How disability accommodations help all your employees (Not just the ones with disabilities)
All too often, employers are scared to hire people with disabilities because of the cost of accommodations. However, most accommodations are less than $500, and there are a variety of tax credits to help cover the cost. And there’s another reason to not fear accommodations: making disability accommodations can help all of your employees, whether they have disabilities or not.
Before we get to why, let’s define our terms. An accommodation is an adjustment to a job, the work environment, or the hiring process. Even if you have no employees with disabilities, you have probably already provided similar adjustments: letting employees work from home when their children are sick, adjusting schedules so an employee can go to school or a second job, or providing step ladders when employees are not tall enough to reach high shelves. Disability-specific accommodations are really not that different.
Providing accommodations gives your organization the opportunity to reexamine how you do things. An accommodation for one employee can be a test case to see if this new process, policy, or procedure should be the standard for your entire staff. You may discover a way to make your staff more productive, or to reduce employee turnover.
Let’s look at some examples. …Click to read more…
