Developing an Accessible Workplace

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Since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, employers have had to make sure that they do not discriminate against job candidates or employees on the basis of disabilities the individuals may have. This article explores how employers can make their workplaces accessible to persons with disabilities. Areas of discussion include background on the issue; the benefits for employers who hire persons with disabilities; how HR can foster the hiring, accommodation and retention of employees who have disabilities; and the costs of making workplaces accessible for such employees. The article also supplies links to information and resources for developing an accessible workplace. For detailed information on the legal aspects of hiring disabled workers and of reasonable accommodation, see Employing Persons with Disabilities.

Background

Individuals with disabilities have often been segregated and isolated. Passage of the ADA, which prohibits employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities, has advanced understanding of the nature of various disabilities and of the fact that people with disabilities can achieve significant personal and professional goals. Nonetheless, preventing discrimination against such individuals in the workplace continues to be a challenge.

Although physical accessibility within the workplace has improved to some degree for employees with disabilities, job prospects remain difficult. A U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report in September 2011 showed that the unemployment rate for people with no disabilities was 8.5 percent, while the rate for people with disabilities was 16.1 percent. See, Employment Status of the Civilian Population by Sex, Age, and Disability Status, Not Seasonally Adjusted and Employers' Practical Guide to Reasonable Accommodation Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Business Case

Organizations have many sound business reasons for hiring people with disabilities and for ensuring that the workplace is accessible to them. Not the least of the reasons is the beneficial impact on organizational performance that can result from the skills of a diverse workforce. By fostering a culture of diversity—a capacity to appreciate and value individual differences—employers benefit from varied perspectives on how to successfully deal with business challenges. Although diversity customarily refers to differences in age, sex, ethnic background and, in some instances, religious affiliation, diversity actually encompasses a broader range of individuals' particular attributes and experiences—among them, disabilities. Thus, disability is a component of diversity, and businesses can benefit by taking steps to make certain that people with disabilities are represented in the workforce.

Companies that are lauded for their efforts in attracting and hiring persons with disabilities typically began with a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve, and they believed that people with even cognitive disabilities could contribute to organizational success. Among the success stories of such employers are Walgreens and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

HR’s Role

Since HR is responsible for ensuring that the talents and skills of all employees are leveraged, HR professionals can and should hold leaders accountable for employing people with disabilities. HR should determine how their organizations’ leaders and managers view people with disabilities. If barriers in the workplace prevent any employee from succeeding, HR has a responsibility to address those issues.

With regard to persons with disabilities, HR professionals need to be familiar with the many resources that can help them reach out to that segment of the labor force. HR should be knowledgeable about the requirements for—and the methods of achieving—accessibility in the workplace for people with disabilities and should be familiar with methods of recruiting, interviewing and retaining such employees.

Accessibility for Candidates

An organization that envisions employing people with disabilities should make sure the concept of accessibility underlies its candidate-selection process. "In general, the ADA does not require employers to make accommodations unless requested to do so by an individual with a disability," the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) notes in online guidance, but "individuals with disabilities must be able to participate in all aspects of the application process."1 The DOL offers a checklist for employers who wish to evaluate the accessibility of their facilities for candidates who have disabilities. Among the considerations are the following: Are parking spaces close to the work site entrance? Are there steps or abrupt level changes on the pathway from the parking area to the building’s entrance? Are access ramps appropriately graded, and do they have handrails? Are doors at least 36 inches wide for wheelchair access, and are the doors easy to open? Is the human resource office or the place where the application process is administered accessible? Would a person with disabilities have access to a restroom, a water fountain and a public telephone? Are elevator control panels lower than 54 inches from the floor and fitted with raised symbols or numbers?

See, Opening Doors to All Candidates: Tips for Ensuring Access for Applicants with Disabilities.

Recruiting Strategies

When filling a job opening, staffing managers should expand their outreach efforts to include qualified candidates who have disabilities and who thus could enlarge the talent pool.

One source of such candidates is the federal Workforce Recruitment Program, which connects federal and private-sector employers with highly motivated postsecondary students and recent graduates who have disabilities. In addition, the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy offers a number of resources for employers seeking candidates.

Other methods of recruiting workers with disabilities include the following: Using disability inclusion statements in job advertisements and in the career section of the organization’s Internet site. Posting job openings on disability-oriented job boards. Ensuring that applications are in formats accessible to all people with disabilities. Providing reasonable accommodations that qualified applicants would need in competing for the job. Attending disability-focused job fairs. Educating all employees, especially managers, about working with employees with disabilities.

