The Representation Edition: Hire People With Disabilities
Creative Spirit US
A staggering 85% of those with intellectual disabilities are unemployed. Creative Spirit creates integrated employment.
Do you think you're looking to include neurodiverse employees in your organization fully?
Our consultants will demonstrate how hiring people with disabilities can improve your company culture, employee engagement, and bottom line.
Creative Spirit Provides Training Opportunities for All Employers
Basic Training includes Building Awareness Around Hiring People with Disabilities.
Creative Spirit is built to benefit both neurodiverse candidates and employers. Suppose you're a neurodivergent candidate seeking employment. In that case, we provide ongoing mentorship, job placement opportunities, and support to help you expand your professional experience and take the next step in your career. If you're an employer looking to make your workplace more inclusive of people with disabilities, we are well-equipped with the resources and the pipeline of candidates to help you achieve that goal. We offer: \
Basic Training: Builds awareness of the current employment situation for individuals who are neurodivergent. Educates teams to eliminate stigmas and misconceptions and to recognize neurodiverse talent.
Expanded Training for TA and HR teams on how to hire neurodiverse employees and include them in the workforce. We will help with the following:
- Recruiting
- Interviewing
- Hiring
- Onboarding
- Mentorship
- Coaching
Cohort Training: enables employer partners to build their capacity for disability inclusion, equity, and access. The goal is to improve the capability and expertise of the organization around disability inclusion. We will help your business "hire different" by developing strategies to include employees who are neurodivergent in your workforce. Our mission is to connect candidates with career opportunities to help them utilize their skills and develop professionally. By working with Creative Spirit, your business will considerably impact employment for people with disabilities while reaching the forefront of innovation by drawing on neurodiverse talent.
Why Are Only 12% of Companies Focused on Disabilities Inclusion?
A 2017 Kessler Foundation/University of New Hampshire study surveyed over 3,000 U.S. employers and found that only 12% of companies have prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for employees with disabilities. This is partially due to the stigma surrounding disabilities, myths about the cost of providing reasonable accommodations, and other harmful stereotypes. "Many companies are having difficulty finding qualified candidates," Rodger DeRose, President, and CEO of Kessler Foundation, has said, according to Kessler Foundation.org, "but are underutilizing practices that can help them achieve these goals. Companies that partner with a disability organization, for example, find this practice overwhelmingly effective for meeting their recruitment needs. Only 27%, however, engage in this practice, although most supervisors see this practice as feasible." For business leaders, partnering with Creative Spirit can be genuinely transformative. With our pipeline of candidates ready and able to work, our coaching and mentoring services, and our partnerships with other organizations, we bring the creativity and innovation that will truly make a difference.
People With Disabilities (PWD) Representation in Media: How Can You Help?
26% of Americans live with a disability but are seen in only 1% of primetime ads.
“Most of the time, disability is absent from advertising, except when focused on products that treat disabilities. Rarely do ads show disabled people in everyday life, such as working, parenting, doing household chores, or enjoying activities. In a custom analysis of Nielsen Ad Intel data, we looked at nearly 450,000 broadcast and cable TV primetime ads in February 2021. Of those ads, just 1% represented disability-related themes, visuals, or topics.”
3% of ads in primetime went to ads inclusive of disability.
From Nielson.com: “Our analysis found that ad spends inclusive of people with a disability and disability-related themes in February totaled nearly $57 million, but just 3% went to ads featuring disabled people, or that were inclusive of disability themes in the creative.”
Advertisers can showcase people with disabilities in everyday life, engaging with brands' products and services.
“A recent Nielsen survey found that people with a disability are more likely to feel that there is insufficient representation of their identity group on TV. The lack of representation in linear TV and advertising, which reaches more than 80% of the adult U.S. population, may be why disabled social media influencers and creators often carry the weight of rewriting the narrative around the media’s presentation of disability” - ibid.
How Brands and Agencies Can Represent the Disability Community
Feeling Seen USA analyzes 58 U.S. ads that bring diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) to the forefront. Of these ads, nearly one-third (31%) showcased people with disabilities, including those who are blind, deaf, and have a physical disability.
(Source: According to Accenture and DisabilityIN, companies that champion disability inclusion.)
How to Hire Different
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2yAs a neuroscientist that works in HR, this is a moral that is actionable. Stigma is a word that should be taken out of most conversations I believe, because it more often than not is a word that can take a hit to those with disabilities' self-confidence, the confidence they never waver on until they start believing the thoughts of people that don't matter. When they start BELIEVING in the thoughts of those that matter ( such as you all at Creative Spirit US ) they will see that it's not the people lacking in all empathy. In my research they may lack empathy for the stigma because to be empathetic or have compassion a part of ones character seems to correlate with the people's thoughts that don't matter, due to not be educated or knowledgable enough to even have a thought about it. With that said even without being educated or knowledgable of certain dissabilities, people, yes, can still have some empathy and compassion, if they are self-aware ( and not purposefully ignorant ). A self-aware person is exactly the type of coach or mentor a person with dissabilities deserves if they seek it.