Research Brief: Disability Inclusive Recruitment and Hiring Practices and Policies: Who Has Them and What Difference Does it Really Make?

Abstract

The employment rate of individuals with disabilities is less than half the rate of individuals without disabilities. Employer policies and practices could have a very real impact on increasing the number of persons with disabilities in the workforce. This study examined the prevalence of inclusive practices and policies that are believed to increase recruitment and hiring of persons with disabilities. Cornell University collaborated with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) to survey human resource professionals. SHRM was the ideal collaborator, as the world’s largest association devoted to HR management with more than a quarter of a million individual members worldwide, including one in five U.S. HR professionals (SHRM, 2012). –HR professionals were targeted as the people most knowledgeable about an organization’s disability policies and practices as well as their hiring and recruitment strategies. This brief explores variations in the implementation of disability-inclusive recruitment and hiring policies and practices by private employers in the U.S., to determine what types of organizations are implementing them and to see if these policies and practices are related to the actual hiring of individuals with disabilities.