Hiring the hidden workforce: Levelling the playing field for disabled workers  

New research from Sapia.ai has revealed the needed processes that can enable disabled workers to get a fair opportunity in the job hiring process.

The study canvassed global responses from 595 self-reporting a disability and 595 randomly selected from those not reporting a disability, controlling for similar gender, race, and answer length distributions.

Through this, the data showed that there was a small difference in the candidate passing rate for those reporting disability against those without one. The data below indicates the percentage of candidates who passed the initial AI screen test.

Results from the data:

• Identifying without a disability: 35.63 per cent suggested to proceed to the next round.
• Identifying with a disability: 30.86 per cent suggested to proceed to the next round.

“Our latest research adds yet another argument for the use of chat-based tools in your recruitment process. Not only are they preferred by women candidates, but they level the playing field for those applying with a disability,” said Barb Hyman, chief executive and founder of Sapia.ai.

“Candidates with a disability already fight against unconscious bias in the hiring process. Many of the tasks allocated to them during recruitment – such as video interviewing – discriminate against them. This data shows that a chat-based interviewing, as an initial means of screening, ensures your second-round candidate pool fairly represents all aspects of the community.”

The job hiring process has been a staple for discrimination against workers with disabilities. For example, when it comes to the process, disabled individuals have far more negative experiences with interviews, group assignments, and psychometric tasks.

As previously reported on HR Leader, a number of individuals with disabilities feel they must mask or camouflage their disability throughout the job hiring process if they wish to be successful. Going through vague, generic job descriptions, and avenues like video interviewing can be extremely detrimental for candidates with a disability.

New avenues like chat-based interviewing have shown to be beneficial for candidates with a disability. It can be a catalyst for breaking down those barriers that, in the past, have kept disabled candidates out of the workforce.

As organisations struggle to recruit and retain workers, expanding the talent pool can be a great relief. By adopting unique job hiring processes such as chat-based interviewing, you may recruit a diverse workforce that has the ability to, without a doubt, boost business outcomes.

Some of the benefits of hiring people with disability were listed as:

• Reliable: People with disabilities take fewer days off, take less sick leave and have a higher retention rate than other workers. The costs to businesses of absenteeism and sick leave for employees with disability can be as low as 34 per cent of the cost incurred by their colleagues.
• Productive: Once in the right job, people with disabilities perform equally as well as other employees.
• Affordable: Recruitment, insurance cover, and compensation costs are lower. People with disabilities have fewer compensation incidents and accidents at work in comparison to other employees.
• Good for business: People with disabilities build strong relationships with customers and boost staff morale and loyalty by helping to create a diverse workforce. Teamwork is enhanced. Real cost savings are realised through reduced turnover, recruitment, and retraining costs. Hiring people with disabilities contributes to the organisation’s overall diversity. It enhances the company’s image among its staff, community, and customers with positive benefits to the employer’s brand.