A Guide: How Employers can help to close Ireland’s Disability Employment Gap

Share this:

Copied

Ibec prioritised the topic of the disability and employment on the agenda of its recent regional HR forums to highlight the subsidies and service supports available to employers who hire people with disabilities.

Ireland is ranked as the worst country in the EU when it comes to employing people with disabilities. We hold one of the largest disability employment gaps, which means, compared to our European neighbours, our workplaces employ the least number of people with disabilities. This needs to change. With the right support, employers and HR professionals have the power to help close Ireland’s disability employment gap.

Over 1.1 million people on this island live with a disability, facing long-lasting conditions or difficulties to varying extents, according to Census 2022. This represents over one-fifth of the population. Very few of those on disability payments in Ireland work, yet data suggests that many could take up work if the right incentives and support measures were in place.

In a rapidly changing global economy, we know the most sustainable societies are those that make use of all their talent, but Ireland is not. Due to the systemic barriers people with disabilities face in accessing the labour market, there is a whole pool of untapped talent in our society that employers are missing out on.

Barriers for employers
There is a general lack of awareness and understanding about disability in Irish society, which extends to workplaces. If you are an individual who does not have a disability or does not have someone close to you who lives with a disability, you may not understand the daily challenges people with disabilities experience, or the systemic barriers they face in accessing the labour market.

Without awareness and understanding of disability, employers lack the knowledge they need to confidently and appropriately support employees with disabilities in the workplace. Instead, fears around hiring people with disabilities persist. Employers are afraid of making mistakes, using the wrong language, and the legal risks surrounding both. Awareness and understanding can dispel these fears.

Consider, for example, reasonable accommodations. These are specific adaptations to the workplace that enable a qualified person with a disability to fulfil their job responsibilities. There is an onus on employers to take appropriate measures to provide accommodations, unless the measures would impose a disproportionate burden on the employer.

Due to the lack of awareness and understanding of reasonable accommodations and what they involve, employers can be reluctant to proactively hire people with disabilities. But many of these reasonable accommodations incur little to no cost to the employer, while a range of financial supports can be accessed for those that do.

Disability employment supports to overcome barriers
The Department of Social Protection introduced Work and Access to help people with disability access and retain employment. Various employer supports provided aim to remove or reduce barriers in the workplace for people with a disability. These include:

• Workplace Needs Assessment grant of up to €2,500 is available to pay towards the cost for a specialist to identify the employee need for additional supports or accommodations.
• Disability Equality and Inclusion Training grant of up to €20,000 is available to employers and organisations to access training for staff, for the purpose of gaining better awareness and understanding of supporting employees with disabilities in the workplace
• The employee supports provided include funding for in-work support of up to €12,500, a personal reader grant of up to €12,000 and a workplace equipment grant of up to €12,000.

Why disability inclusion is important for your business
Most disability is acquired, meaning a person develops their disability during their lifetime as a result of an accident or an illness. In Ireland, 70 percent of disabled adults acquired their disability after the age of 16.[2] With an ageing workforce, disability inclusion is not a marginal concern but a workforce reality.

While there are many employers engaged in great work putting supports and training in place, one employer we talked to gave the example of how he has used Work and Access. Declan Smith is the Director of Chemical Systems Control, and he was diagnosed with MS 19 years ago. He now requires a functional electrical stimulator walking aid (FES) to support his mobility. Previously his place of work, a multi-storey building, was inaccessible to him as it lacked lift access. Through the Work and Access grant, CSC was able to reclaim workplace adaptation costs to install a lift in the building. Declan was also able to reclaim the cost for his FES through the assistive technology grant.

Had CSC not adapted their workplace to make it accessible for Declan; they could have lost an employee with extensive knowledge and skills the business needs. Through use of Work and Access, CSC were able to retain a high value employee and avoid the substantial costs they would have otherwise incurred by hiring Declan’s replacement.

Considered return-to-work pathways and ensuring employers have the resources and knowledge necessary to support employees with disabilities benefits everyone. It will reduce turnover in your business and strengthen your organisation’s resilience, while making our workplaces and society more inclusive for all.

Useful resources

• To apply for Work and Access, you must complete the Work and Access application form. If your application is approved, the department will provide funding to pay service providers directly. You will not be reimbursed for services, equipment or adaptations paid for before getting approval.
• Ibec’s Reasonable Accommodation Passport
• Ibec’s Autism Employment Roadmap
• AHEAD WIDE framework platform
• Ibec Diversity Hub

By Megan O’Sullivan Sweeney, Policy Executive, Ibec

For more information, please find the NDA's 2019 Retaining people with a disability in the workforce information site linked here.