Advocacy Update: Employment

Businesses Can Enhance Their Competitive Edge by Hiring People with Disabilities

Perhaps more than any other group of people, individuals with disabilities have the ability to adapt to different situations and circumstances. As employees, they add to the range of viewpoints businesses need to succeed, offering fresh ideas on how to solve problems, accomplish tasks and implement strategies. Research shows that employees with disabilities consistently meet or exceed performance expectations and have a lower than average rate of turnover.

In addition to positively impacting a business's bottom line, recruiting and retaining workers with disabilities represents an effective strategy for countering the effects of the shrinking of the workforce. Individuals with disabilities represent one of the largest untapped pools of skills and talent in the U.S.

To help demonstrate how this underutilized population can provide businesses with a source of highly skilled employees, the Federal government offers employers a variety of free educational resources on recruiting candidates with disabilities. For more information, visit the Employment section of http://www.disabilityinfo.gov/, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). You can also contact the Employer Assistance and Recruiting Network (EARN), a free service also from ODEP that connects employers looking for quality employees with skilled job candidates, at 1-800-526-7234 V/TTY.

People with disabilities who are seeking employment should visit http://www.hireds.com/ for information and resources.