Welcome Reaching Employers: Unpacking Barriers to Disability Inclusiveness Dr' Hannah Rudstam Disabi

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Welcome! Reaching Employers  Unpacking
Barriers to Disability Inclusiveness Dr. Hannah
RudstamDisability and Business Technical
Assistance CenterNortheast

• National Council on Rehabilitation Education
• San Antonio Texas
• February 21, 2009

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If you would like a copy of this presentation
sent to you, please email me at
hhr5_at_cornell.edu(Its on the card in your
packets)
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In a nutshellGoals for today

• Barriers to disability inclusivenessbroadening
  the conversation
• Who should we be reaching? The gatekeepers
• How does work get done? General workplace trends
  context factors
• How are hiring decisions made? About hiring
  trends techniques
• Its not just about barriersGetting employers
  attention
• Have a look at a program
• Implications for VR research practiceYour
  thoughts

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1. Barriers to disability inclusivenessbroadenin
g the conversation
Indirect context factors Not specific to
disability
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• About discrimination
• U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability
  Employment Policy. Survey of Employer
  Perspectives on the Employment of People with
  Disabilities. Technical Report , November 2008.
• Meta-analysis employer discrimination accounted
  for a substantial part of the wage differential
  (Baldwin Johnson, 2006)
• National surveys of employers Pre-conceived
  attitudes and lowered expectations are
  significant barriers to people with disabilities
  finding employment (Bruyere, 2000 Dixon, Kruse
  VanHorn, 2003)
• Various types of negative expectations lie behind
  this discrimination (Schur, Kruse Blanck
  (2005)
• Low performance expectations
• Negative assumptions about co-worker and customer
  reactions
• Pre-conceived ideas about which types of jobs are
  appropriate for people with disabilities
• Discrimination persists even when applicants with
  disabilities are rated as equally qualified
  (Drehmer Bordieri, 1985)
• Laboratory experiments Out of 13 simulation
  experiments involving attitudes toward hiring
  people with disabilities, 10 found that
  applicants with disabilities with the same
  credentials as others were rated significantly
  lower on perceived future performance potential
  and promote-ability (Colella, Denisi Varma,
  1998)
• Discrimination in hiring process may be more
  hidden and less measurable than other types of
  discrimination in employment processes (e.g.
  promotion, termination or accommodation)

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By the numbers

• About employment in 2007
• 21.2
• Percent of working age people with disabilities
  employed full-time/full-year
• 56.7
• Percent of working age people without
  disabilities employed full-time/full-year

About income in 2007 38,400 Median income of
households that include any working-age people
with disabilities in the US was 38,400 61,000
Median income of households that do not include
any working-age people with disabilities in the
US was 61,000
Source Erickson, W., Lee, C. (2008). 2007
Disability Status Report The United States.
Ithaca, NY Cornell University Rehabilitation
Research and Training Center on Disability
Demographics and Statistics.
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Broadening the conversation Context within which
workplace decisions are made about people with
disabilities Knowledge translation context
within which information is received and acted
upon (or not).
Indirect discrimination factors Not directly
related to disability-- subtly but powerfully
impact how decisions are made about anyone who
appears different
Direct discrimination factors Attitudes,
beliefs, expectations directly related to
disability
Gatekeepers
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2. Who are the key players? The emerging
importance of reaching mid-level managers as
hidden gatekeepers

• HR professionals are often our point of entry.
• Yet, mid-level managers might be more important
  as gate-keepers decisions makers
• Transition from transactional to strategic HR
  practice might heighten the importance of
  mid-level managers as arbiters of employment
  lives of people with disabilities

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3.How does work get done? General workplace
trends context factors the perception of
gatekeepers

• The shift from clear role-based work to
  project-based work
• The emergence of the contingent workforce
• The rapid rise of productivity expectations
• Rapid rise of health insurance costs

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Increased volatility fluidity in how work gets
done. The Blur The late, great job. And
the late, great essential function. What will
this mean given Americans with Disabilities
Amendments Act? Blur The Speed of Change in
the Connected Economy by Stanley Davis and
Christopher Meyer, Warner Publishing, 1999.
Job Shift How to Prosper in a workplace without
jobs. William Bridges, Perseus Books, 1994.
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• Increased volatility fluidity
• in how work gets done.
• And why is this?
• Unprecedented speed on how fast business
  operates order-to-delivery speed, product
  lifecycles, logistics, learning curves, etc.
• Increased value of intangibles brand strength,
  management talent, organizational knowledge
• Increased connectivity IT effect--speed to
  customer, logistics, inventories, JIT production
• Increased volatility in job titlesThere are
  seven times as many job titles now than there
  were 25 years ago (Herman, Olivo Goia, 2003)
• Dramatically decreased tenure of leaders
  managers

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• And what has this meant?

