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23.07.2017 Opinion

Three Metrics To Ensure Equal Employment Opportunities For Persons With Disabilities

By Dr. Nana Yaw Amponsah Adoo
Three Metrics To Ensure Equal Employment Opportunities For Persons With Disabilities
23.07.2017 LISTEN

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is a man of his word. At a Career Fair organised by the Ghana Federation of Disabilities Organisations, the Vice President spoke about fulfilling some of the policy agenda by the National Patriotic Party (NPP) as part of the ruling government’s responsibility to rebuild Ghana’s economy. The theme of that Career Fair wasEmploying Persons with Disabilities to Promote Inclusive and Diversity in the Work Space - the Role of Policy Makers and Employers. It was held at the British Council in Accra on Thursday, June 30, 2017.The focus of the Veep’s speech was on creating employment and enabling opportunities for persons with disabilities (PWDs) and women.

This January, I wrote a rejoinder entitled; “The 11th point plan Dr. Bawumia missed: A rejoinder to the 10-point plan for solving graduate youth unemployment in Ghana”. The article was intended to specifically ensure that persons with disabilities’ employment opportunities moved from policy to action.

Policies and laws, previously designed by previous governments to promote and protect the needs of persons with disabilities, are commendable. However, the time for accountability has come for crafted policies and enacted lawsto be put into practice. The Economic Management Team of the NPP government has demonstrated its intent to do just that. Some private organizations, including MTN Ghana, have taken the lead to put persons with disabilities to work.It is important to encourage public-and-private sectors to fully commit to apprise changes from policy and law to practice by engaging all communities at all levels.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, Ghanaians view, connect, and perceive persons with disabilities with stigma. The nature of a person’s impairment itself is less relevant to them. Indeed, disability is not inability. As a result, persons with disabilities in Ghana should be included as decision makers for all things that affect their impaired lives, as they are best to communicate their needs. The focal points of all employment opportunities decisions should aim at generating the most employment capabilities and not less desirable ones. For a long time, our collective hauteur has prevented us from seeing persons with disabilities as equals. Rather, our collective responsibilities should be spawned by virtues of dignity, respect, and can-do spirit to engage all persons without regard to their impaired abilities. Persons with disabilities should not be taken for granted.

In the January rejoinder, I provided five policy options for Dr. Bawumia’s Economic Management Team to consider, to which they did. Undeniably, the NPP’s 2016manifesto highlighted important guiding principles on equitable employment for persons with disabilities. Dr. Bawumia petitioned for strategies that transform persons with disabilities to reach sustained employment in his speech at the Career Fair. I present below three strategic focus ideas that public-and-private sectors can take into consideration as accountable metrics.

Strategic Focus 1:
The recommendation for private sector employers and government entities to reform their recruitment tactics and practices around disability interests.

This should require increased access and equitable inclusion in the workplace for persons with disabilities. A recruitment strategy should utilize available technology to tap into the projected National Identification System in the effort to restructure existing hiring flexibilities. This can include a pre-screened certification listing of job applicants that happen to be persons with disabilities and targeted disabilities.

The pre-screened certifications can offer increased selection of quality applicants for employers. By tradition, disability employment has been viewed by employers and the government through the lenses of medical, psychological, educational, and vocational inputs that influence the impaired person’s functioning and job skills. These attitudes should change if we are to move forward.

Thus, plenty of opportunities lie within our structural systems to tap into perceptions, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and abilities of persons with disabilities. To ensure accountability, public-and-private sector entities should set up inclusive recruiting benchmarks to assess their performance and inform set strategies. The benchmarks should be clear and measurable to achieve comprehensive results.

Strategic Focus 2:
The recommendation for public-and-private sector entities to enhance employer practices that impact labor market outcomes.

The value of any hiring initiative rests with the leadership of public-and-private sector entities in their understanding of the business reality of employee retention. A core action will be to train talent acquisition personnel to improve their knowledge of how workplace practices relate to successful hiring, sustained employee retention, and promotion of persons with disabilities. This must be emphasized as necessary. Student hiring, available internships and externships, and mentoring programs should be a new business reality.

