As PwD Employer You Might be Facing Many Challenges, Apprehensions & Concerns to Hire People with Disability. Listing Few Below & Possible Solutions.
As employer, I want to hire people with disabilities but there are hardly available with right skills.
Understand Why
- In India, there are still a lot of apprehensions about people with disabilities. Parents do not have the right understanding and they might not send their children to right school or any school.
- Schools and colleges are not equipped with right teachers who can handle disabled children education.
- Tools and process in schools and colleges are not accessible.
- Curriculum in PwD schools and colleges is not revised as per industry standards and there is hardly any professional exposure.
- At times, even bright disabled students are denied admissions in right schools and colleges due to social taboos and beliefs.
- Due to above and many other such reasons, it’s very hard for a disabled student to acquire right skills.
- As freshers, when they do not get right employment then how can they gain experience.
Possible Solutions
- This situation can definitely be tricky but you can still try out few options to proceed.
- If the PwD resumes are provided by an NGO or SPOC, you can proactively reach out to them to share strengths & weaknesses of the candidate. You can also ask to share any acquired skills via training even if there is no experience.
- Based on the key characteristic of the person, you should proceed with an interview to see if an entry level or internship position can be offered.
- Most of the PwD candidates are very committed and learn very fast given one chance. They outperform as getting job in an MNC is a dream come true for them plus huge privilege hence they do all what’s needed to do well.
There are hardly any PwD profiles available on any job sites & LinkedIn. How do I find the candidates?
Understand Why
- This is right, due to all traditional reasons explained above and more, people with disability have hardly get any professional exposure.
- Hence they might not even know about job sites and LinkedIn, forget about having a profile in there with right details.
- People with disability also fear of rejection if the employers just see the profile on job sites and reject because they are disabled.
- Most of the people with disabilities generally contact their local or other NGOs for jobs.
Possible Solutions
- NGOs and volunteers should definitely encourage people with disability to create the right resume, keep it always updated.
- They should also be encouraged by NGOs to look for openings in various job sites and proactively apply with latest resume.
- Corporates should encourage volunteers to take workshops for PwD candidates to build a good resume, build good LinkedIn profile etc. NGOs should be able to do spread the word and arrange the candidates.
- However, this situation, will take sometime to improve.
- In the mean time, corporates can definitely reach out to NGOs to provide the right candidates for the desired roles.
- Corporates should share a template which can be used by NGOs to provide candidate profiles.
- Corporates should also maintain PwD candidate pool which is sourced from NGOs or by other means which can be used each time for a role.
My organisation might not know how to interview PwD candidates due to accommodations needed.
Understand Why
- Corporates are trying hard to define inclusive processes and accessible products which can be used by people with disabilities. However, it’s not a small process.
- Different people with disabilities require different accommodations for end to end hiring process. For example: to interview person with speech and hearing impairment, sign language interpreters would be needed but corporate might not be aware or how to arrange the interpreter.
- There are no set standards and process as well by any corporate or industry for end to end hiring for people with disabilities.
- Most of the times, corporates have to figure out a way on the fly to interview PwDs.
Possible Solutions
- This problem can definitely be tackled step by step though defining industry wide standards might take sometime.
- Corporate can definitely take a step to document what worked while interviewing a PwD and share it organisation and industry wide as well as feasible. This is definitely better than hiring managers and talent acquisition team reinventing the wheel each time.
- There are best practices documented based on practical experiences of interviewing various people with disabilities across disabilities. You can refer these here. If these works in your organisation, please share it across for wider awareness.
As employer, I am worried about long term fitment of PwD candidate & growth.
Understand Why
- This is a very genuine concern and employers definitely need to check the same for any employee being hired.
- It is true that PwD candidates might not able to play few roles due to limitations because of disabilities.
- Other limitation could be professional exposure which the PwD candidate might not have hence it’s challenging for them to play larger roles.
- For example: It could be the case that you are hiring a person with speech and hearing impairment as colleague support engineer to handle employee’s issues and concerned about how with communication challenges the person can move to lead role.
- Another example could be, you are hiring a person with vision impairment as developer and concerned about how the person will be able to lead a team of developers due to non exposure of industry wide standards, architecture and design awareness etc.
- There could be more such examples where you would see the limitations.
Possible Solutions
- The challenges here can be very different hence the solution might also be different and according to the situations.
- First thing should be to do extensive interview should be done in each case without any compromise.
- Most of the time people with disability are very solution oriented because they have faced many societal, cultural, behavioral and other challenges from the beginning and they are used to finding solutions to tackle these. In the interview, you must give various situations keeping future growth in mind and ask them to think how it will be handled.
- For example: You can ask, how do you think you will be ale to lead the team and guide them on design and architecture.
- Apart from this, where ever, the limitations are not due to disability, organizations must take necessary steps to groom PwD candidates technically, functionally and overall like it will be done for any new hires.
- Other solution could be to hire the candidates as contractor, give them enough time to perform than completely rejecting the candidate.
- You can also check to hire PwD candidates as per role mappings.
- Role mappings are created based on proven hiring and growth ahead. You can refer to PwD Job Role Mapping.
As employer, I am not sure about accommodations needed by people with disabilities to work & how can we arrange that?
