Welcome to our July 2010 issue.
Hi. Welcome to this
month’s issue of inclusionRX.
In this issue, you’ll
find the next installment of my continuing article on
Diversity and Disability: Kindred Souls on the Road to
Inclusion. In this series, I am examining seven factors
that can influence a company’s buy-in to diversifying their
workforces and, in particular, how those factors relate to
the community of people with disabilities.
Those seven factors
include:
1. As a
Social
Responsibility (April, 2010 issue)
2. As an Economic Payback
(May,
2010 and
June, 2010 issues)
3. As a Resource Imperative
(Current Issue)
4. As a Legal Requirement
5. As a Marketing Strategy
6. As a Business Communications Strategy
7. As a Capacity-building Strategy
In this issue, I am
addressing the "Resource Imperative" factor of workforce
diversity - the need that companies have for new sources of
talent and how people with disabilities still represent an
underutilized human resource.
Also, I am happy to
include a guest article by our friend and associate Larry
Robbin. Larry's article on unemployment statistics is a
healthy encouragement to temper the egocentrism of our
disability focus with an allegiance to other groups who are also
daunted by dramatically low rates of workforce participation.
Lastly, I want
to put in a plug for the USBLN's conference in September. I
think they have put together a remarkable event. I don't
think I've seen an agenda (on disability and employment
issues) like this since the annual conferences of the former President's Committee on the Employment of People
with Disabilities. It is a meaty agenda and is sure to be an
invaluable networking opportunity for everyone who attends.
Be sure to check it out. See you
there?
~ Rob McInnes
Comment? Do you have a comment on anything in this issue?
Please send us your thoughts by email. We enjoy hearing from
our readers.
Email your feedback
on this issue...
inclusionrx@diversityworld.com
Diversity and Disability: As a
Resource Imperative
“The changing
demographics in the workforce, that were heralded a
decade ago, are now upon us. Today’s labor pool is
dramatically different than in the past. No longer
dominated by a homogenous group of white males,
available talent is now overwhelmingly represented by
people from a vast array of backgrounds and life
experiences. Competitive companies cannot allow
discriminatory preferences and practices to impede them
from attracting the best available talent within that
pool.” (from
Workforce Diversity: Changing the Way You Do Business)
While some folks
might have been aware of it beforehand, for many more of us,
our great awakening to the dramatic demographic changes
forecasted in the North American workforce was precipitated
by the 1987 report by the Hudson Institute, Workforce 2000:
Work and Workers for the Twenty-first Century. Funded by the
United States Department of Labor, the report predicted
that, while they dominated the workforce in 1985 by holding
47% of all the jobs in the U.S., native-born white men would
comprise only 15% of the 25 million new workers hired over
the next 15 years. By 2000, non-whites, women, and
immigrants would make up almost 85% of the workforce.
Startling in its assertions, Workforce 2000 heralded an
urgency for new skills, perspectives and practices in
addressing workforce diversity issues. The workforce had
traditionally sustained itself by drawing on young workers
just entering the workforce from school or college. Pointing
to the post-baby boom decline in birth rates, Diversity 2000
also forecasted a significant decline in the availability of
young workers and the need for companies to explore new
avenues to replenishing their workforces. For those of us
engaged with folks from groups that had been traditionally
excluded or underrepresented in the workforce, Diversity
2000’s conclusions couldn’t have sounded sweeter; “With
fewer new young workers entering the workforce, employers
will be hungry for qualified people and more than willing to
offer jobs and training to those that they have
traditionally ignored.”
It was around this
time that we began using new language to describe job
seekers with disabilities; “the emerging workforce”, “the
untapped labor pool”. People with disabilities, as job
seekers, now had a natural place of inclusion in the
conversations that had become both current and significant
to employers.
What has developed
since then is a bad news/good news story. The bad news is
that, in the roughly two decades since the report was
published, two decades that were enriched by the passing of
the Employment Equity Act in Canada (1986) and passing of
the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), unemployment
rates for people with disabilities in both countries have
not changed to any appreciable extent. The good news is that
there is still a largely-untapped domestic labor force
available to North
American workforces.
