The draft of the proposed rules, to be printed later today (Friday the 9th), would create a big new set of rules related to hiring people with disabilities.

Federal contractors and subcontractors would have to try to have 7 percent of their workforces be people with disabilities, among other requirements. It’s not a hard mandate, but a goal to work toward for various job groups (in other words, as the proposal spells out, a company shouldn’t mask low levels of disabled employment in certain job functions by building up a high number in low-paid jobs). Contractors would have to take certain recruiting, training, and other steps to work toward the goal, “similar to those that have long been required to promote workplace equality for women and minorities,” says the U.S. Labor Department.

Page 26 describes a new requirement about surveying your employees, “providing an opportunity for each employee who is, or subsequently becomes, an individual with a disability to voluntarily self-identify as such in an anonymous manner, thereby allowing those who have subsequently become disabled or who did not wish to self-identify during the hiring process to be counted.”

There’s much more. On page 36 it says the contractor should “promptly list all of its employment opportunities, with limited exceptions, with the nearest Employment One-Stop Career Center. It also requires the contractor to engage in a minimum of three additional outreach and recruitment efforts …”

And around pages 38 and 39, it says contractors would need to “review the outreach and recruitment efforts it has undertaken over the previous 12 months and evaluate their effectiveness in identifying and recruiting qualified individuals with disabilities, and document its review.”

You’d have to look at how many employee referrals and applicants were people with disabilities, examine if your efforts are not working, investigate why, and implement changes.

There are provisions about recruitment training; for example, related to making sure you’re training people in being sensitive to applicants and recruits.

Two Months for Your Two Cents 

There’s much more in the proposed rules, which we’re sure many labor and management lobbyists will be poring over when they awaken. The process for commenting on the regulations, before a final rule is made, is spelled out briefly on page 2. Comments must be received by February 7.

Sadly, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is 13 percent — a problem I have been interested in since being involved in lobbying in favor of a disability-related tax credit called the WOTC, championed by New York Democrat Charlie Rangel, in the 1990s.

In the meantime, for more on the topic of disabilities in the workplace, the Job Accommodation Network has long been a great source of information.

She struggled to earn a living, for a time clerking at Wal-Mart. But her goal was to find work as a professional in a career that could allow her to be independent. With the assistance of Virginia’s Department of Rehabilitative Service, Chitalia received job counseling and speech therapy.

Today, she is a project manager with Anthem Wellpoint and was recently lauded in the company newsletter.

Her story is but one of dozens being cited as examples of the success disabled workers can have when, with a little assistance from the government, employers reach out to the disability community.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The U.S. Department of Labor is taking the lead in promoting the month around the theme of “Profit by Investing in Workers with Disabilities.” Managed by the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, the month-long campaign to build awareness of the contributions of the disabled includes the posting of stories like Chitalia’s, as well as lending support to state and local efforts to increase the hiring of disabled workers.

Despite laws prohibiting discrimination in hiring against people with disabilities, the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the unemployment rate for disabled persons at 16.1 percent, compared to 8.5 percent for persons with no disability. While the unemployment for the bulk of the population declined from 9 percent in September 2010, it increased from 14.8 percent for the disabled.

An even more telling statistic is the percentage of the disabled who are in the workforce, whether working or looking for a job. Only 21.1 percent of disabled persons are considered in the workforce, compared to 69.7 percent of the population without a disability.

When you look at unemployment rates and workforce participation for other protected worker classes — by sex, age, ethnicity — there are disparities, but few as wide as for the disabled. (Young workers and black males are the leading exceptions in the unemployment rate spread. But even among the youngest workers, their participation in the workforce is higher.)

Why the gulf when it comes to the disabled? In a study of the issues affecting the hiring of the disabled, a group of scholars found employer attitudes had much to do with the low employment rate. “While employers tended to espouse positive global attitudes toward workers with disabilities, when specific attitudes related to the hiring of this group were assessed, views were more negative,” the researchers wrote.

