Supporting and Enabling Employees with Disabilities

---

The final report of the Royal Commission has been published, with more information than can be included here. Volume 7 of the report contains information specific to education, employment and housing. 

Employment is also about human rights. Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) recognises:

    the right of persons with disabilities to work, on an equal basis with others; this

    includes the right to the opportunity to gain a living by work freely chosen or 

     accepted in a labour market and work environment that is open, inclusive and 

    accessible to persons with disabilities.

John Badwater Consulting has no affiliation with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation into People with Disability. The statement above is for informational purposes only. It is copyrighted by the Commonwealth of Australia and reproduced here under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. The full report is available in the public domain and can be accessed at https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report-complete-volume-formats

Many employers have developed policies to address the needs of employees with disabilities in order to promote an inclusive workplace. This may take the form of targets for the recruitment and retention of staff with disabilities. Initiatives for the support and enablement of employees with disabilities are generally led by public service entities. The supports are useful for promoting an inclusive workplace, but do not always take into account the personal, private and changing aspects of an individual's experience of disability. The balance between the privacy of the individual and access to workplace adjustments can be difficult to achieve. Reporting of activity against targets is often problematic when the collection of data is via workplace satisfaction surveys. This method of data collection is notoriously unreliable, due to low employee participation rates and a reluctance of many to share personal information. There is a genuine fear that the data could be identifiable and either impede career growth or lead to conscious or unconscious bias, or discrimination. It is reasonable to suggest that staff, particularly those with non-visible disabilities, are not willing to share their status or seek workplace adjustments that would enable them to complete their tasks to the same quality all other colleagues.