As my inbox surely can attest in these early days of the month, October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). First observed in 1988, the United States’ Department of Labor says NDEAM is meant to “celebrate the value and talent workers with disabilities add to America’s workplaces and economy” while adding its purpose is to “confirm our commitment to ensuring disabled workers have access to good jobs, every month of every year.” According to the federal agency, the theme for this year’s NDEAM is “Access to Good Jobs for All.”
There’s a video on YouTube all about it.
Heather Walker is a senior data journalist at Culture Amp whose first year-and-a-half was spent working with customers in North America as a senior people scientist. Her academic background lies in disability studies, and she holds both a Ph.D and a Masters in disability and human development from the University of Illinois in Chicago. In a recent interview conducted via email, Walker explained to me her professional career has focused upon “fostering inclusive work environments, using my expertise to improve workplace culture, engagement, retention, and overall employee wellness.” Prior to settling into her current role, Walker taught college courses on accessibility, universal design, social justice, and DEI. She also served as assistant director of qualitative research at an academic healthcare system. Walker described her passions as “addressing major workplace issues like access, DEI, change management, and community belonging.”
The subject of disability employment is right up Walker’s proverbial alley. However unstated, her attention towards disability in the workforce dovetails with NDEAM insofar as she told me the focus on disability employment “stems from a meaningful gap in opportunities and outcomes for disabled employees compared to their non-disabled peers.” As ever, despite the steady drumbeat for increasing DEI societally, Walker said the reality is disabled people oftentimes are “left out” of conversations surrounding the metrics of diversifying employment through equity and inclusivity. No matter how “diverse” a workplace may be championed to be, Walker said even when disability is considered during strategy planning, “disabled employees still face systemic barriers unique to the disabled experience that hinder their employment opportunities and career grow.” These barriers, she added, end up having a detrimental effect on how disabled workers feel, which Walker characterized as “meaningfully worse than non-disabled employees.” She pointed to two statistics to reinforce her point, telling me while 84% of non-disabled people felt respected in the workplace, 73% of disabled employees felt the same way last year. Likewise, while 60% of non-disabled employees report that administrative tasks are fairly divided, only 48% of disabled people agreed with the sentiment.
The research, Walker said, “highlight” how societal perceptions of disabled people rub against classical workplace practices. It leads to “[failure] to accommodate the diverse needs of disabled individuals, leading to their disenfranchisement in the job market.” It’s resonant to Walker, as she identifies as disabled and said she has “experience with the messy ways in which ableism shows up systematically in policy, interpersonally with peers and higher-ups, and even internally within my own conceptions of what work should be and look like.”
“People are socialized to understand the disabled body and the disabled person as less than—lacking something [and] in need of protection,” Walker said. “Consider: a disabled employee and a non-disabled peer do the same stretch task at work and both tell their manager that the task is challenging. The manager celebrates with the non-disabled employees because they tried something that helped them grow even though it was hard. But when the disabled employee says the same thing, the manager feels bad, maybe even guilty, because the disabled employee struggled. Who will the manager offer a stretch task to next time the opportunity arises? Both employees completed the stretch task, but one produced feelings of excitement in the manager, and the other, guilt.”
Walker explains the scenario thusly: “The manager isn’t trying to approach their direct reports inequitably, rather, they may believe they are catering to the unique needs of each person,” she said. “However, this sort of paternalistic bias is sneaky. It hides as good intention—a form of protection. The protection is having the opposite impact. At the end of the day, the disabled employee gets fewer opportunities.”
While she stressed the scenario is hypothetical, Walker nonetheless said there exists data suggesting “situations like this are likely happening more broadly than we want to admit.” To wit, she noted that in 2023, “disabled employees were still 10% points below their non-disabled peers when it comes to opportunities to succeed in the workplace.”
“Speaking more generally, disabled employees may ask for more resources—in the form of accommodations [and] adjustments—than non-disabled employees, which can lead to discriminatory hiring practices and limited career advancement opportunities,” Walker said. “Entire books could be written to answer this question.”
As to remedies, Walker said the first thing employers can do is give disabled workers “a voice within organizations.” Employee resource groups, colloquially known as ERGs, are popular in Silicon Valley at places like Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, and others and something, Walker said, “is a good start toward sustaining their voice.” Furthermore, she noted companies that have a disability-centric ERG and leverage members; perspectives “will have a leg up in creating equity internally.” As for disabled workers inside ERGs, Walker pointed out how research has come out of University of Illinois-Chicago suggesting that “real change happens in workplaces when there are disability champions who raise their hands, proactively share their opinions, and ask for better.” She went on to say that although there’s value in sharing one’s lived experiences in terms of amplifying awareness, the crucial part is asking for specific change like an accommodation and/or ableism training are actionable things that’ll really start to “shift the workplace” in a truly positive direction.
“Job-seekers can seek employers who prioritize inclusivity and advocating for their needs within the workplace and employers can be vocal about their support in job listings,” Walker said. “Collaboration between these groups is crucial in creating a supportive ecosystem for disabled individuals in the workforce.”
When asked about the vibe around disability employment, Walker said there are “home loud disruptive voices gaining momentum and speaking out for disability inclusion,” adding the loudness could be interpreted as “an increasing demand from disabled individuals for support in securing and maintaining high-quality employment.” Many folks, she told me, are “vocal” about the need for better job advancement for disabled people; she’s excited for voices that clamor for greater disability inclusion as “silence won’t get us anywhere… every loud voice is welcome.”
On the flip side, Walker did acknowledge the reality that there are many companies out in the world who are more performative than passionate about driving disability inclusion. Their focus is clearing the lowest of bars—doing just enough to meet the legally mandated, bare minimum requirement. Maybe there’s some investment so as to meet some arbitrary internal number to boast about. Beyond that, Walker lamented how some companies “make no changes to the operational structure, change-management practices, or team-building processes that would actually retain top diverse talent—disabled people being an example.”
Looking towards the future, Walker said companies oftentimes try to make their ranks for inclusive by offering disabled workers training on such topics as self-advocacy and stress reduction. These trainings, she said, “matter and they can have a positive effect.” What they have in common, Walker added, is they shine a spotlight on the problem and the solution within the disabled person. The net effect is clear: companies need not change their institutional mindset “doesn’t have to change” when that happens. To that end, Walker emphasized the key is pairing these trainings with listening sessions with decision-makers in an organization, such as people ops and Human Resources such that everyone can “weigh in” on major structural changes before they occur.
Otherwise, the outlook looks bleak and backwards.
“The safe space we create for disabled employees can do more harm than good,” Walker said of the alternative. “Members get the message that society is already telling them: ‘The disability is the problem, you aren’t enough. When you can get around that, you’ll be better off.’”