Understand Why
- This is true because accessibility is not the design principle earlier or even now.
- Most of the tools, products and process used or built in organizations are not accessible.
- Challenges do not just end with non accessible tools or process but Different kind of disabilities require different set of accommodations and there is no published set standards available.
- Different people of same disability are also different and might require different set of accommodations due to varied degree of disability or due to the comfort of the person. Again there is no set standards published anywhere.
- For example: People with vision impairment: Some might just need a computer with large fonts, some might use magnifier, some might need screen reader depending on the degree of the vision impairment.
- Another example could be of people with speech and hearing impairment. Some might communicate only with sign language and not good in written communication as well, some might be very good in written communication, some might lip read very well to understand what you are saying, some might use bit of speech etc. These are dependent on the exposure which the person has got starting from school and degree of communication which the person has used. If they were sent to a regular school, they will be quite good in written communication versus if they went to a special school they might only know sign language given the school process.
Possible Solutions
- Each candidate should be encouraged to provide the accommodations in the resumes they need during interviews, onboarding and on-the-job in the resume as far as known, this does not leave room for assumptions.
- However, candidates fear if they provide the accommodations in the resume itself, then they will not be shortlisted even for interviews irrespective of skills as they are PwD and providing accommodations can be an overhead for the organization.
- This must be addressed by the organization leadership and it can be done by spreading awareness, by mentioning equal opportunity employer and by sensitising hiring managers to focus on skills than disabilities.
- Corporates can make a policy that any accommodation will be provided by centralizied budget than each hiring manager to worry about arranging the same which can cause rejection of a skilled PwD candidate.
- You can refer to the standards First thing which can be done is to keep creating the standards as and when various organizations learn about it.
- Organizations should also have a common platform to share and learn.
- While working together organizations can find alternate accessible solutions, tools, products than rejecting the candidate due to non accessibility. For example: If a IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for developers is not accessible, other one can be used.
As employer, I am concerned if the PwD candidate will be able to work well with the team & vice versa.
Understand Why
- This can definitely happen due to communication gaps between the team and the candidate.
- If the candidate is person with speech and hearing impairment and uses only sign language or even chat, the communication can be very limited hence the gap.
- Due to no awareness & sensitizations, team members might not feel comfortable talking & gelling with the PwD candidate.
- Entire corporate environment, team work might be very new for PwD candidate and they might feel overwhelmed to talk and gel with the team due to fear of rejection.
- PwD candidate mostly do not have professional exposure from the beginning hence they might not initiate a conversation, share their concerns, seek for help etc. as they might think people will think low about them.
- Every organization have a different environment, culture, processes and tools which might not be accessible hence it’s confusing for PwD candidate to adjust.
- There is lack of awareness and sensitization in corporates for inclusive culture and how to build the same specially for PwDs.
Possible Solutions
- Basic awareness can go a long way in such case while the situation improves. Various teams can be sensitized to initiate a conversation with the PwD candidate in their team.
- Teams can be encouraged to go through basic sign language videos and learn small gestures which all of us use anyway in our daily lives. Teams should be encouraged to meet and greet people with speech and hearing impairment using these basic signs which is a great way to make them feel belong to the place and team.
- PwD candidate should be made aware about company culture, team etc. during onboarding. They should be motivated to initiate conversations with teams, share their opinions, concerns, problems and work together.
- Team manager’s should be encouraged to have team introductions, funs sessions to provide opportunities for team & PwD candidate to know each other better.
- Team members might change and the candidate can change the team as well hence these initiatives should be done regularly to keep the bonding going.
As employer, I am concerned if the PwD candidate will be able to cope up with the fast paced environment & work.
Understand Why
- This can definitely happen due to communication gaps between the team and the candidate.
- If the candidate is person with speech and hearing impairment and uses only sign language or even chat, the communication can be very limited hence the gap.
- Due to no awareness & sensitizations, team members might not feel comfortable talking & gelling with the PwD candidate.
- Entire corporate environment, team work might be very new for PwD candidate and they might feel overwhelmed to talk and gel with the team due to fear of rejection.
- PwD candidate mostly do not have professional exposure from the beginning hence they might not initiate a conversation, share their concerns, seek for help etc. as they might think people will think low about them.
- Every organization have a different environment, culture, processes and tools which might not be accessible hence it’s confusing for PwD candidate to adjust.
- There is lack of awareness and sensitization in corporates for inclusive culture and how to build the same specially for PwDs.
Possible Solutions
- Basic awareness can go a long way in such case while the situation improves. Various teams can be sensitized to initiate a conversation with the PwD candidate in their team.
- Teams can be encouraged to go through basic sign language videos and learn small gestures which all of us use anyway in our daily lives. Teams should be encouraged to meet and greet people with speech and hearing impairment using these basic signs which is a great way to make them feel belong to the place and team.
- PwD candidate should be made aware about company culture, team etc. during onboarding. They should be motivated to initiate conversations with teams, share their opinions, concerns, problems and work together.
- Team manager’s should be encouraged to have team introductions, funs sessions to provide opportunities for team & PwD candidate to know each other better.
- Team members might change and the candidate can change the team as well hence these initiatives should be done regularly to keep the bonding going.