Public-and-private sector entities should make special efforts, to the extent permitted by law, to ensure retention of persons with disabilities who are injured on the job and are prepared to return to work. To be accountable, special efforts should include organizational targets with clear standards for improvement, expansion, and increased successful return-to-work outcomes for employees who suffer from work-related injuries and chronic illnesses.

A senior-level official can be designated to be accountable for enhancing employment opportunities for persons with disabilities and persons with targeted disabilities. This official should be accountable for developing and implementing the organization’s plan, establishing opportunities to educate parallel senior officials on the value of inclusive labor force, and developing recruitment and training programs with the human service department to facilitate the employment of persons with disabilities and targeted disabilities. In implementing its retention strategies, the official should oversee training and development, mentoring, reasonable accommodation programs, blended learning approach for managers, and equitable performance management processes.

Strategic Focus 3:
The recommendation for public-and-private sector entities to increase employment opportunities for persons with disabilities throughout the country.

Just like the career fair organised by the Ghana Federation of Disabilities Organisations in Accra, more of such fairs should be organized consistently and sponsored in all regions. Overtime, they shall achieve the specific goal of ensuring greater emphasis on employment strategies to recruit and retain persons with disabilities and persons with targeted disabilities. Public-and-private sector entities can set up Temporary Employment Programs (TEP) that offer employment opportunities to persons with disabilities in remote parts of the country. While using TEP, employers and government entities can implement Career Experience Programs (CEP) to complement disability and diversity recruitment efforts. Positive discrimination may be considered in this measure. The allocated funding for District Assembly Common Fund can be increased and used to support this effort.

CONCLUSION
The special issue of disability affects all of us directly or indirectly at some point in our lives. Most of us will face disability as a natural outcome of growing old. Many Ghanaians incur a short or longer-term disability in midlife. Some of us are born with a disability and/or may care for cherished family members who have disability of a sort. Disability is widespread in lived human experiences. It compensates for life’s distortions, inconsiderate of our socioeconomic, religious, ethnic, and geographic contrasts and boundaries. Therefore, living in a country where the experience of disability, no longer without cause, sets us away from each other should be an urgent issue for us to handle. The ability for all Ghanaians to use natural talents to fully play roles in our society is eased by the ability to experience meaningful work. Intending workplaces that make possible the full inclusion of persons with disabilities should continue to be a vital national goal we all can be proud of.

Fair employment engagement and workplace inclusion for persons with disabilities are issues that truly touch each of us, irrespective of where we find ourselves. Our differences may divide us. However, where we work is the center of this fight. The complex demands to meet company and government expectations, directed by financial and political pressures, create unintended and complicated challenges. These challenges affect the hiring of available talent, thus placing the success of affected institutions in the balance. Perhaps, while finding the common goal in the pursuit of equity for persons with disabilities, we owe it to ourselves as Ghanaians to go beyond the differences that limit persons, businesses, and the government from achieving our collective fullest potential.

Dr. Bawumia aspires for Ghanaians to have equitable access to socioeconomic and employment opportunities, without difficulties of discrimination. I share these aspirations of Ghanaians to legally seek meaningful work wherever they can find it. However, these aspirations are not enough, and should not be at the expense of persons within our community with impaired abilities. It is worth pursuing to provide equitable employment for the less impaired among us. We owe it to every Ghanaian, disabled or not, to build a fair and egalitarian society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Adoo is an international education and management professional. His research interests focus on employee work motivation and wellbeing, organizational change, and uncertain employment relations. He is a Professor at Shorter University in the United States.He was nominated for the 2016 Shorter University Vulcan Materials Teaching Excellence & Campus Leadership Award inrecognition for strong campus leadership and pioneering teaching methodology.

He has served as a member of the editorial board of The Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association (jGPHA), a peer reviewed publication addressing public and community health, health education and promotion issues. He is the founder and managing partner of Education & Management Consulting, LLC. (EMCLLC), an innovative organizational development consulting and solutions company, providing services to businesses and governments. Dr. Adoo can be reached on the worldwide web through the following mediums: Website at http://www.emcllc.expert; Twitter at @yaw_adoo, and Subscribed YouTube channel at EMCLLC TV.

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