Employer Best Practices in Employing People with Disabilities Presented by Susanne Bruyere and Lisa Nishii, Cornell University >> JACQUIE: Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to today's webcast Employer Best Practices Employing People with Disabilities. Our speakers will be examining workplace factors that may contribute to ongoing barriers in the successful hiring and retention and career advancement of employees with disabilities. Our presenters today are Susanne Bruyere and Lisa Nishii from Cornell University and they will be presenting this webcast. Susanne Bruyere is the Director of the Employment and Disability Institute and Associate Dean at Outreach at Cornell University of Industrial and Labor Relations- Extension division. And Professor Lisa Nishii joined the ILR school as an Assistant Professor more than five years ago. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of Maryland. She has expertise in both workplace diversity and inclusion. And you can read more about them on our webcast page. This webcast is sponsored by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, NIDRR, who funds your host for this webcast at this Southwest DBTAC center. I am Jacquie Brennan and I'm with the ILRU project DBTAC center. I will be assisting with today's presentation. For those of you listening to the webcast today, click on the E-mail button on your screen or you can E-mail your questions directly to swdbtac@ilru.org. If you have any technical difficulties today, please feel free to call us at (713)520-0232. And again, thank you for joining us. Now I'm pleased to go ahead and introduce our speakers. I turn it over to you. >> SUSANNE: Thank you, Jacquie, and thank you for the opportunity for Lisa and I to join you today. We hope that you find this information interesting and useful. We have a 30-slide PowerPoint available on the website. We will be talking to you from those slides. If you don't have them, we hope you will have them for future reference. Our objectives -- I'm on slide No. 3 if you have a copy of this today. As Jacquie mentioned, we want to examine workplace factors that can contribute to identify on going barriers in the hiring and the retention of people with disabilities. We want to look at these things that mediate these barriers. Also with engagement with people with disabilities. We will look at workplace factors as well today. Slide No. 4, this is an important topic for focus for a number of reasons. Cornell University has been involved in workplace research, research on employment with people with disabilities for many years. The IRL school is a workplace studies college at Cornell University so this is a topic important to us and it's important because people with disabilities continue to be significantly unemployed or underemployed compared to their nondisabled peers. Also if we look at employment discrimination claims, we continue to see that people receive discrimination. It's important for us to pay attention to these issues. And finally with the recent September passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act amendment, it provides us with an opportunity to reexamine and improve upon workplace problems. This is important because not only for the needs for people with disabilities, but also an aging work force is going to be ever more important for employers to understand what accommodation means and how to respond to requests from employees and people with disabilities. These topics, will be covering six topics today. I will give you some information on the employment gap is for people with disabilities and we're going to talk about areas both disability-type and parts of the employment process where claims of discrimination indicate to us where people were experiencing disability discrimination and we are going to talk about then, continuing barriers and ways to address them. From research all of these pieces of information and from research conducted at Cornell University using a variety of sources and information and all of this research has been funded by, again, the same funding agency the Department of Education National Institute on Educational Research. We will also talk about disability and culture and disability inclusion. I think one of the ways we like to show how compelling the topic is is to show the continuing disparity in employment for people with disabilities in comparison with their peers. Slide No. 6 is a way to get that idea across. If you look at slide No. 6, the employment gap we are looking at ages 21 through 64. This information is taken from the American Community Survey and was calculated at Cornell University. It shows that people with disabilities are employed about half the rate of the nondisabled peers. 37% and down to 43%. Staggered difference and it points to the need to pay attention to what are the factors keeping us from employing people with disabilities and having them experience the same opportunities in the workplace as their nondisabled peers. This work, let me just say, comes from the Disability Demographics and Statistics Rehabilitation Research Center at Cornell University. Moving on to slide 7, another way of looking at data other than national trend data, how many people with disabilities are participating in the working force and another way to look at why we are having problems is to look at where claims are being filed in disability employment discrimination. So we have several slides here from research that we're conducting now using the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge data system and we have data for 15 years and this gives us a snap shot of that research. It helps frame why Lisa and I want to have this conversation around the importance of looking at workplace policy practices around human resource practices, managerial practices and workplace climate and inclusion practices. The first of these slides talks about the type of disabilities where people are more often filing claims. As you might be able to see from this chart if you have it in front of you we are looking at percentage points from 0 to 18% and over the course of the last 15 years, we're looking at the top five. Orthopedic back impairment has been one of the highest, and second regarded as disabled, third is orthopedic again. Fourth is depression and five diabetes. That is the order of priority. The orthopedic back impairment has been highest and now being rivaled with disabled in terms of the number of claims being filed at about 14% regarded as disabled and about 9% for structural back impairment. Another thing to look at when looking at parts of the employment process where discrimination may occur and the EEOC gives us some information about that as well. This has been true across the last 15 years since 1993 when these charges were being