Lead the Way: Supportive Business Culture

Commitment at all levels of an organization is critical to creating and maintaining a work environment that supports people with disabilities. Business culture begins with leadership at the highest levels, including top executives and boards of directors. Managers and supervisors, and particularly human resources staff and other personnel involved in hiring decisions, must also understand the role they play in facilitating disability employment.

Learn More about Building a Supportive Business Culture

Establishing a business culture supportive of employees with disabilities begins with leadership. Communicating goals to all employees—and indicating what they can do to help—is also important. One action company leaders can take is to adopt formal expressions of commitment and intent related to the recruitment, hiring, retention, and advancement of people with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities. Successful approaches used by both large and small employers include:

1. Making the employment of people with disabilities an integral part of the company’s strategic mission.
2. Implementing a comprehensive set of disability employment initiatives and building a related infrastructure, with leadership as the catalyst.
3. Developing and communicating policy statements and other illustrations of the company’s commitment to disability employment. Policy statements may:
   • Affirm the company’s commitment to employing qualified people with disabilities;
   • Provide for an audit and reporting system of efforts to eliminate discrimination;
   • Assign responsibility for accommodation and accessibility processes to a person or office for implementation;
   • Express commitment to recruit, hire, retain and advance people with disabilities at all levels;
   • Ensure all personnel actions are administered without regard to disability and all employment decisions are based solely on valid job requirements; and
   • State that employees and applicants with disabilities will not be subjected to harassment, intimidation, threats, coercion or discrimination because they have engaged in activities such as filing a complaint or participating or assisting in an investigation into one.
4. Establishing an enterprise-wide team consisting of executives, managers and employees with disabilities to support the recruiting, hiring, retention and advancement of people with disabilities. This team may also function as a disability-focused employee resource group (ERG).
5. Distributing a reasonable accommodation policy statement to all employees by prominently posting the policy statement in human resources offices and sharing it through all available internal and external channels, including online platforms (for example, distributing reasonable accommodation procedures to managers, supervisors, and other personnel responsible for processing reasonable accommodation requests).
6. Seeking input (for example, using employee surveys, focus groups, discussions, and ERGs) regarding the existence of an accessible and supportive workplace environment.
7. Encouraging workers with disabilities and other employees to identify barriers and individual and systemic concerns without fear of reprisal, and also providing mechanisms to allow them to provide this information anonymously or confidentially.
8. Establishing a universal policy providing workplace flexibility and accommodations for all applicants and employees, with and without disabilities.
9. Implementing work-life programs and initiatives to help employees balance work and non-work responsibilities.
10. Developing emergency preparedness and management plans that specifically address the needs of employees with disabilities. In addition to providing practical guidelines for emergency managers and employees, such plans should address communication and distribution, employer and first responder responsibilities, employee self-determination and emergency notification channels.