We think we should prepare people with
disabilities for a workplace thats like this
When in fact, we may be dealing with a workplace
thats like this
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Implications of the shift from role-based to
project-based work

• The ADA Amendments Act will likely throw more
  attention onto who is a qualified individual
• Essential function is key to this determination
• In the current workplace context, it is getting
  more difficult to pin down essential function

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How does work get done?General workplace trends
context factors
The rapid rise of the contingent labor
force Contingent workers are defined as those who
do not have an explicit or implicit contract for
long-term employment
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U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Number of New
Jobs in 10 Fastest-Growing Industries.
Projection 2003 - 2012
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How does work get done?General workplace trends
context factors
Increased productivity expectations (Which are
likely to intensify)
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U.S. workforce productivity has risen
dramatically over the last decade
Productivity in /worker
Source Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Dept.
of Commerce, 2006
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How does work get done?General workplace trends
context factors
The embedding of health insurance in employment
rapidly rising health care costs
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Health care system health care-embedded in
employmentEmployers responses

• The WalMart leaked internal memo
• Growing employers fear of rising health care
  coststaking steps to contain health care costs
  (SHRM 2009 Outlook Survey)
• 53 of employers have added a health assessment
  to their benefits enrollment process
• To avoid high health care costs, employers may
  be less interested in hiring (and insuring)
  people with disabilities. (NCD, 2007, p 181)
• Particularly an issue for medium small
  businesses (ODEP November, 2008 survey)
• Suppresses the entrepreneurial options of people
  with disabilities themselves (DiCicca, 2007)

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4.How are hiring decisions made? About hiring
trends techniques

• Where will there be hiring? Are we preparing
  people for the right sectors?
• Changes in hiring methods techniques
• Rapid emergence of standardized assessments
• Rapid emergence of online screening systems

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• Are job-seekers with disabilities being prepared
  for employment sectors that are vulnerable to
  being moved to the contingent workforce
  (outsourced) or of disappearing overseas?
• Bureau of Labor Statistics projections people
  with disabilities are under-represented in the
  fastest-growing occupations and over-represented
  in employment sectors with fastest rate of
  decline (NCD Report, 2007)
• There would be an additional 860,000 jobs for
  people with disabilities if they were being
  prepared for occupations with the highest rate of
  job growth (Kruse Schur, 2006)

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The Service Sector
Employment Expectations Index The of HR
Prof.s who expect hiring in their organizations
to increase minus the who expect it to decline
Source SHRM Leading Indicators of National
Employment Employment Expectations. SHRM
Outlook Special Supplement to HR Magazine, pages
4 6, Society for Human Resource Management
2009.
Source Society
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The Manufacturing Sector
Employment Expectations Index The of HR
prof.s who expect hiring in their organizations
to increase minus the who expect it to decline.
(August measure shown)
Source Society
Source SHRM Leading Indicators of National
Employment Employment Expectations. SHRM
Outlook Special Supplement to HR Magazine, pages
4 6, Society for Human Resource Management
2009.
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But the news is not all bad!

• There will most certainly be a talent shortage in
  the next 5 10 years
• According to the SHRM 2008 Survey
• 21 of employers said retaining retiring workers
  is part of their HR strategy for 2009
• 61 said it would be part of their HR strategy
  within the next five years
• Employers will have a teachable moment about
  disability inclusiveness

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Changes in hiring methods techniques
Hiring for emotional intelligence Use of
competency-based hiring Use of behavioral event
interviewing
Competency-based hiring Hiring for emotional
intelligence Use of behavioral event interviewing
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• Movement toward competency-based hiring movement
  away from task-based or essential functions
  hiring
• About 75 of organizations report using some form
  of competency-based hiring (Van Der Heijde Van
  Der Heijden, 2006)
• Competenciesdeep, underlying knowledge,
  behaviors and commitments that predict high
  performance in a broad range of job categories.
  (Sources McClellend McClelland, 1995
  Spencer, 1996 McLagan, 1996 Boyatzis, 2003)
• Formed either through internal study of high
  performers or purchased off the shelf

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• Increased use of behavioral event interviewing
  (BEI) techniques
• About 75 of employers use some form of BEI
  (Maurer, Sue-Chan Latham, 1999)
• Several different formulations (Eder Harris,
  1999), but all based on same premise
• The best predictor of future work competence is
  past behaviors.
• More powerful in predicting high performers
  (Boyatzis, 2003)
• Often competency-based

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• Movement toward hiring for emotional intelligence
• Though different studies have different findings,
  according to Goleman, McGee Boyatzis (2003), EI
  predicts about 60 of high performance in the
  workplace
• SHRM 2006 Outlook survey About 70 of employers
  include EI in their hiring practice
• Different formulationsusually focus on about 5
  7 areas of emotional intelligence

