Curb-Cut Effect has pledged to hire people with intellectual and developmental disabilities - find o
A new study reveals that hiring people with intellectual and developmental disabilities doesn’t just improve culture—it improves the bottom line.
The study was conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, or i4cp, a company that analyses the practices of high-performance organisations. Among some of the impressive findings are just how many employers believe their employees with intellectual and developmental disabilities offer distinct benefits to their workplaces. More than three-quarters of employers surveyed ranked their employees with intellectual and developmental disabilities as good or very good on work quality, motivation, engagement, integration with co-workers, dependability, and attendance. Many employers reported being initially skeptical of hiring people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, only to see their concerns dissolve after the employees were on board.
“The positive impact on the workforce is brought about in two ways: hiring individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities adds highly motivated people to the workforce (which can lead to increased productivity) and it promotes an inclusive culture that appeals to the talent pool organizations want to attract,” reads the study. “The improved customer satisfaction realized can lead to better sales and customer retention. The enhanced employer brand can translate to a better image in the community.”
i4cp defines a high-performance organization by four factors: market share, revenue growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction. i4cp has found that diversity and inclusion policies are correlated with high performance. High-performance organisations are twice as likely as low-performance organisations to emphasize diversity and inclusion as a matter of policy at the highest levels, and more than twice as likely to specifically include people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in their diversity goals.
Based on the i4cp study, the organisation Best Buddies International, which facilitates job placement for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, launched a media campaign called I’m In To Hire. The goal of the campaign is to convince employers that it is not charity, but in the best interest of business performance, to hire people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
On Thursday, the campaign announced it had received 100,000 pledges of support on its website. Many celebrities and politicians have tweeted their support for #ImInToHire, including Maria Shriver, Martin O’Malley, Cindy Crawford, Kevin Spacey, and Gavin Newsom.
Curb-Cut Effect has pledged to hire people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. You should too - go to www.imintohire.org
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