When engaging employers you may come across a range of employer concerns. While these concerns may be genuine, they are often based on assumptions or a lack of knowledge or experience of employing people with disability. Talking to employers about some of the benefits to their business when employing people with disability will provide you with an opportunity to correct misinformation and to positively market job seekers with disability to employers.
Why employ people with disability?
Recruitment in Australia must be responsive to changes in economic conditions and social trends. Businesses can address future employment requirements by expanding their workforce through the employment of people with disability.
Like all employees, people with disability bring a range of skills, abilities and qualifications to the workplace. Many businesses already employ workers with disability because it makes good business sense.
What are the benefits to business?
Research has found that there is a strong business case to support the employment of people with disability (Graffam, Shinkfield, Smith and Polzin 2002):
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people with disability can have fewer accidents at work—the workers compensation costs for people with disability can be as low as four per cent of the workers compensation costs of other employees
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people with disability can have lower absenteeism and often take less sick leave than other employees
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the costs of hiring people with disability can be significantly lower than hiring other employees—as low as 13 per cent of the cost of the other employees
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employing people with disability can build staff morale and teamwork, raise management awareness of workplace practices and conditions and increase customer and staff loyalty
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over 90 per cent of employers who had recently employed a person with disability said they would be happy to continue to employ people with disability.
A study conducted on behalf of Telstra Australia in 1999 found that:
- people with disability worked on average 4.1 years in a call centre, compared to 3.2 years for people without disability
- over a 15 month period, people with disability had 11.8 days absent, compared to people without disability who had 19.24 days absent
- there were no significant differences when comparing people with disability to people without disability in the areas of performance, productivity and sales.
Employer experiences
When promoting the business benefits to employers, it may be helpful to provide real examples of the benefits from the viewpoint of other employers.
The following brochures contained can be printed out so that you can provide them to employers in hard copy:
The following page contains clips from the employer experiences:
References
Graffam J, Shinkfield A, Smith K, and Polzin U 2002, ‘Employer benefits and costs of employing a person with a disability’, Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, vol. 17, pp. 251-263.
Noble J 1999, Entrepreneurial Research Project, Telstra Australia.