“It is apparent that an overarching concern among employers has been that the costs associated with hiring people with disabilities will outweigh the benefits,” they said.

The evidence suggests that the cost issue is largely a red herring. Studies going back several years show the cost of making accommodations for disabled workers was almost insignificant. The most current data — from the Job Accommodation Network — says 56 percent of the employers participating in the survey reported no cost to accommodate a disabled employee; 38 percent reported a one-time cost they estimated at $500.

Other studies have found that the benefits of hiring disabled workers outweigh the costs, even when they are at the top end.

At an April conference organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, its president and CEO said, “Individuals with disabilities make great employees. In fact, employers report that the work ethic of disabled employees has a positive effect on the morale and production of other employees.”

(The Chamber has a free, best practices booklet –  Leading Practices on Disability Inclusion –  that highlights the inclusion programs of several companies.)

Besides the cultural effects and the productivity gains, there are also tax benefits to hiring disabled workers. Small businesses can take up to $5,000 off their tax bill for costs related to providing accessibility for their disabled workers. Hiring certain qualified disabled persons may be able to claim a $2,400 credit; double that if the disabled person is a veteran.

Many states offer their own incentives as well as providing vocational and rehabilitative services for disabled workers. Last month the Department of Labor awarded seven states a total of $21 million in grants under the Disability Employment Initiative.

If the carrots don’t work, there’s one other reason to seek out and hire the disabled: enforcement by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Disability claims at the EEOC have been rising steadily since 2004, when the number hit a low of 15,376. Last year there were 25,165, the EEOC reports.

Today, disability charges account for a quarter of the individual charge filings. Additionally, in 2010, the EEOC collected $76 million on behalf of aggrieved individuals.

However, the point of National Disability Employment Awareness Month is not to emphasize the legal obligations, but to encourage employers to consider the benefits and dispel the concerns, legitimate or otherwise, of employers about hiring the disabled.

The authors of the study mentioned earlier note in their research report that, “though benefits are considerable, the employment rate for people with disabilities remains low. This gap suggests the pressing need to educate the business community about the benefits of having a disabled workforce, and how these benefits may outweigh perceived costs.”

Or, as Jennifer Woodside, president of  The Disability Training Alliance, says, “Because of the looming labor shortage which will happen in the next decade, companies must be visionary, prepared to recruit a native talent pool and welcome an under-served demographic in their communities: qualified, highly educated candidates, including STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) grads and combat injured veterans who just happen to have a disability.”

Brenda Weitzberg is the founder of Aspiritech, which is offering services to employers looking for test software, hardware, websites, applications, and computer bugs, using her staff of Asperger’s employees.

Barbara Bissonnette

On the podcast below, Weitzberg talks about employing people with Asperger’s. Also on the line is another expert: Barbara Bissonnette. She specializes in coaching and advocacy services for individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, and consults with employers about how to get the most out of these employees.

I feel so lucky that I am still working after 27 years with it and love every day I am alive.
–Jon Gundersgaard

Yesterday, my blog featured an interview of Jon Gundersgaard, a 30-year veteran of the HR/Staffing Industry. Jon’s compelling life story as someone who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and has been in a wheelchair since 1995 initiated a discussion with friend and mentor (pictured at right), Gerry Crispin, Chief Navigator at CareerXroads. Jon’s depiction of a life well lived, and intense productivity as a valued member of his staffing organization, missing work only six months in the last 30 years was provocative. Here was a perfect personification of an industrious, talented element of today’s workforce who served as a critical member of his team and was a productive contributor to society as a whole — despite a serious malady. As a paraplegic, his disability was a sidenote, to an otherwise determined approach to keeping his sourcing and recruiting skills up-to-date with the latest techniques and tools available. The story speaks likewise to a broader workforce effected by blindness, deafness, and other differently-abled categories.

