Research from the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) has shown Canada can gain substantial economic benefits if it were a fully inclusive society for persons with disabilities. Awareness has also been growing about the social injustice experienced by persons with disabilities due to the labour market barriers they face. And yet, an employment gap remains, as persons with disabilities face a much lower employment rate than the general Canadian population.
Closing that employment gap requires a greater focus on providing organizations with the tools and resources they need to build their disability confidence, said Dr. Emile Tompa, senior scientist at the IWH, at a recent symposium titled “The win-win of designing workplaces for disability inclusion.” Building employers’ disability confidence means building their capacity to recruit, hire, onboard, retain, mentor and promote persons with disabilities across the full range of employment opportunities,” he explained.
The symposium was organized by Inclusive Design for Employment Access (IDEA). It’s a seven-year initiative funded by the New Frontiers in Research Transformation Stream and co-led by IDEA’s executive director Tompa, and director Dr. Rebecca Gewurtz of McMaster University.
Held both in Toronto and online, the symposium had the aim of sharing evidence-informed tools and resources—including best practice guidance—and success stories from researchers, service providers, disability community members, and policy-makers working together in this space.
“We’re trying to make transformational change. And our formula to do that is through knowledge-to-practice solutions that are co-designed with our partners and mobilized across Canada,” said Tompa.
The initiative’s focus on inclusive design means priority is placed on helping organizations design their workplaces and systems so that, from the outset, “barriers are not present and there is less of a need for individual accommodation requests,” said Gewurtz at one of the panel sessions at the event. “That’s because the duty to accommodate, which has guided inclusion efforts for persons with disabilities over the last two decades, has gone about as far as it can go,” added Dr. Mahadeo Sukhai, adjunct professor at University of Ontario Institute of Technology and co-lead of one of IDEA’s five hubs.
“If being reactive is not taking us farther, we need to look at something else, and that’s where proactive, systems-thinking comes in,” said Sukhai.
The two-day agenda featured an opening keynote on the first day by Cornell University’s Dr. Suzanne Bruyère, who is also the academic director of the Yang Tan Institute on Employment and Disability. Bruyère shared research on how to support employers in building inclusive employment practices. In an opening talk on the second day, Dr. Karen Harlos, a professor at the University of Winnipeg, shared research on the effectiveness of equity, diversity and inclusion training on inclusive practices.
The agenda included presentations from the federal government about programs that have been recently implemented to improve the recruitment, retention and advancement of workers with disabilities within the federal public service. The symposium also showcased programs and initiatives by IDEA partner organizations such as Diversity Institute, March of Dimes Canada, LiveWorkPlay, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Youth Employment Services, Ontario Disability Employment Network and Canadian Association for Supported Employment.
“There has been tremendous evolution in this space. There are important avenues and structures in the workplace, as well as out in the community, for voices to be heard and leadership to be exercised,” said Alec Farquhar, IDEA strategic advisor, in an address that looked back at 30 years of the journey to disability inclusion in Canadian workplaces.
“There has been an incredible increase, in quantity and quality, of partnered academic research in this space,” he added. “Having that kind of research involvement is invaluable to making the case for change. Because we can go to unions, employers and government to say, ‘This is not just a good idea. It’s been validated, replicated and rigorous research around the world shows this is the direction to go in.’”
The two-day IDEA symposium also offered an opportunity for participants to learn about the activities underway within IDEA’s incubator hubs (see sidebar). With the IDEA initiative past its halfway mark, said Tompa, “we’ve gathered a lot of knowledge, developed solutions, and scanned the environment to learn what others are doing as well. So now we want to get all that great work out there for organizations to use.”