Transcript

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Ruth Wright: Welcome everyone to our Ask the Expert Webinar on making our organizations more accessible for people with disabilities.

My name is Ruth Wright. I’m with Signal49 Research, and I’m the Director in the Human Resources Research area. And I’ve been focusing much of my work in recent years on inclusive and accessible talent management practices and in helping organizations create engaging, sustaining work environments, and I’ll be your moderator for the session today.

I’m so pleased to welcome you all to this panel-style webinar where we have some real—really terrific experts who will answer our questions on how we can make our organizations more accessible for people with disabilities, employees, and customers alike.

So, on behalf of Signal49 Research, and a big shout-out to our partner, the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to join us today.

The panel will begin shortly and will last for about an hour. The webinar is being recorded for those of you who aren’t able to join us live. And during the panel discussion, the phones will be—for the most part—muted, and the recording of today’s session will be made available on our web page in a week or so, and we will follow up with instructions on how to access that.

In a moment, I’m going to introduce you to our experts.

Afterwards, we’ll begin with questions, some of them that you sent us in advance, and today is an interactive forum.

So, if you’d like to ask a question, of any of the experts, you can type it into the chat window, which is situated in the lower left-hand corner of your screen, and, in fact, we are counting on you to have questions. We’ll try to get to as many as we can. And also, keep in mind that in terms of structure, we’re going to—for the most part—follow the employment cycle as we go through the questions.

So, we’re going to begin with questions relating to sourcing, candidates who happen to have disabilities, recruiting, onboarding employees, then we’ll move to the whole accommodation process and some of the mechanics of that. Then we’d like to touch upon return to work and performance management. These are all things within the Employment Standard, but we also encourage questions outside of the Employment Standard that still have some bearing on broader people in customer practices.

And our panel has very broad expertise, as you will see when I introduce them. One thing that I did want to say is, if you did want to ask your question verbally, you can only do that if you’ve called us through the telephone line. If you’ve connected and your sound is coming through the computer, you’ll have to use chat. But to verbally ask a question, what you do is press 1–4, and the operator will come on and connect, I guess, and unmute your call.

I’d also like to note that closed captioning is available for this webinar. So, in order to access the closed captioning, please type the link that we have here into your URL. And there’s also a link in the e-mail communications that we sent to you, so you can link up directly. I’ll leave this slide up for just a second in case anyone needs to type out this URL that they need to get into their browser in order to access the closed captioning.

Before we begin, I’d like to provide you with some background and context on what Signal49 Research has been doing around accessible employment practices.

For the past few years, we’ve been working with the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario to provide various tools and resources that employers can use to make their workplaces more accessible for people with disabilities. And in 2012, as many of you know, we produced an Employers’ Toolkit making Ontario workplaces more accessible for people with disabilities. You see that pictured on this slide here.

In 2015, we released a second edition, and it’s fully translated into French language, and you can separately download a lot of the tips, and templates and tools that are stored there in Word. And the Toolkit—again, it goes through each section of the Employment Standard as it sits under the AODA and Integrated Standards.

And it provides interpretations relative to workplace practices that will meet and very often exceed the standard.

We work directly with the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario to translate the legal requirements into workplace practices that would be acceptable. And in producing the Toolkit, we had the fabulous opportunity to work with employers who are ahead of the curve, people with disabilities, lawyers like Laura, and between all our partners and our own work in disability management, we produced quite a number of tips and examples that are readily available for you.

Since producing that Toolkit in 2012, we’ve worked on a number of other projects and developed additional resources for employers to help them become more accessible.

And a really exciting new development is a partnership with the Regional Municipality of York, and a fabulous online organizational self-assessment tool that they’ve developed called Beyond Compliance: Accessibility Self-Assessment Tool. And it’s a tool where you can kind of do a bit of a self-audit and establish a baseline of how accessible your organization is. And then it has resources embedded within it to help organizations think about new initiatives or practices that help them get to the next level, to get beyond compliance, to create a more accessible organization, speaking to culture, leadership, and other key considerations in an organizational environment and dynamic. And we’re pleased to report that this is now officially transferred to us. It’s live, and we’ll be managing it going forward. All these resources are available for free—posted on our new and improved Accessibility Website, so if you haven’t been on the site lately, have another visit. We’ve got another key enhancement to it. There’s a new resources section, which now acts as a clearing-house for resources—ours and other organizations. And it has a broader range of information that includes you know some links to resources relating to all the standards under the Integrated Standard. It’s also a site you know where recordings of webinars like this are posted and a range of other resources.