A few days after meeting Jon, the thought of such inspirational people weighed on my mind at the airport as I was returning from the ERE Conference. I texted initial inquiries to Gerry in reference to other individuals within our industry with handicaps that have yet to be highlighted. The text evolved into an in-depth dialogue that broached related topics such as the candidate side of the equation; wounded veterans, deaf or blind software engineers, etc.

Gerry’s interest also stemmed from a gig he did with his colleague Mark Mehler with their client, National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology, under an IBM grant nearly a decade ago. NTID graduates were, at the time, not benefiting by the runup in interest in hiring new engineering and computer science majors. They conducted focus groups with recruiters, students, and working graduates and identified several choke points in the recruiting process that unintentionally filtered disabled candidates out.

As the saying goes, “the rest is history.” The end result was Gerry’s idea to develop a survey with Mark Mehler which was launched this week, designed to answer the following question:

‘Are employers who are approached by jobseekers with requisite skills, experience and knowledge but who happen to have a disability, prepared to assess their ability (and not be distracted by their disability) given the decade-long shift to digital protocols?’To be succinct, “How prepared are you for jobseekers who happen to have a disability?”

Corporate EEO statements routinely professes to focus on hire-ability and not be distracted by disability. The following survey developed by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, attempts to see what this “ground floor” looks like to someone with a disability.

We invite corporate staffing leaders and teams to participate in this worthy cause to learn more about industry efforts to address disability candidate experiences. Your answers to questions about how your firm accommodates disabled prospects in the hiring process (not the job itself) will absolutely be kept anonymous.

CareerXroads will be the only one with access to your contact info. Your firm will not ever be listed as having participated. We require your contact info however to ensure a) no duplicates, b) a representative sample is acquired and c) to invite you to a private webinar that will share the results before they are published.

Feel free to contact Gerry Crispin at CareerXroads to address any questions or concerns you may have.

Your assistance in enhancing the viral reach of this effort is to be commended. The special nature of this endeavor has attracted the combined forces of Arbita ACES, Starr Tincup, ERE, John Sumser, and Peopleclick. We thank everyone, including you our audience, for doing your part in forwarding a link on this story to your respective Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts. Old school email to your fellow co-workers and staffing leadership is always a sure fire way to attract with precision as well.

“More workers will be defined as disabled,” says Myra Creighton, partner in the Atlanta office of labor firm Fisher & Phillips. That will almost undoubtedly mean that more workers will be requesting some form of accommodation for their disability.

Where previously a diabetic or someone with ADD whose condition is controlled by medication was probably not disabled under the prevailing court decisions, now the amendments make clear that they probably are. The amendments loosen up the definition of disability and eliminate consideration of the effect of medication, prosthetics, hearing aids, and the like. That means a person is to be considered disabled whether or not any form of treatment or corrective device (with the exception of glasses and contacts) is used to control or ameliorate the condition.

However, for recruiters and hiring managers, the impact is likely to be more subtle.

Changes may need to be made to job descriptions and in the application and interview environment. There is some thinking that the nature of the post-offer, pre-employment physical will have to be altered to disregard the effect of medical mitigation.

“People ought to have better job descriptions,” counsels Creighton. Most descriptions already take into account the physical requirements of a job, such as the ability to lift certain weights. But too few, says Creighton, take into account the mental and emotional requirements.

“A lot leave out the mental demands that some jobs make,” she says, pointing to supervisory positions where a manager has to relate to employees. Certain types of mental conditions can negatively affect the performance of a supervisor.

She also suggested that more job candidates may now be eligible to request an accommodation in the interview process. Those employment kiosks so popular in home improvement centers, large retailers, and others might have to be modified or alternatives offered to accommodate candidates who request them.

In fact, in a December webcast, the Association of Corporate Counsel used the example of a candidate with ADD requesting a quiet place to fill out a job application. “Do you have to accommodate?” the presenters asked. The answer is yes.

But how many on-site managers know that — or how — an accommodation is to be made?

Creighton says all the old rules about what questions can and can’t be asked during the hiring process still apply. “Those haven’t changed.”

Now, because more candidates can be considered disabled and partially because jobs are tight, Creighton urges recruiters to be especially vigilant about ensuring every question they ask and every requirement in the job description is directly related to business necessity.

While there “aren’t a ton of failure-to-hire cases,” Creighton says, “Some people may view this (the ADA amendments) as an opportunity.”

Neil Romano, assistant secretary, office of disability policy, told the ILG conference today that people still believe the myth that disabled people are receiving plenty of money and don’t need to work. On the contrary, Romano argues: the disabled are innovators who crave the chance at developing products others may not have thought of.

“The marginalization of people with disabilities starts very, very early,” Romano said, speaking from personal experience as a dyslexic. He said every job he has ever received has been from word of mouth, because his disability prevented him from successfully and correctly applying for jobs. “I completely messed up the health care forms at the Department of Labor — so much so that I wasn’t covered for two months,” he jokes. (Romano also tells the endearing story of when he called his mother to tell her the White House nominated him to his job, only to hear his mother respond, “do they know you can’t spell?”)

Disabilities are a running theme of this year’s ILG, with many speakers arguing that disabled job candidates are the next wave of diversity, the next band of talent largely shut out of the workplace, as women and blacks once were.

On the exhibit floor, the Job Accommodation Network is evaluating employer websites for their accessibility. JAN is likely to be busy in future months as the government takes a closer look at the multimedia running on career sites. SSB BART is one private company also in this field.

Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman, the 120,000-employee maker of radar, missile defense, laser systems, satelite systems, and more, is making a special effort to hire the severely disabled. It’s recruiting from job fairs, military facilities, and via word of mouth. “There’s no big list of everyone who’s been injured and is out looking for work,” Northrop HR director Mike Jones says.

Because it’s often hard to translate military skills — for those you who do not offer positions driving tanks — Jones says he’s looking at his effort as “reverse recruiting,” examining candidates’ skills and then seeing where the company may be able to place them.

Northrop expects to hire about 15,000 people this year, and has something like 2,000 different types of jobs open now, from HR to systems administration to secretarial to accounting.

All training grads are home-bound, combat-wounded, or disabled veterans, fully skilled in call center and contact center technology, and all have successfully completed an online training program offered through the Purple Heart Service Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

According to Greg Bresser, executive director of the Purple Heart Service Foundation, “we recognized two years ago that if combat wounded or disabled veterans were properly trained, they could work from home. We saw an opportunity for this group of veterans to become a vital, remote work force for many large Fortune 1,000 companies, as well as smaller family-owned businesses.”

The first phase of the partnership will see 20 virtual agents deployed to Disaboom, responsible for approaching local and national businesses to sell listings in disaboom.com’s online business listings. Disaboom plans to expand the number of graduates employed to 150 virtual agents by the end of the year.

The veterans’ training course work maximizes their military training, according to Disaboom. Applications for participation in the program are currently being accepted at www.combatwoundedcallcenter.com.

“So many people with disabilities are able to work, but they are largely being ignored by employers,” says Honig. “The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are over 30 million disabled workers between the ages of 16 to 64, but only 18 million are currently employed. Over 70% of disabled workers have hidden disabilities, but of those declaring their disabilities, the average cost of the reasonable accommodation is anywhere from $200 to $600. We think that this workforce offers financial advantages to employers.”

Honig points out that some disabled workers are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, which provides health insurance cost savings for employers, and also that employers may be eligible for tax credits when they hire a disabled worker.

This means that federal employers can now use a password-protected online resource any time.

Private sector and other government employers can request unlimited searches by calling (866) 327-6669.

“American employers often express that while they want to include people with disabilities in their recruitment efforts, they do not know where to find qualified candidates,” said W. Roy Grizzard, assistant secretary of labor for disability employment policy, in a release.

Grizzard explains that The Workforce Recruitment Program bridges this divide by bringing pre-screened job seekers, with varied education and experience, directly to employers.

Employers can set the criteria for each candidate search by specifying location, degree program, position type, and length of appointment.