compiled that on average half of the charges come in a discharge process and that continues to be true. The other highest areas are in reasonable accommodation at about 25%, terms and conditions at about 20%, harassment between 10 and 15% and the hiring process 10% or a little less. These are parts of the employment process where people are perceiving distinction and filing claims with the EEOC or their state Fair Employment Protection Agency. Slide No. 9 provides again, a little different information but also taken from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge data and that is to show us relative to other populations the number of claims that are being filed by people with disabilities. It's significantly higher than other protected groups relative to that population. The number of charges by each of the statutes in this slide for 10,000 people using labor force class across this 15 years. The trends are pretty much the same although they are fluctuating from year to year. They are higher for other populations. Not in terms of sheer numbers, but in charges by statute compared to age discrimination statistics, Title 7 and Title 7 for race and ethic employment discrimination charges. So this slide particularly tells us that it is very important for us to take a look at people's experience of workplace discrimination and important for us to take a look at how that might compare to experiences of other populations and Cornell is just beginning to look at this research and we will tell you more about that as we move along in our presentation today. I'm moving on to slide No. 9. Slide No. 9 is an overarching slide that I like to share in this types of presentations because I think it shows some of the work we have done at Cornell University. We know that many, many things go into employment success. Or a persons difficulty in workplace and we are trying to attend those different factors. Accessing employment and staying in employment. There are systematic factors that we are focusing on today and other factors like impediments to employment. We listed a number of these. Under public policy factors we have talked about and done research on Social Security benefits, work incentives, nondiscrimination legislation and work force development initiatives, particularly those focused on access for people with disabilities. Organizational factors for successful access for employment for people with disabilities are those by service providers, or the community-based support services provided for people with disabilities and specifically employer organizational factors within the employment setting or workplace setting in policy practices. Individual factors might be impediments, prior experience, prior training. We will talk about employer practices as we move along in this presentation in just a moment. I am now going to move on talking a bit. We talked just now about employment trends for people with disabilities over the last 15 years. We talked about people's perception as demonstrated by the charge data of discrimination and now we're going to move to some research that reflects employer's perspectives. This is research supported again by NIDRR, but also by the U.S. Department of Labor task force and we have conducted surveys specifically with human resource professionals and we think it's important to share a little bit about that. There are reports on the Cornell website, that we believe points to what has become our next generation of research and I think helps us to share with you our listeners today, why we are focusing on some of the new research we are focusing on from our prior work being informed from employers that they are finding as problematic. Slide No. 7 provides information on parts of particular issues for employers, where they have found it difficult to make modifications in response to the Americans with Disabilities Act in their employment process. And we have areas reporting difficulties or very difficult to make select changes. Both in fact federal sector and in the private sector. On this chart it suggests the areas where employers have told us where they have difficulties in knowing how to respond with accommodation requests and making information accessible for people with hearing impairments and visual impairments. 25% of our private sector employers found it difficult or reported difficulty for hearing impairment and about a third for those with visual impairment. These issues historically delves more deeply into this and found it was a problem in making print materials accessible and use of sign language interpreters and more contemporary further discussions with employers these issues in responding effectively with sensory impairments in terms to access to websites and to have intensive work and computers for not only work-related activities but employee access activities to benefit to train within the organization. So being able to effectively deal with the accommodation requirements for people with sensory impairments is very important and continues to be something that we focus on at Cornell and have implications for the aging work force going forward. Now I'm moving on to slide No. 12. It continues to be from this research and surveys of HR professionals in both the private and the federal sectors. This slide is those survey responding the greatest barriers to employment or advancement in the organization were people with disabilities. For both of these populations it was even for in the federal sector. One in five of our people responding say this is a problem and two in five in the federal sector. So this is one of the things that points for us toward the importance of looking at workplace factors that we will speak to in just a moment. I want to also mention that there are other things that would suggest to us that we need to do more work with managers and supervisors from that supervisory knowledge of about how to make accommodations was also an area of concern. About one in three in both private and federal sectors said this was an issue. So continuing to educate and inform managers is imperative for us to be effective in getting people into the workplace and keeping them there. Also areas of concern, which we won't address a great deal today but will just mention is the perception of people with disabilities having appropriate related experience and training and skills was also an area of significant concern. This is something that certainly we continue to work on in the public policy area trying to address federal access to education and to work force initiatives and I think it's worthy of mentioning here although we will not focus on it, there are employers providing equitable opportunities for people with disabilities to maintain and upgrade their skills in a competitive work environment. I'm now moving