Breaking disability biases in the world of work

15%. That’s 1 billion people worldwide who live with a disability according to the World Health Organisation in 2011. This is the world’s largest minority group. And that number keeps growing according to the WHO, as the population ages and despite medical advances: in the 1970s, that number was around 10%.

As the pandemic hit the world in 2020, many wondered how the typical barriers to social and economic inclusion faced by disabled people (e.g. physical environment, transport, assistive technology) would help or hinder their employment rates and hireability.

While awareness is possibly increasing, we’re yet to see clear results and impact. As remote working is here to stay, employers have a huge opportunity to tap into an overlooked talent pool.

And it’s our job to make workplaces, ours and others’, more disability-inclusive and ensure those unemployment and underemployment rates reduce.

What ‘counts’ as disability?

In Germany, social law defines a level of disability as a non-temporary diminishing of bodily or psychological abilities that is due to an irregular state, rather than induced by age or temporary illness.

In the UK, you’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial‘ and ‘long-term‘ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.

Some impairments and conditions are automatically treated as a disability: cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV infection, or also a severe, long-term disfigurement — for example severe facial scarring or a skin disease.

Neurodivergent people will usually be considered under the Equality Act 2010 — even if the person doesn’t consider themselves to be disabled.

So at StepStone when we’ll talk about disability, we’ll typically refer to these frameworks and definitions, and encompass physical, cognitive, visual and auditory disabilities and impairments, as well as neurodiversity, unless we focus on specific conditions and syndromes — in which case we’ll be explicit of course.

Disability facts and figures

In the EU in 2003, 40% of disabled people of working age were employed compared to 64% of people without a disability.

Disability in Germany

At the end of 2019, roughly 7.9 million severely disabled people were living in Germany. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that this was an increase of approximately 136,000 (almost 2%) compared with the end of 2017.

In 2017, the proportion of persons in employment and jobseekers among people with disabilities was less than half (30%) that among people without disabilities (65%).

Disability in the UK

In the UK, about 10 million people live with a disability, including 6.8 million people in working age — that’s a fifth of the total working age population.

The Disability Rights Commission reported in 2007 that no matter the qualification level, persons with disabilities are 3x more likely than others to be without a job, yet wishing to work

They also estimate that improving the employment rate of people with disabilities would boost the economy by £13m — the equivalent of 6 months of economic activity.

It’s also been found that 75% of the companies of the FTSE 100 Index on the London Stock Exchange don’t meet basic levels of web accessibility, thus missing out on more than $147 million in revenue.

Other facts about disability

• In countries with life expectancies over 70 years, people spend just over 11% of their life span, roughly 8 years, living with a disability.
• Women with disabilities are recognized to be multiply disadvantaged, experiencing exclusion on account of their gender and their disability.
• Disabled men are twice as likely to have a job than disabled women.
• Comparative studies on disability legislation shows that only 45 countries have anti-discrimination and other disability-specific laws.
• Unemployment rates vary between types of disability — the highest being with those with a mental illness.

Breaking the bias

According to the Disability: A Research Study on Unconscious Bias report by ENEI in 2014, over 1 in 3 people show an unconscious bias against those with a disability, higher than levels of bias on the basis of gender or race. And those biases hit people in various stages of the job process.

From hiring managers and recruiters discarding applications to lowered self-esteem for jobseekers facing silence and discrimination, there’s a lot of work to improve the situation. As always, recruiters have a big part to play and we’re looking at ways to incentivise and challenge behaviours for a better inclusion of disabled workers.

Meanwhile, let’s break some biases and myths around disability at work:

‘It’s costly to hire and accommodate workers who are disabled’

The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) of the US Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment states that the employers in the 2010 study reported that 56% of accommodations cost absolutely nothing to make, while the rest typically cost only $600.

In the UK, similar estimates have been made — and a cost even lower: according to Remploy (2004), 80% of workers with disabilities do not require any adaptations to accommodate them at work. Where adjustment are required, the average cost is only £80.

‘People with disabilities can’t work’

According to the International Labour Organisation, about 386 million of the world’s working age people have some kind of disability. Unemployment among those with disabilities is as high as 80% in some countries.

In the US, a 30-year analysis* showed that people with disabilities have equal or higher performance rating, better retention rates, and less absenteeism, than other working groups.

Another factor feeding into this assumption and bias is actually ableist fear. Congressman Tony Coelho, an epilepsy sufferer himself and one of the authors of the Americans with Disabilities Act says: “It’s really fear of the unknown.”

The best way to eliminate such fears, he argues, is to hire persons with disabilities. “You’ll find out that a lot of those things that you’re fearful of are not true.”

‘Disabled workers don’t belong or can’t fit in the workplace’

“Motivation, loyalty and perseverance were some of the characteristics of employees with a disability,” said Amanda Calwell, General Manager of Wollongong employment agency (Australia). “Having got a job, they want to maintain it probably more than any other job seeker because it probably took them three times as much effort to get there.”

In the UK, hardware chain B&Q claims that by employing workers with disabilities, it’s gained a number of benefits including and increased overall employees satisfaction and better retention and productivity rates.

Cherry on top, another US study by Unger also reports that employees with disabilities have better retention rate, thus reducing the cost of turnover and hiring.

In the news…

US Department of Justice warns that misuse of algorithmic hiring tools could violate accessibility laws

AI tools for the hiring process have become a hot category, but the Department of Justice warns that careless use of these processes could lead to violations of U.S. laws protecting equal access for people with disabilities. If your company uses algorithmic sorting, facial tracking or other high-tech methods for sorting and rating applicants, you may want to take a closer look at what they’re doing.

[…]

The general sense of the guidance is to think hard (and solicit the opinions of affected groups) about whether these filters, tests, metrics and so on measure qualities or quantities relevant to doing the job. They offer a few examples.

[…]

If a company does not or cannot provide reasonable accommodations for these processes — and yes, that includes processes built and operated by third parties — it can be sued or otherwise held accountable for this failure.

Source: TechCrunch. Read the original release from the DoJ.

Sources

• UN’s factsheet on Persons with Disabilities
• ILO’s Facts on Disability in the World of Work
• * Equal to the task II: 1990 Du Pont survey of employment of people with disabilities

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