Of course this
disappointing outcome has generated a good deal of research,
dialogue, opinions and assertions. Personally, I am inclined
to attribute it to the same factor that Susan Scott Parker,
the Chief Executive of the Employers Forum in Great Britain
once cited as the root of the apparent failure of their
“business case” seminars for hiring managers; “We must now
recognize that no amount of factual evidence on productivity
and cost benefit can hope to persuade an individual manager
who has yet to address the embarrassment, the fear and the
deep-rooted negative assumptions about disability which are
so often at
play.”
We have all watched large companies respond to workforce
diversity issues in a big way. They have invested
substantial resources to the re-tooling of their policies
and practices in order to effectively recruit, accommodate
and retain women, people from racial & ethnic minorities,
people with different religious affiliations, people with
different sexual orientations, etc. There was a will and
they found the way.
From personal
experience, I have found that most companies have not
reinvested in retooling their policies and practices for
people with disabilities the way that they have for other
minority groups. I have watched them spend tens of
thousands of dollars to hire renowned speakers to educate
their employees about other minority groups – while getting
free local speakers to do so about people with disabilities.
I have seen their recruiting booths intentionally staffed by
people who visibly represent other minority groups but
almost never by people with visible disabilities. I have
seen them set up formal internal mentoring relationships
between new and seasoned employees from other minority
groups while leaving new hires with disabilities to flounder
on their own. These kinds of examples are endless.
Where there is a
will, there is a way. I think of the Hewlett-Packard
facility that I once visited in Roseville, California where,
within the three minutes it took to walk from the front door
to the meeting room, we encountered half a dozen employees
with very significant and visible disabilities (employees
with white canes and guide dogs, employees chatting in ASL,
employees using power wheelchairs, etc.). When I later
queried the head HR person about this, he chuckled and, with
a twinkle in his eye told me how, when all the other high
tech companies in California were busily filling their
workforce needs by constantly stealing employees from one
another, he had gone out and aggressively recruited talented
students with disabilities who were graduating from colleges
across the country.
The good news is
that, if they really want to, if their will is strong
enough, companies can still take advantage of a large pool
of untapped talent. Unemployment rates for people with
disabilities in the United States and Canada are still
almost one and a half times the unemployment rate of people
without disabilities. Even that discrepancy fails to reveal
the true size of the untapped talent pool. There are a great
many more folks with disabilities who are willing and able
to work, but have just given up looking for work and are not
included in those numbers.
Where there is a
will, there is a way. Standing in contrast to the companies
that occasionally hire an applicant with a disability (and
in sharper contrast to the many companies that never do),
there are rare and glowing examples of companies large (e.g.
Walgreens) and small (e.g.
Habitat
International in Tennessee), who have purposefully set
out to make their workplaces inclusive and have not only
succeeded but have reaped benefits well beyond their
expectations. They are enjoying great success through
workforces comprised of people ignored and/or rejected by
other employers in their communities.
To be
continued...
© Rob McInnes, Diversity World, July 2010 (If not used for
commercial purposes, this article may be reproduced, all or
in part, providing it is credited to "Rob McInnes, Diversity
World - www.diversityworld.com". If included in a newsletter
or other publication, we would appreciate receiving a copy.)
Comment? Do you have a comment on anything in this issue?
Please send us your thoughts by email. We enjoy hearing from
our readers.
Email your feedback
on this issue...
inclusionrx@diversityworld.com
When
I hear people in the disability community talk about the low employment rate
of people with disabilities being the lowest of any group I think they need
to consider statistics like the one that I learned from a recent article by my
colleague and mentor Ed DeJesus at the Youth Development and Research Fund -
only 8% of low income African American youth have jobs! (We can be sure that
this number is much lower for African American youth with
disabilities.) People with certain types of disabilities have higher rates of employment
than this level. People with other types of disabilities have even
lower levels of employment. Race, community based employment opportunities,
age, type of disability, the social capital that comes with class
connections and many other factors all have an important impact on
employment that I rarely see discussed in disability and employment
articles. 
More information:
