VCU
CRC DEMANDSIDE FACTORS RELATED TO EMPLOYMENT ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
APRIL 14, 2016
Services Provided By:Caption First, Inc.
> FONG CHAN: The study was conducted on applicants who have industry experience and applicants who have not moved between jobs that much. And the study indicates that people with relevant experience who had been out of work for more than six months or longer get called back a lot less than people even with relevant experience. The call back rate for people who have been unemployed for more than six months is very, very small. So you have to think about people with disabilities.
Many of them have been out of work for more than six months. And so we could look at, you know, what do we need to do in order to improve employment outcomes of people with disabilities so they can find career paths that will allow them to move out of poverty and into middle class living. We are very good at doing rehabilitation, but we are not as good at doing demand-side employment. We are good in providing vocational rehabilitation services to improve functioning, stamina and job skills along with taking into account the role of business organizational behaviors and employer needs and the changing labor economy, for example, the recent quick recession.
And so, therefore, supply-side employment models ignore variables related to employer demand and also the interaction of employer demand characteristics and supply-side factors as predictor of employment outcomes for people with disabilities. Researchers do not pay a lot of attention to employer practice and employer behaviors and employment engagement.
In rehabilitation research we need to move beyond the supply-side focus in vocational rehabilitation research and develop a better understanding of the real concerns of employers in the hiring and retaining of people with disabilities to be able to better address employers' needs and concerns. This is consistent with the recent development, the Work Force Opportunity and Innovation Act, and the rehabilitation amendments that were passed in 2015. And one of the major focuses of the Act is on employment engagement, employer engagement and relationship.
And actually when Joe Biden submitted the job training report to Obama, and that report is only six pages long and the term middle class appeared 22 times. So it reflects the support of both the Republicans and the Democrats on rebuilding the middle class and also helping people with or without disabilities find career pathways to the middle class.
So the objective of this seminar, of this webinar is to kind of overview the concept of demand-side employment and job placement for people with disabilities and also review some of the reason research related to people with disabilities and also analyzing workplace discrimination and also survey of employers' perspective on the employment of people with disabilities. We will discuss how this information can be used to formulate policies to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
So what's the focus of demand-side employment? Well, the focus of demand-side employment models is on the employer and the work environment, thus the occupational shifts and industrial changes. The demand-side driven employment strategies must emphasize the preparation of people with disabilities for jobs that their employers need to fill. And vocational rehabilitation professionals must have a comprehensive understanding of the real concerns of employers and about hiring people with disabilities and be able to address employers' concerns and needs.
The focus of demand-side employment models is also on job placement of people with disabilities with all types of disabilities, and all levels of severity and not just people with disabilities. The focus of demand-side employment is participation of people with disabilities in occupations representing all levels of complexity from unskilled occupations to professional technical and managerial occupations.
And I'm showing you some of the demand occupations that I extracted from the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Labor and some of those are, for example, high tech occupations. Some of them are healthcare occupations and some of them are sales type occupations and service industries.
Also, you know, in order to understand employer behaviors, we may want to know what employers are looking for when they are conducting a job interview. Here I am showing you a study that is, that was conducted by Huff and some of his colleagues. They basically analyze what are the typical constructs of being evaluated in job interviews.
And basically they reveal that 47 employment interview studies in the meta-analysis, and they find that actually employers basically regardless of interview type structure or unstructured interviews, they tend to look at several psychological constructs when they interview a person. For example, they will be trying to evaluate mental abilities, and within the mental abilities they are looking at general mental ability which is related to the overall ability to learn and process information.
They are also looking at applying mental skills, application of mental ability to make decisions, to make judgments, to solve problems and to plan, and they are also looking at creativity. And when they average out the 37 studies, they find that actually creativity and job performance are quite related with a relationship upon 58, and applied mental skills in job performance .28, in generally mental ability is related to job performance and about conversions upon 24. They also interviewed people by evaluating knowledge and skills.
And basically knowledge and skills correlate with job performance at .42. They also look at basic personality tendency, and within that they pay a lot of attention to what we call agreeableness, which is the basic desire to be liked and to fit in with other people. And agreeable necessary could correlation upon .51.
And they also look at applied social skills which is the ability to function effectively in social situations, and the relations between these two constructs at point 39 and that's why in rehabilitation we put a lot of attention to workplace socializing and skills training for people with disabilities.
And they also look at interest and preferences and the correlation is .24. They look at organizational fit and the relationship is about .49, and they also look at physical appearance and actually there is no data on relationship between physical appearance and job performance data. And, however, it could affect people with disabilities if employer puts a lot of emphasis on physical appearance.
Another study I want to share with you is a survey by the U.S. Department of Labor, the Office of Disability Employment Policy. Basically they survey employers and ask them what are their barriers and facilitators of hiring people with disabilities. So in this study, they basically conducted focus group research in 13 major metropolitan areas with 26 groups of private sector executive level managers and human resources professionals. And the key questions that they asked was what one thing would need to change to improve the hiring climate for people with disabilities?
And what they find is this, employers said they need more accurate and practical information to dispel preconceptions and concerns about hiring people with disabilities. Employers are also concerned that people with disabilities cannot do the type of work that the organization needs to have done, and employers want credible information including facts and statistics to dispel the myths and the misconceptions about people with disabilities.
And employers want immediate concerns involving retention and return to work of injured workers, not recruiting and hiring of people with disabilities. And so in our own research, we receive some money from the National Science Foundation, and actually we make a video with about seven people with disabilities who work successfully in science and technology jobs in Chicago, and we made a 30-minute video showing them working successfully on the job, and by interviewing them and their supervisors.
And that's probably one way that we can incorporate this kind of information to help employers see real people with disabilities performing real jobs in the world of work. And I would imagine that we can incorporate some of these videos in diversity and inclusion training for business and corporations. And ODEP also conducted an additional study and surveyed employer's perspective on the employment of people with disabilities after the focus group study and this one is a large survey study.
And they have looking at small, medium and large companies. And across 12 industries, wholesale, construction, retail, transportation, information, financial, professional, education, hospitality, manufacturing, state and local government, et cetera.
And the sampling frame including over 7,000 companies representing over 2million companies. And the interviews were completed with 3797 respondents for a response rate of about 50%. That's pretty high. And they basically find that among companies in the United States, about 19% report hiring people with disabilities people with disabilities this should be disconcerting for most of us because most companies probably will report that they hire 100% of the company will say that they employ women or probably 100% of the company would report that they hire AfricanAmericans.
So only 19% of the employers said that they employ people with disabilities. This is probably not acceptable. For small companies in general, they report 11% that they employ people with disabilities. For medium-sized companies, about 23% reported that they hire people with disabilities. And for large companies, about 53% report employing people with disabilities. In terms of recruiting people with disabilities, about 14% report that they actively recruit people with disabilities. And the larger companies are more likely to actively recruit people with disabilities with about 34% saying that they do that compared to, say, 8% of smaller companies.
And also service producing industries are more likely to actively recruit than those in good producing industries. And how to persuade companies to employ more people with disabilities. The survey have indicated that for companies that do not recruit people with disabilities, information about performance, productivity and bottom line benefits are useful to persuade those companies. In small and mediumsized companies, information on satisfactory performance and hiring people with disabilities can increase a company's productivities are considered more persuasive.
And large companies are more likely to be persuaded to hire by means of information supported by statistics or research. So if you are doing any job development with large companies, you better go in and show them actual statistics. In terms of hiring people with disabilities, frequently cited challenges include the nature of the work cannot be effectively performed by people with disabilities, healthcare costs, workers compensation costs, and fear of litigation, cost of hiring and the belief that people with disabilities lack the skills and experience necessary to perform. This is especially true and voiced by small and medium companies, and supervisors’ uncertainty about how to take disciplinary action, that's a major concern of large companies.
