase their ADA knowledge and job accommodation strategies. We can also be their resources and consultants on those issues. I think by doing that we have a door opener to help them look at different ways to hire qualified people with disabilities. I have more to say but I am running out of time. I invite you to go over the entire PowerPoint presentation and if you have any questions or comments send them to me at the end of our talk you will have my e-mail for communication. I want to answer some of the questions. Let’s see the questions now.
Question: We have some questions from the participants. Here is the first one -- What are some specific examples of soft job skills?
Dr, Chan: Soft skills are basically workplace socialization skills, your ability to be able to get along with your coworkers, ability to get along with supervisors, your ability to request help in the appropriate way. Also your ability to control your unhappiness and get upset, your ability to deal with, to determine what is a typical workplace teasing about you or whether they are harassing you, how to become part of the group, whether you can be a team player, things like that. It really depends on the individual and the workplace.
Queation: Another participant is asking -- What about job matching?
Dr. Chan: For job matching, it really depends. Job matching can be as complex as doing a comprehensive psychological evaluation, or vocational evaluation or just doing a good workplace job analysis, doing an ADA job analysis or doing a good analysis of the functioning of the person with disabilities and being able to match that person based on a good transferable job skills analysis. This is important. Good, ADA job analysis along with some of your job functioning data that you collect form your comprehensive assessment of your clients during eligibility determination and also during your plan development.
Question: This is another important question. What are the states with best employment practices?
Dr. Chan: In terms of what are the states that are most progressive in hiring people with disabilities, I am not so sure I know that. However, I know there are several companies that allow more hiring of people with disabilities. For example, Walgreens is one of the companies that I mentioned and there are not many companies with a diversity manager and the VP level. Companies that have a diversity manager at the VP level tend to have a better receptiveness of hiring people with disabilities.
Question: A participant wants to know -- How can we talk to the “C” level manager?
Dr. Chan: In terms of "C" level. When you talk about “C” level people it is CEO, CFO, when you talk to them they tend to be quite positive about hiring people with disabilities. That is probably the initial door opener. You would be surprised they have limited way of influencing line manager, hiring manager and human resources manager behavior unless they change company policies. Although they are receptive to it they do not really make significant change in the company policies. If you do not make company policy change to create incentives at the Line level manager level, or if they are not being pushed to employee people with disabilities you will continue to have resistance from line managers. They are going to worry about productivity, they are going to worry about worker’s morale, they are going to worry about resentment of co-workers, and they worry about their own promotions. The work has to be focusing on company policy changes and also working and consulting and workplace support for the workers and the midlevel managers and front line managers. We have to help change company policy and also company incentives for line managers.
Question: This question is about your international studies. How do you compare the U.S.A. employment situation with other countries – like in Europe?
Dr. Chan: I have been doing some similar research in the Netherlands and England. In England, if you have breast cancer there, it is social system medicine services; it is a more Socialist country. In England if you have breast cancer, after surgery you are given full pay for four months. After four months you have to go back to work, if you do not go back to work you will not receive full pay any more. Breast cancer survivors in England have to go back to work after four months, does not matter if they are ready or not if they want to go back to receiving full benefits and full pay. They are very concerned that line managers know how to work with breast cancer survivors. What are their attitudes? Many of the attitudes of the line managers are they worry that the survivors may not be ready to go back to work and may have productivity problems. After breast cancer survivors receive chemotherapy, as you know it is toxic, but the person goes back to work; some of the typical complaints are memory, concentration and physical stamina. Again, some of those things may be exaggerated by Line managers, some may be true and they may need accommodations. Again working with Line managers and co-workers on this is a very important issue.
Another thing, I also completed another study in Colorado Springs, in Colorado with the DBTAC for Region 8. They surveyed all the companies in Colorado Springs and looked at their attitudes of hiring and retaining for employment people with disabilities. What I found out is that smaller companies, company size of less than 50 employees, tend to be less positive about hiring and retaining people with disabilities because they feel that all of the workers need to be flexible and be able to do multiple tasks and therefore has to have multiple skills. If one person cannot pull their weight it can affect the whole company’s bottom line significantly. So I can say that based on my study smaller companies in Colorado Springs were more negative about hiring and retaining, and understanding issues related to potential employees with people with disabilities.
I am sorry that I rushing it but we are running out of time. I have other interesting things in the PowerPoint, so I encourage you to go back and look at one example of demand-side job placement that we use and we developed for the STR Inc. in Chicago. You can see that is it somewhat different than the traditional job placement model. I am still working on this model with this company. We are beginning to collect information on whether the business model of doing job placement and job development has really worked. Hopefully, I can give you some more information next year once we finish this study with the mid-sized IT Company in Chicago. I thank you for your time and bearing with me.
Job placement and job development is not a subject we can ever make hugely interesting whether you are in college, in your Master’s Degree program, or are an active VR professional. We have no way of making it more interesting, but it is a very important topic, and I did try my best with the time allowed, okay. I thank TACE for inviting me to present to you and for your participation in this training webinar. I thank you for your time and bearing with me. If you have any more questions about this presentation please free to send me an e-mail. I respond to emails very quickly.
Lucy Wong Hernandez: Dr. Chan thank you for your presentation on this educational and important topic. Also for sharing your research findings with us on the topic of demand-side in employment of people with disabilities.
In summary, some important points to remember are that the focus on demand-side employment model is the employer and work environment. Also the demand driven employment strategies must emphasize the preparation of persons with disabilities for jobs that employers need. Rehabilitation counseling professionals must have a thorough understanding and real concerns of employer’s strategies about hiring persons with disabilities and being able to address their concerns and needs.I also want to take this opportunity to thank our participants for their valuable participation and questions. As you know a transcript of this session along with all other materials will be posted and available on the TACE website within two weeks of the session. You can look for it at our website: www.TACEsoutheast.org
Please remember to complete your evaluation of today's session. Your feedback is very important for our continued planning and development in addressing the specific topics that you may have some concerns about or interest to know more about it. The link for the evaluation form is posted in the chat area. You can click on that site straight from the chat area and fill out the evaluation form when you are done with the session. As you know, this session has been approved for .1 CEUs and 1.5 CRCC credits. Please refer to the site coordinator instructions for additional information. Also, remember that in order to be eligible for the CRCC credits you must reside within the eight southeastern states served by the TACE Center in Region 4. If you are out of the region you may still apply for CEUs, but not for CRC. If your questions were not answered today or if you need more information on the subject matter, please contact the TACE Center at 866-518-7750 or by sending an e-mail directly to Dr. Chan or to directly to TACEsoutheast@law.syr.edu.
Just to keep you informed, the next webinar in the month of May is Ethical Issues for Rehabilitation Counselors Related to Self-Management and Adherence to Treatment, that will be held on May 27 form 11:00 am to 12:30. This concludes our session for today and again thank you all for your participation, and thank you to Dr. Fong Chan. I hope to see you all again during the next webinar.
We now conclude our session. Thank you.
[Event concluded -- May 13, 2009]