Now, it’s my pleasure to introduce our experts.

Online we have Laura McKeen, Tricia Pokorny, and Jaclyn Krane.

Each expert has a unique perspective and will give you a bit of a background on themselves. And answer the question, where should employers start, in terms of becoming an accessible/inclusive employer?

So, Tricia, I’ll introduce you first.

Tricia Pokorny: Okay.

Ruth: Tricia is the Senior Manager of Accessibility at OLG, Ontario Lottery and Gaming where she’s responsible for interpreting and implementing the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act, province-wide. Tricia is a true pioneer in providing accommodations to persons with disabilities. Prior to joining OLG in 2009, Tricia was at Casino Niagara, Fallsview Resort, for 13 years where she developed and managed an award-winning diversity and accessibility program. We actually had the opportunity back then to visit. Tricia has been an active—has been very active in employer/accessibility networks and is much sought after for advice and public speaking.

So, welcome, Tricia.

Tricia: Thank you.

Ruth: I’ll now introduce Laura McKeen. Laura is a partner at Cohen Highley LLP. And she is a litigation lawyer with a focus on residential tenancies, municipal planning and zoning and expropriations. Laura provides practical advice to businesses about the Accessibility for Ontarians Disability Act. She’s also the champion for accessible employment practices within her own firm, so she brings two great perspectives and has really been a leader in this space. In 2015, Laura was selected by Business London as a recipient for the 20 under 40 Award. Congratulations, Laura.

And she’s been an incredible and generous resource for us, so welcome, Laura.

Laura McKeen: Thank you, Ruth.

Ruth: And last, but definitely not least, it’s my pleasure to introduce Jaclyn Krane. Jaclyn’s the Manager of the Workplace Essential Skills Partnership, WESP, at the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work. CCRW is a fantastic resource. And, again, the organization that’s been very generous over the years in sharing its expertise.

Jaclyn is a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, and she’s responsible for managing the content and delivery of the WESP group-based workshops. She’s also responsible for conducting outreach activities with employers, with post-secondary institutions and fellow non-profit organizations. So, welcome, Jaclyn.

Jaclyn Krane: Thank you, Ruth.

Ruth: Okay. And to the questions.

First of all, you know one of the questions I frequently get is—how do I frame the business benefits of making our organizations accessible for people with disabilities, and what are some of the benefits—my question would get—from hiring employees with disabilities?

And you know to deal with that we’ve got—as I’ve mentioned—great material on our website on the business case. But you know aside from being an incredible, loyal, highly-qualified reservoir of talent, you know think about the one business buzz word that we hear constantly—innovation. We need people who are going to think out of the box. And organizations that continually try to clone themselves are organizations that are heading for extinction.

So, you know, the question is, why are we so afraid of difference? And bringing Tricia, Laura, and Jaclyn in, what are some of the most common myths and misperceptions that employers have with regards to employing people with disabilities? I want to begin with Tricia and then we’ll follow with Jaclyn and Laura.

Tricia: I think one of the big misconceptions is, first and foremost, is that we—we make a lot of assumptions about persons with disabilities. Some of those may be things, such as they’re not able, or they’re unwilling to work, that they’re not reliable, that there will always be someone there that has to help them, it’ll be a considerable expense to accommodate the individual, you know, they have a—they’ll have a higher absentee rate, that we can’t put them in a position—we don’t want to put them in a position where they’ll fail, which you know we don’t want them to fail, but when we all go into the workplace, we may come up with challenges that we have to work our ways around and figure out, so persons with disabilities are capable of doing that as well, they’ve done that their entire life.

Ruth: And, Jaclyn, you’re in and out of different employers, organizations, all the time. What’s—what’s your perception?

Jaclyn: Mm hmm. Thanks, Ruth. And so, one of the statements I often begin presentations with is, you know if you think of the number of people that are currently in your workplace that have a disability, I would say multiply it by a minimum of 5, maybe even by 10, because chances are there are so many people that you work with every day—work over, work under, supervise, train—who have disabilities, and you’re just not aware of it.

But, in fact, working with people with disabilities is not—does not have to be a huge conundrum, does not have to be anxiety provoking, and I think that’s one of the—the biggest myths is immediately managers sort of have to take a step back and sort of breathe in sharply and think, oh, no, this is going to be costly, complicated, what if I do the wrong thing, what if I say the wrong thing, is this going to lead to legal action, and all of a sudden it becomes all of these anxieties.

And, ultimately, I say, you’re already doing it. You just don’t know that you’re doing it. So, I think that that’s sort of one of the first pieces to re-assure people is the fact that you’re already likely accommodating people with disabilities, and you’re probably already doing a relatively not too terrible job of it, and you just don’t know that you’re doing it. So, I think that that’s my little added piece there.

Ruth: Good point. It’s just fundamentally good people practices, and you’re probably doing it. Laura, anything to add?

Laura: I think one of the things that I get asked a lot—I think particularly as a lawyer—is concerns about those risk-management issues. Concerns that if you are hiring someone with a disability, you won’t have the ability to fire them. They’re—that your—somehow your hands are going to be tied, and you’re going to inevitably end up in a situation of litigation or extreme cost. And what I respond with is that’s simply just not backed up by the evidence, that this is a myth that is out there that is, you know, causing a barrier to employers where there is this untapped pool, of where there is this potential.

And where the reality is that you know—as Jaclyn said—you are already employing people with disabilities. Many disabilities are invisible, and many common-sense business practices are being used by employers to provide accommodations without even realizing it.

Ruth: For sure. Okay. Well, let’s start with the first stage of people’s careers. It’s—and the first steps in the people process, and that’s identifying and sourcing places to find great talent, recruiting, and on boarding people with disabilities. I mean, here I think the standard seems quite straightforward. It’s just about being a bit more proactive in communicating the availability of accommodations. Is there anything else to this in terms of the law, Laura, and what’s your perception of how employers are doing here?

Laura: I think employers are doing a good job here. This is found in the Integrated Standards. It’s at Sections 22, 23, and 24 of the Regulations. And what—you know, it’s common sense. It just needs to become part of the script that’s used generally for the individual who’s making the call to notify prospective applicants and prospective—those applicants that are invited for an interview—that accommodations are available upon request. So, making it a habit to put that into the job ads, making a habit to put it as part of the script when—when people are being invited in for an interview. And then putting in, in the job offers, as part of your written offer of employment, that successful applicants, where they can find information about the company’s policies on accommodations.

Ruth: Thank you. Jaclyn, in our research—here’s something I’ve come across a few times—we hear from employers that people with disabilities don’t apply, and then when we talk to employment service agencies, people that support people with disabilities getting into the work force, they tell us they can’t get their candidates past the employer’s screens.

So, if I’m an employer, how can I tap into good talent sources for people with disabilities? How and where can I source them?

Jaclyn: That’s a great question, Ruth. And, truthfully, I think it’s a question that applies not just for people with disabilities, but I think it’s something that talent managers often face is, how do I—how do I source that really good talent pool, how do I find those really good candidates, and so I’ll share with you one of the models that we use at our WESP Program.

And what we find is—we actually have on staff someone with a role of job developer. And what they act—is basically like a liaison between all of our job candidates who are highly qualified, and professional, and seeking employment in their field of interest—with different employers who are actively looking to hire those candidates. And so, what we encourage—and we’re talking about very large-scale organizations or companies that are looking to hire—and so, obviously, they have huge websites and huge portals, in terms of doing the applications online, because they’re managing thousands of applications just for each role that’s available.

So, in addition for our candidates to apply online using that online portal, what we found tends to be a benefit is for our job developer to reach around and often reach out to the recruitment advisor who’s overseeing the posting and to say, you know, we saw this posting and here are our top three candidates, in our honest opinion. And here are their resumes, and you’ll see their resumes online. They’ve gone through the regular process. But for your review, here are the three applications, and we’re going to now leave it in your hands.