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• Rapid rise in number of employers using
  standardized assessment tools in hiring
• Types of standardized assessments
• Cognitive
• Ethics/deceitfulness
• Skills/interests
• Traits/personality/temperament
• Assessments are often timed
• May be a response to increase in negligent hiring
  lawsuits

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• Rapid rise in number of employers
• using online hiring systems
• SHRM Outlook Survey, 2008
• 12 increase in just one year--number of
  employers who intend to institute an online
  assessment as part of their hiring
• Study released by Spherion Corporation in 2006
• 60 of employers have increased their use of
  standardized hiring assessments in the past five
  years
• 51 increased their use of prescreening programs
  in the same time period
• (Related to this 20 of employers reported
  scraping a candidate because of something they
  found on the internet--SHRM Outlook Survey 2008)

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Rapid rise in number of employers using online
hiring systems Target website lawsuit brought
this issue to the forefront Studies of IT and
the workplace--Erickson (2002) and Bruyere,
Erickson VanLooy (2005) (2002) Vast majority
of recruiting/hiring sites not accessible only
UPA IBM accessible (2005) Only 13
employer-respondents familiar with guidelines for
accessible web design Hiring kiosks being used
more extensively (World Privacy Forum,
2003) Blockbuster deployed an estimated 4,000
employment kiosks in 2000 Albertsons deployed an
estimated 2,300 employment kiosks in 2003 Sports
Authority and Sears have greatly increased use of
kiosks
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5.The news is not all bad! Trends that make
disability inclusiveness a source of competitive
advantage

• Customer-demand for social responsibility
  disability inclusiveness
• Disability inclusive workforce strategies will
  become increasingly key to competitive advantage
  and talent management efforts
• Disability is diversity--Disability inclusiveness
  and diversity

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What a company stands for matters for how
customers make buying decisions

• Cone Cause Survey, 2007
• 87 respondents will switch from one product to
  another (price and quality being equal) if the
  other product is associated with a good cause (an
  increase from 66 in 1993)
• Brands that can engage customers emotionally
  command prices significantly higher than the
  competitors
• 72 of employees want their employers to do more
  to support a cause (up from 52 in 2004)

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What a company stands for matters for how
customers make buying decisions

• A University of Massachusetts Harris Poll study
  found that 93 of customers surveyed said they
  would PREFER to patronize a business that has
  people with disabilities in their workforce
  (Sipersteina, et.al., 2005)

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Disability inclusive workforce strategies will
become increasingly key to competitive advantage
and talent management efforts

• Employers are still aware of an upcoming talent
  shortage due to skills shortage retirement wave
  (SHRM Outlook Survey, 2008)
• Our workforce is agingdisability inclusiveness
  will become key to retaining talent

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• Employers are aware of an upcoming talent
  shortage, but are postponing their response
• 2006 survey of organizational leaders.
• The most commonly cited concern for respondents
  business future is lack of talent and inability
  to retain and develop talent (Wellins, Caver,
  2006)
• According to the SHRM 2008 Survey
• 21 of employers said retaining retiring workers
  is part of their HR strategy for 2009
• 61 said it would be part of their HR strategy
  within the next five years
• What does this mean? Despite the current
  economic meltdown, there is an upcoming
  teachable moment for VR professionals to reach
  employers

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Disability inclusive workforce strategies will
become increasingly key to competitive advantage
and talent management efforts

• Increasing realization of the real cost of
  turnover
• Return on investment of reasonable accommodation
  as a means
• To prevent turnover
• To enhance productivity
• To prevent off-work time

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Diversity and disability inclusiveness
Disability IS Diversity
Most employers have a diversity plan or
initiative in place Disability is often not
considered in current diversity initiatives
(Ball, et.al., 2005)
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6. Lets have a look at a program that is based
on these ideas

• Funded by the Kessler Foundation of New Jersey
• In progress112 people have participated
• Seven more sessions planned
• Blended learning approach
• Targets both disability service providers and
  employers

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Lets have a look at a program Discovering
Untapped Talent Disability Inclusiveness as
Competitive Advantage

• Blended learning approach
• Two different kinds of learning
• Face-to-face learning for emotional engagement,
  conversation, reflection
• Online learning for information around business
  case connection to competitive advantage

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The journey beyond legal compliance Are There
Wheelchairs in Heaven? Ben Maittlin, NPR
Morning Edition, Dec. 7, 2005 http//www.npr.org/t
emplates/story/story.php?storyId5042181
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Lets have a look at a program Discovering
Untapped Talent Disability Inclusiveness as
Competitive Advantage

• Blended learning approach
• Online program
• www.FindTalentnj.org
• (Contact me for log in information)
• Supplements in-person workshop
• Online tutorial for disability service providers
• Online tutorial for employers

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• OKwhat are your thoughts?
• Implications for VR professional practices?
• Implications for VR education training?