And retaining employees of disabilities, the frequently cited challenge finding ways to return people to work after the onset of a disability is cited as a challenge by small and mediumsized companies, and retention strategies. Visible commitment from top management, mentoring, that's more for large companies and employer tax credit. That's become important for small and mediumsized companies.
I also conducted a demand-side employment survey in terms of factors affecting job placement and job retention of people with disabilities using a focus group approach in Chicago and Milwaukee. And basically the goals of my study was to identify perceptions and barriers to hiring or retaining individuals with physical disabilities and professional occupations, identifying work performance factors that are important for meeting job demands and identify what types of workplace support will enhance the success of people with disabilities in professional occupations and identify what kind of job placement models will help encourage employers to hire people with disabilities in professional occupations.
So basically we conducted three focus groups with human resources managers who hire people with disabilities into high technology information technology type occupations. And we conducted focus group in Milwaukee, Chicago, and a suburb of Chicago. And basically those human resources managers expressed how they define productivity as quantity as well as quality, and meeting specific goals and improving process, timeliness, coming in on budget without incurring additional expense, contributing to the productivity of the team and unit and positive social relationships at work.
And human resources management perspective in terms of productivity issues will be reduced time to fill talents and also retention of high qualified and productive employees. And what are some of the productivity concerns of human resources managers, project managers and hiring and any managers with hiring authorities are will be low productivity, high mistakes, lack of experience, lack of supply of qualified personnel with disabilities, lack of time to train, people with disabilities may need special treatment, people with disabilities may need more training, more supervision, more special needs, can create resentment among coworkers and affect morale and lower skill sets, reduced physical stamina and people with disabilities are slower learners, may need more supervision, perceptions that employers need to lower standards.
Now, those are not the concerns of the people that we conduct focus group with, but those are the concerns that they expressed that they think some human resources managers and hiring managers may have, and that may cause, my post a barrier or my present a barrier for hiring people with disabilities. And those, and the participants in our focus group also share that some of the attitudebased concerns that may be, that may prevent human resource managers to hire people with disabilities include that other employees would be fearful of individuals with disabilities, that coworkers may be close mindedness and lack of acceptance, and maybe they cannot, maybe coworkers cannot see through a disability.
Other employer concerns will be they don't know how to interview individuals with disabilities, they don't have knowledge regarding the ADA resources. People with disabilities are frequently being screened out before getting a chance to interview. The risk aversion theory, easy to hire but difficult to fire. Lack of familiarities with disability related issues, lack of exposure to successful stories, lack of exposure to people with disabilities, do not know how to develop a relationship with people with disabilities, concern about individuals with a disability fitting into the corporate culture, and also coworkers do not feel comfortable communicating with people with disabilities.
And also applicant pool of qualified individuals with disabilities is small has been cited as a potential barrier. Diversity training is offered only occasionally, and disability is not emphasized. Lack of practice, do not interview many people with disabilities, do not have enough exposure to quickly learn to communicate with people with disabilities, do not know etiquette in communicating with people with disabilities, do not know how to discuss disability with people with disabilities. And disability is not one of the focuses of diversity and inclusion policies in companies.
So then they also kind of brain storm with us in terms of what are some of the strategies to improve hiring, and some of that they identify are as the use of temporary employment as a starting point, more effectively use of internship, contract to hire is a good way to test out whether they want to hire people with disabilities for long term, employer consultation services by job placement agencies, better assessment, better job matching, linking disability explicitly as part of this diversity disability as a culture, and need to have more successful stories through TV and other media, and better efforts to the disability community.
And training to help employers and employees feel comfortable in interacting with people with disabilities will help, and companies must have clearly communicated strategies for hiring people with disabilities. Resources that would allow companies to be proactive in recruitment and services to better prepare people with disabilities for the demand of the job. So those are strategies identified in our focus group study. And so in summary what are some of the myths about people with disabilities in the workplace? From this study, we can summarize it that people with disabilities are thought to require extra time to learn new work tasks. People with disabilities are stereotyped to think that they require some sort of job accommodations and not everyone requires that. People with disabilities have trouble getting their work done on time, and often need help to help them finish the job.