Another key recruiting step is to ensure that the company’s human resource systems are accessible to people with various types of disabilities. Many companies have moved toward use of the Internet as their sole means of recruiting, posting job openings, and collecting resumes and applications. For help in making their websites accessible to people with disabilities, employers can tap the resources of EARN, a free consulting service that is part of the National Employer Technical Assistance, Policy, and Research Center at Cornell University. EARN is funded by the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. EARN supports employers in recruiting, hiring, retaining and advancing qualified individuals with disabilities. It does so through confidential consultation and technical assistance, customized training, online resources, and links to state and local community-based organizations serving job seekers with disabilities.

Interviewing Strategies

When considering a job candidate with a disability, an interviewer may first want to question the applicant about his or her ability to do the job. But that should not be the first question the interviewer asks, experts say. Initial queries should relate to the candidate’s skills and experiences. Although the ADA restricts employers from asking specific questions about a candidate’s disability, employers may ask the candidate what workplace accommodations he or she would need in order to do the job effectively. Usually, the candidate will volunteer such information early in the interview to resolve any concerns. See, Americans with Disabilities Act.

When interviewing a candidate with a disability, staffing professionals should keep the following in mind: The focus should be on the merits of the candidate, and hiring managers should be willing to adapt the application or interview process to the candidate’s strengths. For example, an engineer with high-level autism may not be able to speak well, so a situational interview may not be appropriate. But the candidate may have an outstanding portfolio. In that person’s particular field of engineering, his or her accomplishments and experience may be more important than evaluating his or her ability to talk about them. Never assume that people with disabilities lack the necessary education, training, and experience for employment or that they would not be able to perform essential job functions. Workers with disabilities might do things differently, which in fact could mean they fulfill their responsibilities more efficiently and effectively than previous employees in the position.

Accommodating for Accessibility

Employers who have never hired persons with disabilities may overestimate the cost and complexity of making the workplace accessible for such employees, but accommodation need not involve significant extra expense. Often, the employee requires nothing more than considerations like those already provided to others in the organization, such as flexible work schedules, telecommuting or restructured workstations. Although sophisticated adaptive equipment can cost more than $10,000, most accommodations cost no more than a few hundred dollars — a small expense considering the potential return on the investment.

Recent research from the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) found that 56 percent of employers who submitted information about the costs of accommodating employees with disabilities said there were no costs, and 38 percent said they bore a one-time cost, typically about $500 — or about $343 more than they would have spent on accommodating an employee without a disability. (The remaining 6 percent said they had annual costs but supplied little data about those costs.) JAN, a service of the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, provides free consulting to help employers determine possible accommodations based on disability. See, Workplace Accommodations: Low Cost, High Impact.

In 2010 the U.S. Department of Justice issued final rules under the ADA’s Titles II and III, adopting revised standards for new construction, alterations and — where required for public accommodations — barrier removal. The standards provide specifications for a wide range of architectural features, including public stairwells, elevators, restrooms, parking spaces, signage and assembly areas. They also require accessible common-use circulation paths within employee work areas. In new construction and alterations, employee work areas must be designed and constructed so that individuals with disabilities can approach, enter and exit the areas. See, Revised ADA Regulations Implementing Title II and Title III.

HR can help managers understand that accommodations are tools to help ensure that a person with a disability can be productive, just as tools are provided to those without disabilities to ensure their productivity. The tools may be different — perhaps a larger computer monitor or a laptop for working at home for the employee with a visual disability, while an employee with no disability might need a glare screen for a desktop — but their purposes are essentially the same. Successful organizations invest in all employees and do not limit themselves in finding creative solutions to move the organization forward.

Help with the costs of accommodating and training employees with disabilities can be obtained from various state agencies. For example, if a company changes its computer systems and an employee who is blind needs to have his or her adaptive technology upgraded accordingly, vocational rehabilitation services may help. See, Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies.

Employers who hire people with disabilities may also be eligible for various federal tax incentives, including the Disabled Access Credit for small businesses, the Architectural and Transportation Barrier Removal deduction, and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit Program, which are described on the JAN website. See, Job Accommodation Network and Tax Benefits for Businesses Who Have Employees with Disabilities (IRS).

