Approaching Employers

(upbeat music) - When we're approaching employers about hiring people with disabilities, one of the most important things you can do is to become fluent in something we call the business case for employment. And what that means is knowing what are the benefits that come to employers who make that commitment to diversifying their workforce by hiring people with disabilities. I think there's a lot of assumptions among employers about, well, can a person with a disability really do the job? Will this require more of our supervision? Are they likely to keep the job? Is there gonna be high turnover or even greater cost for supervising them? But the business case, which has really studies that have documented how businesses are actually impacted, tell a very different story. Employers who hire people with disabilities tell us that actually turnover is less for people with disabilities. And there's huge hiring expense costs with a turnover and hiring new people. So people with disabilities are more likely to retain that job and stay on that job, they're more likely to have less absenteeism. And the concern about safety on the job turns out to not bear out, that people with and without disabilities are no more at risk than the other for safety issues. And then there's all the benefits that come to business about a more creative and more diverse workforce, about hiring patterns that end up getting community members to be more likely to come to your business because you've made that commitment to hiring people with disabilities. And then lots of employers will talk about how the workplace culture has changed in better ways because they've made that commitment. So I think there was a mindset years ago where we would try to convince employers that hiring people with disabilities would be good for people with disabilities and sort of a charitable mindset that you should step into that. I think the stronger cases to say, hey, I've got some young people who have incredible talents and are gonna be an asset to your business. You're gonna wanna get in on this and then tell them why that's the case.