Staff with disability often build strong connections with customers and the community.
Staff morale is boosted and teamwork is enhanced. Real cost savings are realised through less turnover, recruitment and retraining costs.
Hiring people with disability also adds to the organisation’s overall diversity. It can improve the company’s image among its staff, community and customers adding positive benefits to the employer label.
Three reasons to hire people with disability:
- There is a strong business case for employing people with disability. It generally does not cost your business more to hire a person with disability and there is support through government assistance.
- It is easier than most people to think to employ a person with disability. A Disability Employment Service (DES) provider can do the hard work for and assist you with recruitment.
- Businesses can access free individualised support for recruitment, job analysis, job matching, advice and training.
Employees with disability are:
- Reliable – people with disability take fewer days off, take less sick leave and stay in jobs longer than other workers.
- Productive – once in the right job, people with disability perform as well as other employees.
- Affordable – recruitment, insurance cover and compensation costs are lower.
Your business can benefit from employing a diverse workforce
Employers have ongoing challenges to attract and keep a well skilled and productive workforce.
Skills and labour shortages, wages competition and a shrinking pool of labour caused by an ageing population are just some of the reasons to examine your employment practices to ensure that you can find your next employee.
A sizable and work ready group currently ‘outside the box’ is people with a disability.
About one in five people have some type of disability. Many people with disability are able to work effectively with either minimal or no additional assistance.
Employers need to ‘employ outside the box’ if you want to have a dependable supply of labour into the future.
A strong focus on staff retention is required as the pool of labour gets smaller and the population ages. The cost of labour will become more expensive unless the supply pool can somehow be expanded to include those who have not traditionally been seen as a source of labour.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) has released The Business Case for Employing People with Disability which outlines in more detail the rationale as to why employing people with disability makes good business sense.
