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Don’t Miss Out on the Skills of Disabled Employees
 If
your business is struggling to find
employees with the skills you need; have you
properly considered searching for disabled
employees, many of whom are unemployed
despite having the necessary skills and
abilities.
Employers should make use of the wide pool of resources and skills
that disabled employees have to offer
according to John Hutton, Secretary of State
for the Department for Work & Pensions. With
over 600,000 vacancies in the British
economy waiting to be filled, Mr Hutton
believes that employers may be missing out
on talented and motivated staff if they
refuse to look at disabled workers as a
solution to their staffing needs.
Mr Hutton said: "I believe we need to go further in getting
employers themselves to do more in
supporting both recruitment and retention of
disabled people.
"However, we will not succeed in changing the attitudes of
employers by simply placing additional
burdens on them. It has to be about enabling
them to see and benefit from the huge
potential that disabled people have to offer
and the difference that they can make to an
employer's bottom line."
Mr Hutton said that Government has played its part in helping
disabled people to be 'work-ready' - through
programmes such as New Deal for Disabled
People and Pathways to Work - and employers
should make more use of this workforce,
which the new Employ Ability initiative will
help them to do.
Employ Ability will be piloted in the four cities of Leeds,
Bradford, Manchester and Liverpool from
September before being rolled out nationally
next year and will:
- Challenge negative assumptions about the skills and talent
disabled workers, and those with long-term
health conditions have to offer and address
misconceptions of risk (for example: that
adaptations to the workplace for the
disabled employee are costly - in most cases
the costs are negligible or cost nothing)
- Build the confidence of employers in recruiting and retaining
disabled workers and promote best practice
examples of how this is being successfully
done to the benefit of business.
- Improve employers' access to practical information, making it
easier for them to locate relevant sources
of advice and support for their situation.
Employ Ability will advise employers not only on best practice in
recruiting disabled employees but also in
retaining current employees who become
disabled while in the job - this is
necessary in order to prevent those
employees from having to leave their job.
Increasing the number of disabled people in
mainstream employment will help towards
achieving equality of disabled people in
society overall, which is one of the
ambitions of the government.
Mr Hutton said: "Our ambition must be a world where meeting the
needs of disabled people is seen not as a
burden but as an opportunity; where
discrimination is seen not as an inevitable
part of the culture of our country but as a
fundamental barrier to our success; and
where disabled people themselves are never
consigned to accepting second best but
empowered and supported to achieve full
equality of opportunity and genuine
independence and respect within our
society."
More information on employment issues is
available in our You and Work portal.
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