Finally, bear in mind two possible additional benefits in making accommodations for employees with disabilities. First, accommodations can have cascading effects that help other employees. Voice recognition software, for example, is being adopted widely within workforces because it can be more efficient than traditional keyboarding. Second, an organization that embraces workplace accommodations for new hires with disabilities may be able to make similar workplace accessibility adjustments for employees who later become disabled. Accommodating such employees and thereby keeping them in their jobs can enable employers to side-step the probably far greater expenses of hiring and training replacements for those workers.

Performance Standards

Some employers assume that employees with disabilities cannot be held to the same levels of performance that are applied to employees without disabilities. That assumption is incorrect. According to guidance issued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), "An employee with a disability must meet the same production standards, whether quantitative or qualitative, as an employee without a disability in the same job. Lowering or changing a production standard because an employee cannot meet it due to a disability is not considered a reasonable accommodation. An employer should evaluate the job performance of an employee with a disability the same way it evaluates any other employee’s performance."2

When hiring or evaluating employees, HR can use the EEOC’s guidance to educate managers that expected levels of performance will be the same for employees with disabilities as for all others and to stress that loyalty, dependability and a desire to do a good job are attributes that are not exclusive to employees without disabilities. Moreover, studies regularly demonstrate that the safety records of disabled employees are equal to or better than those of other workers.

Managers unfamiliar with the finer points of ADA regulations may worry that they cannot fire or fail to promote an underperforming employee who is disabled, fearing a discrimination suit. However, the reality is that the process for terminating an employee with a disability is the same as that for terminating any other employee.

Retention Strategies

Treat employees with disabilities as any other employee relative to retention. Employers should enable the employee to do his or her best by providing access to tools, resources, information, equipment and career-development opportunities. Following are some of the more effective retention practices: Research shows that presenting applicants with a realistic job preview during the recruitment process has a positive effect on retention of those new hires. See, Staffing Issues Critical to Business Strategies and Recruiting for Retention. The use of biographical data in the selection process can identify life experiences that tend to differentiate those who are more likely to stay with an organization from those who are more likely to quit. Life experience associated with people who stay may include significant tenure in previous jobs, educational experience, involvement and leadership in career-related clubs and organizations, and early work experiences. Assessing a candidate’s "fit" with the job and the organization can also be helpful.

See: Fueling the Talent Engine — Finding and Keeping High Performers How Google Searches for Success Use Employment Branding to Hire, Keep Employees With Best Cultural Fit Socialization practices — delivered via strategic onboarding and assimilation programs — can help new hires become embedded in the company and thus make them more likely to stay. Such practices include shared and individualized learning experiences, formal and informal activities that help people get to know one another, and the assignment of more-seasoned employees as role models for new hires. See, Managing the Employee Onboarding and Assimilation Process and Fusing Fun With Work Aids Retention. If employees lack opportunities to continually update their skills, they are more inclined to leave. However, training and development can be a double-edged sword because it can make employees more marketable, increasing the ease with which they can be recruited by rival organizations.  Agencies and organizations Office of Disability Employment Policy Job Accommodation Network

Information tools ADA/ADAAA Policy SOAR (Searchable Online Accommodation Resource) JAN on Demand Employers' Practical Guide to Reasonable Accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Accommodation Information by Disability: A to Z Information by Product or Service ADA Library How to Determine Whether a Person Has a Disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) Disability Employment Resource Page

Endnotes

1 U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy. (2011). Opening doors to all candidates: Tips for ensuring access for applicants with disabilities. Retrieved from www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/fact/opening.htm.

2 Society for Human Resource Management. (2011). Disability: Hiring employees with disabilities: Are there myths about hiring people with disabilities that impede disability recruiting initiatives? If so, what can HR do about it? Retrieved from www.shrm.org/TemplatesTools/hrqa/Pages/HiringEmployeeswithDisabilities.aspx 

Acknowledgement—This toolkit was prepared for SHRM Online by Margaret Fiester, SPHR, operations manager of the SHRM HR Knowledge Center. In addition to relying on her own professional expertise and research, the author has incorporated existing SHRM Online content in developing this treatment.

Publication Note—This toolkit was first published in December 2011. SHRM staff members will update it periodically as developments in the diversity discipline warrant. For the most recent developments, see the Diversity discipline page and articles archived under specific diversity topics. Notify SHRM of broken links or concerns about the content by e-mailing content@shrm.org

All information in this article was obtained directly from the SHRM Volunteer Leader Resource Center (VLRC).