Special Article
Disability Employment Awareness Month – We Need More than Posters
By
Joyce Bender [view bio]
President and CEO of Bender Consulting Services.
Every October in the United States, we celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Throughout the United States conferences and seminars are held, as well as Disability Mentoring Day. Disability Mentoring Day occurs on the third Wednesday of every October and is a wonderful day for high school students and college students with disabilities to go to corporations and Federal agencies to job shadow.
Disability Mentoring Day is a great day. Bender Consulting Services, Inc. has participated every year and will always participate every year. This day is coordinated by the American Association of People with Disabilities; you can read more about the day at www.aapd.com .
In addition, many media concerns contact me and other disability leaders for interviews and write articles about Disability Employment Awareness Month. The more that is written about the need to employ people with disabilities, the more attention will be placed on the issue of high unemployment of Americans with disabilities. The written word is very powerful and we need to bring attention to this problem.
Frequently, in the month of October posters are placed on walls at Federal agencies and at corporations advertising Disability Employment Awareness Month. This serves as an opportunity to remember the need to celebrate the month. This is all wonderful, but posters are not enough. The reality is – we are not celebrating employment; we are, in reality, dealing with a high unemployment rate in the United States for Americans with disabilities.
This year, the United States Business Leadership Network Conference held in Minneapolis, MN hosted two great speakers, Senator Bob Dole and national disability leader, John Kemp. John Kemp is the 2005 Betts Award winner and partner at Powers, Pyles, Sutter & Verville, P.C. Both of these speakers noted that the employment of Americans with disabilities has gone backwards—not forwards! How is this possible?
We all know that only 35% of Americans with significant disabilities who want to work are actually working; we need to do something aggressive to change this now – it requires more than simply putting up a poster. The time has come to do something more than conferences, posters, or having a special speaker. I love to speak about employment, but that alone won't cause the change we need in employment for Americans with significant disabilities.
At every corporation and/or government agency in America, I would suggest an implementation plan to follow National Disability Employment Awareness Month. You can attend a church or synagogue, but the service is not enough; it is the way you treat your neighbor every day that matters. The same goes for National Disability Employment Awareness Month; this is the equivalent of the service. Now we need the implementation plan – employment.
Participation in National Disability Employment Awareness Month is great for raising awareness – now hire.
The following includes suggestions for leadership teams to implement after awareness has been raised:
- Form a team of leaders in the company with the power to hire people; those who will focus on ability. The key is to include hiring managers; human resources representatives support the process, but do not have the positions.
- Target positions in the company for people with disabilities and make it a serious commitment. A serious commitment is not a one week effort with no results. Recruitment teams must be held to a level of performance that results in employment for people with disabilities.
- Make disability part of the diversity program at the company – not a side program.
- Contact other companies to identify role models for employment like those companies listed in www.dol.gov/odep who have won the New Freedom Initiative Award. Companies such as Highmark, Computer Sciences Corporation, Microsoft, and many others, will provide advice on best practices for recruiting people with disabilities.
- Hire a person with a significant disability in the Human Resources Department; this is a great way to show immediate results and to maintain a long term commitment.
- Get over the thinking of only hiring people with experience. With a high unemployment rate, most people with disabilities do not have work experience. With the impending labor shortage due to the baby boomer retirement, it is critical to begin hiring entry-level associates across the board.
Thank you for making the commitment to including talent with disabilities in your workforce.
Remember posters are not enough – we need employment.
For additional resources check:
Joyce Bender is President and CEO of Bender Consulting Services. Please direct questions for Joyce to info@disability-marketing.com.