Hiring with diversity in mind for October and beyond

BY MICHAEL THOMAS

October is Disability Employment Awareness Month and Jeanette Campbell, CEO of The Ontario Disability Employment Network (ODEN) has a very loud message for employers around the world who have not yet hired folks with a disability. “You are missing out on a pool of talent; the return on investments when you hire a person with a disability outweighs the fears that you might have.”

ODEN was created in 2008 and is a professional body of more than 130 employment service providers united to increase employment opportunities for people who have a disability. Members are from every corner of the province and support people of all disability types beyond Ontario, ODEN (odenetwork.com) has connections with organizations in almost all the provinces and territories of Canada.There are five weekly themes centered around recruitment and onboarding that ODEN has set their sights on for this year:

• Where is the talent and how do I source it?
• How to ensure your recruiting process is accessible for people who have a disability.
• Harnessing the power of AI and other technology to make your workplace more inclusive.
• Creating a company culture of inclusion and being a leader.
• Making the onboarding process of employees easier and more successful for everyone.

The highlight of ODEN’s 2019 NDEAM campaign will be on October 24^th. A moderated panel discussion on hiring for diversity and inclusion will be live-streamed nation-wide from ODEN’s Annual Rethinking Disability Conference at the Sheraton Parkway Hotel in Richmond Hill, ON.This 75-minute discussion will include four business leaders from the public, non-profit, manufacturing and retail sectors who will share their experiences in inclusive hiring, both their challenges and successes.

The organization has decided to live-stream this conference to help inspire more businesses across Canada to focus on increasing diversity and inclusion within their hiring practices, the CEO said. Campbell spoke with Toronto Caribbean Newspaper earlier this week about how things are shaping up, and what her organization plans to achieve at the end of the day.

Toronto Caribbean Newspaper asked the CEO of (ODEN) why she believes some employers are reluctant to hire people with a disability? “I think there are lots of myths happening surrounding people who have a disability, that can deter business from hiring from that talent pool; we know that people who have a disability are motivated and ready to work. They are skilled, educated and a number of them have university degrees. As much as 50% of Canadians with a disability are university educated.”

Campbell reported that students with disabilities who have graduated have a higher unemployment rate than the rest. When asked what her organization’s message is for businesses who would like to help, she said, “We encourage businesses to contact us to talk about how they can create a strategy for hiring from this talent pool, or if they are already doing so, how we can support them to improve their results. If they are already hiring, have a conversation  with us about  retention and promotion, but if they haven’t started on this journey, then we can have a conversation about what the business needs and how ODEN can help to support them in meeting those business needs.”

Campbell has great expectations for the future of the organization, “Five or ten years down the road I would like to see us not just in Ontario, but reaching across the entire nation linking businesses to employment services organizations, and creating pipelines from secondary school institutions directly into all the different sectors, so that we are able to provide the same services we are doing in Ontario all across Canada.”

The CEO hopes that one day her organization will not have to do myth-busting; it is so important for employers to understand that it’s a win-win situation when they hire a disabled person, but in the meantime she said, “We have discussions with them and point out the stats and facts like how people with a disability have lower absenteeism, higher safety records, and how their entire business will benefit from this. When a business reflects the community that they operate in, they create a more inclusive business period. Just because this is disability employment awareness month it is not acceptable for businesses to focus on this just for one month, but every day.”