And we find by doing that dual stream, the recruiters tend to appreciate it, because it does sort of give them an FYI, in terms of which applications to start with.

For our job seekers, it also helps them to know that we are helping in any way that we can, in terms of getting their application to at least be fully considered, and at the same time we haven’t talked anything about disabilities. So, we would never share any confidential information. It’s simply just a method of highlighting those applications for further review. And that models tends to really, really work, and you sort of have the large-scale approach as well as the individual networking approach.

But I realize it obviously might only apply for our program, but I share it so that if anyone is thinking—how could I do this, it is a way to think about it and the idea of really making those individual connections in addition to doing those large-scale recruitment campaigns. The dual stream tends to be the most efficient, from our experience.

Ruth: Okay. So just to recap a bit, Jaclyn, there, and what I find is that there’s your grass-roots kind of local-level service providers, stakeholders, networks and coalitions that you can tap into. And then also there are organizations like yours with a bit more national [indiscernible] or clout that can help on a broader level.

Jaclyn: Mm hmm. Exactly. And I think even when it comes to hiring needs, for companies to really put concrete goals in place. So, we often have companies come to us saying, you know we’re looking to recruit …

Ruth: Sorry, Jaclyn. Can I get you to speak up just a bit, please?

Jaclyn: Oh, sorry about that, Ruth.

Ruth: Thank you.

Jaclyn: Can you hear me now?

Ruth: Yep.

Jaclyn: Oh, I’m sorry about that. Sorry. So, as I was saying, we often have companies come to us saying we’re looking to increase the number of people with disabilities working in our companies, and I often say, well, what does that look like? How many, or what percentage, and by what time frame, and in which kinds of roles? And then with that, I say, well, how have you been recruiting those roles in the past? What strategies have worked? What strategies have not worked? And for the ones that have worked, how can we put a disability focus on it or a disability spin? How can we encourage people with disabilities perhaps to disclose earlier in the recruitment process?

Anyone with a disability can disclose at any point, but I imagine from—from oftentimes from the company’s perspective, they would like to know sooner rather than later in case there are any accommodations that can be made, rather than taking a reactive approach. So, I find that that often tends to help too. It’s just by starting off with that kind of conversation.

Ruth: Mm hmm. Okay. Well, Tricia, you’re an employer. OLG is a large employer, and, you know, you’ve got facilities all over Ontario, and you’re recruiting at different levels. So how do you make sure that candidates with disabilities make it through your screening process, and what do you do from a broader corporate level and maybe supporting your facilities at the local level?

Tricia: Well, at the local level, you know, we—often our recruitment teams, you know, they can look out at what’s in your own back yard.  So, any of the agencies, social-service agencies that we have within our own cities, whether it’s CNIB, Ontario March of Dimes, the Quadriplegic Society, the Canadian Hearing Society, you know, we can—we can reach out to them to see, you know, what—who are their clients and vice versa. How—what are the jobs that we’re seeking out, and what sort of qualifications do you need for those jobs? And then, hopefully, between ourselves and the social-service agencies, we can—you know they’ll be a good match.

And so, obviously, knowing, you know, the functional assessments of the positions and what would work best in those positions is a good—is a good resource.

But also, knowing that your staff understands that we need to have accessible postings, both online and if we have them say on a bulletin board that they’re at an appropriate height for persons maybe that are short in stature or in wheelchairs. The online component is very important. That candidates can get into the portals, and be able to navigate through those portals, fill in the forms. Not be restricted by time, you know, with a countdown as to, you’ve got 10 seconds left to finish this form. You know making them—making those forms accessible to candidates is really important.

So, you need to have that equal balance between—with your staff—letting them know this is how is best—it’s best to work with persons with disabilities and have them feel comfortable and be able to approach individuals, discuss with them, you know, what the job is all about. And, perhaps, you know, working with the agencies to have mock interview sessions. So, you’re bridging that gap between what social-service agencies feel is appropriate for a job candidate and what the employer feels is appropriate and, you know, matching those two together, so you’ve got a strong candidate coming in for the interview.

Ruth: Okay. Laura, is there anything that you want to add to that? You’re employing, I suppose, at a, you know, national scope and at the local level.

