A recent BMO survey conducted among 1,000 Canadian workers reveals that people with disabilities have trouble finding their place on the labour market. The phenomenon is mainly due to poor understanding of the costs of their integration and work capabilities.
48% of Canadians believe that a person is more likely to be hired or granted a promotion if they conceal their disability. And this perception is even more pronounced with respondents who reported having a disability, at 55% of them.
Only 44% of SMEs have already hired a disabled employee. Furthermore, people with disabilities who are able to work (30% of them) are twice as likely to remain unemployed than other contenders for work.
The war on accepted ideas
Although many of the accepted ideas about disabled candidates are being dismantled bit by bit, they remain excluded according to the results of this survey. The reason is a misunderstanding about their integration within the company and the arrangement of positions. The consequences are damaging, since employers are depriving themselves of skilled workers by leaving aside a pool of untapped talent, according to Sonya Kunkel, Director of Diversity and Integration at BMO. The main problem raised is the erroneous perception of the abilities the disabled employees have to perform their work and the cost of arranging their workstation… although 20% of disabled people don’t require any special arrangement and the average costs of a specific arrangement are no more than 500 dollars on average.
The survey on this subject revealed that 67% of respondents had no idea of the cost for arranging a workstation and that the estimate generally given was 10,000 dollars.
Finally, among employers who have already hired disabled workers, 77% of them said they are satisfied with their performance. Is this perhaps sufficient to convince companies that are still reticent?
Enfin, parmi les employeurs ayant déjà embauché des travailleurs handicapés, 77 % d'entre eux se sont déclarés satisfaits de leurs performances. Peut-être de quoi convaincre les entreprises encore frileuses ?