Bridging Return-To-Work Gaps For People With Ill-Health or Disabilities

The past experience of organisations in hiring people with serious health conditions or disability drives a greater openness to recruiting people experiencing similar conditions in the future, according to a recent research report.

Conducted by Comcare, the Employer Mobilisation Report surveyed almost 2,500 employers on their behaviours, attitudes and intentions towards hiring and retaining people with health conditions that impact their ability to work.

“Employers often have significant barriers to hiring people with ill-health or disability, but the research shows many of these issues fade with experience,” said Comcare CEO Jennifer Taylor.

The report found that actual experiences in hiring and supporting staff members with serious conditions and disability can help to break down the barriers of conscious or unconscious biases that so often accompany employer perspectives on health conditions and disability – and on average, that the experience is positive.

There is also a very strong relationship between the overall psychosocial work environment and employer willingness and openness to consider hiring people experiencing serious conditions.

“Those organisations who are leading lights – in terms of their support for people with disability and serious health conditions – tended to have invested time and energy into developing a ‘strategic human resource flexibility’ that extended to their whole workforce,” the report said.

“They view each and every staff member as a package of characteristics that need to be accommodated and integrated, and disability as just one characteristic within this broader set.”

At the other end of the spectrum, employers that are resistant to the idea of hiring people with serious conditions tend to focus on the condition.

“They imagine ways in which it will cause them issues – sapping management time and energy, or causing injury or issues for other staff – and immediately dismiss the idea of ever hiring people who are not completely able-bodied or who have a cognitive or psychosocial health condition,” the report said.

The report found that few employers were able, unprompted, to outline the specific advantages and benefits of employing someone with a disability.

But when prompted, 60 per cent of employers indicated that ‘as anyone could experience a health condition or disability, workplaces that include these people support everyone’; and, that the benefits were the same as any other suitable person for the job.

Less than half of employers indicated that their organisation had ever managed processes for recruiting, accommodating or handling the return to work for someone with disability or a health condition. Only one in four or less had done so in the past two years, while managing processes for temporary conditions was generally more common than for permanent conditions.

This study also found only small proportions of employers had in place formal and informal policies to accommodate people with a disability in relation to return to work (although this was nevertheless the most common policy in place), retention and recruitment.

Larger organisations in the public sector were more likely to have these policies in place and public sector organisations were more likely to have them formalised.

Awareness of various initiatives to aid employers was also moderate to low, and actual use of processes or modifications to help employ or accommodate people with a disability, such as the modifications of tasks, was measured at three in ten employers or fewer.

Another important issue is the sheer diversity of disability and serious health conditions.

“Every individual is unique when discussing disability, but employers can think in extremes and be inclined to be dismissive based on assumptions or generalisations, rather than taking the time and effort to consider the specifics of an individual’s situation,” the report said.

Article originally published by the Safety Institute of Australia.