Laura: I would just add from—from our firm’s perspective, we try to keep the accommodation process in terms of the recruitment process separate from the individuals making the hiring decisions so that, you know, there isn’t any—so we can minimize as much as possible any bias that might—you know unintentional bias that might be present during an interview, in terms of persons with disabilities. So, that the individual who makes the accommodation—or deals with the accommodation during the recruitment process—is not the individual that’s making the hiring decision.

Ruth: Okay. Let’s talk about onboarding, and then I’m going to come back to a couple of questions that have come up from our participants.

There’s probably a little less specifically about onboarding in the Act, but is there anything that employers should do differently to onboard an employee with a disability? For instance, Tricia, if you know that a job candidate coming in has a disability, is there a process that kicks in? Is there something you do different? Or is really situational?

Tricia: Well, our recruiters would ask when they’re reaching out to set up an interview, as an example. They would, you know, they’d ask the candidate, do you have any special accommodations that we should take into consideration for the interview process?

So, as an example, if a hearing impaired or totally deaf candidate needs an American Sign Language interpreter, that that gives our recruitment team an opportunity to reach out to one of the interpreters that we work with and have them come in for—to assist during the interview process.

And, you know the same—the same idea if, you know, somebody who has a visual impairment, maybe they come in and need assistance to the room where they’re being interviewed. The com-, I think the easiest thing is to have the recruiters just be very—be very natural and at ease about it, and if they’re not sure on how to handle these individuals with their various disabilities, ask them, you know, how may I help you? And people are pretty—pretty up-front in telling you, you know, I’ll take your elbow. You walk ahead of me. I just walk a couple steps behind you and just sort of describe briefly, you know, where we’re going, what we’re—what we’re encountering, that sort of thing. So, everyone feels at ease and isn’t uptight and making all the—

>> Mm hmm.

Tricia:—feeling they’re making all the wrong moves and saying all the wrong things.

Ruth: Yes. And nobody is expected to be an expert in all the disabilities out there, and I find the internet is a wonderful thing. I mean, if you’re asking the right questions, as you said, in advance, then the resources are out there …

Tricia: Mm hmm.

Ruth:—for very specific disabilities and what, you know, might, generically, be required there.

So here—here’s a question I have then for all three of you.

With your different perspectives—whether it’s from a risk perspective or just a good management perspective—what kind of training should be provided to managers?

How do we prepare them to accommodate employees?

So maybe we’ll start with Tricia there. Do you have specific training that you provide, like is it—is it situational, you provide it when you know that somebody is coming in to a work group, or do you do broader education?

Tricia: We—I’ve done various different training with staff over the years. Currently, at OLG, we have a program that anybody that—existing within the organization right now has this mandatory training, which is put out—which we get off of the IESR, under the AODA. We put some training together to explain disability, how to work with disabilities, and how to accommodate, that sort of thing. It’s also mandatory that after 60 days—if you’ve been hired just recently, after 60 days of being employed, you have to take that mandatory training. So, everyone in our organization, from the top all the way—all the way down to the bottom, everybody gets this training.

So, it doesn’t matter what position you hold, where you are in the province, you get the training. In other situations, that I’ve been—I’ve worked in—we’ve done training where we give almost like a sensitivity-awareness training where we identify certain types of disabilities with the understanding that, you know, you’re only going to imagine what it’s like to be in this disability for a day.

However, these are some of the things you may encounter when you’re in a certain position, perhaps with a certain disability. So, it gives them that challenge of, you know, how do you communicate if you’re deaf to somebody who has full hearing? How do you communicate with somebody who is blind, how do you walk with them, how do you interact with them? Same thing with people in wheelchairs, people with learning disabilities, people with mental illness.

So, you know, we’ve worked a bunch of different disabilities, but the key—the key to all of this training is that the end of this training, these folks are stepping out of their disabilities, whereas, if you have the disability, it’s a lifelong situation that you contend with day in and day out. So, keep that in the forefront and not forget that the disability doesn’t go away. It’s always—you know, it’s your shadow. It’s with you all the time.

Ruth: Yeah. Walk a mile in my shoes.

Tricia: Yes.

Ruth: Okay. Laura, anything to add from maybe even a legal perspective? Is there something that managers need to know or the general work force?

Laura: I think you know the training compon