on to slide No. 13. Again, still part of this research is one of the questions we ask is not only the barriers but ways to address the barriers and impediments for people with disabilities. And here we see the very area that both of our respondents and private and federal sector felt was imperative was visible top management commitment to these issues. This is very important. One of the reasons why we think it's important to have top management commitment for an inclusive climate. We will talk more about that a little bit later on. Although we focused on this item about visible top management commitment, we also want to say that top management here doesn't just mean the owners are executives but managerial and supervisors and dealing with best practices throughout the organization. Also on this chart there's a high responding rate showing confidence in mentors as a way to address workplace discrimination that people experience in the workplace and we are beginning to do some research in this area, too. It would suggest that having a mentor is really important in creating a safe pathway within the workplace to minimize discrimination and maximize the way to execute one's job. Lisa will talk more about that. It's interesting to us that our research suggests that that's something we should focus on. Moving on to slide 14 All this prior research for us is leading us to this next generation of work and we are also being compelled to move in new directions with emerging work issues. I'm going to show you some statistics that support this for us in a second. Employers are going to be asked ever more to make accommodations to retain an aging work force. As all of us age, we do have more challenges often with our visual and hearing capability. Disabilities become more common as we age and also to upper extremity issues due to our arthritic problems. So to retain the aging force it's important for managers to respond to requests. Inclusion is a very important factor and we ever more understand the importance of for the successful employment of diverse populations of all kinds including aging and people with disabilities. We believe workplace should be a focus. Before we move on to some of those topics, I would like to share with you some statistics to suggest this is very important because we do have an aging work force so attending to this issue and knowing about accommodation is imperative. Now on slide 15, which presents some statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau that were analyzed by a Cornell colleague, the 45 to 54-year-old population is projected to grow by 17% and 35 million or 39% in the next ten years. This will account for nearly half of the working population. By that we mean the 20-64 year-old group will double by 2010. It's imminently upon us. The possibility of it grows with age. Certainly workplaces will be confronted and required to respond to this group. That means by 2010 that people will almost double and will be significantly larger than at any other age. Slide 16 provides a visual of those statistics, those demographics that I was just sharing with you showing from age 20 up to people in their 80s how there's a natural growth in age. We should be able to respond more readily to accommodation needs and slide 17 shows that by the year 2010 we will be experiencing a larger group of people who may have accommodation needs in our work force by the fact of our demographics we will have a proportionally higher number of people from the 50 to 70-year-old group who maybe retained in our workplace and need us to respond effectively to accommodation needs. Now I'm going to pause there for a moment and I think, Jacquie, Lisa and I would like to take questions now. >> JACQUIE: I believe I have four questions that have come in. The first one references slide 7, but the question is why do you think regarded as claims has increased significantly when the other four areas remain static or decrease? >> SUSANNE: You want to take these one at a time? >> JACQUIE: Sure. >> SUSANNE: I don't think we know specifically why it's getting higher. We can certainly conjecture why that might be but maybe as we get through culture issues. I think one reason is that 15 years have gone by since the ADA employment provisions came into place and I think people are becoming more aware of their rights and more quickly recognizing when they may be perceived even if they don't have a disability and to raise a charge of discrimination. That's a hypothesis and not something we know from research. We do know that we certainly work hard and DBTAC has contributed to that work, worked hard to inform people with disabilities of their rights and employers of their responsibilities over these 15 years and that may mean that we see more people filing claims where perhaps may have not thought they had the right to do that. >> JACQUIE: This one says do you think the ADA amendments act will change these trends much? As an HR professional, I am concerned about this new law. >> SUSANNE: That certainly remains to be seen. That's a terrific question and as I indicated early on I think these conversations like the one today you have afforded us today are important in view of the legislation. We don't know exactly how that will play out in the workplace. I think it's terrific that human resource professionals are listening today and are asking for more information about that because it is an expanded definition and it means that people who may not have previously raised questions about accommodations or rights of a protected person may do so now. So I think the effective causes and practices that we will encourage through our conversation today are ones that HR professionals should take seriously and try to put in place a structure that will then minimize the likelihood of actual discrimination or perceived discrimination by people with disabilities. >> JACQUIE: I will take this moment to plug our webcast next week and you can get more information about that. The next one is you mentioned sign language interpreters. Do many employers offer ASL interpreters as an accommodation on anything more than an ad hoc basis for a meeting now and then? ASL interpreters can be expensive to have the hire full time. >> SUSANNE: We did not ask about -- in our prior research we did not ask about sheer number of use with setting people who were using sign language interpreters. In an ad hoc way it varies greatly from employer to employer. I think some employers do just use sign language interpreters for specific targeted meetings and not every day exchanges. Other employers actually do have sign language interpreters as part of their core HR activities and they are much more readily available for more types of day-to-day events and access by people with disabilities who are employees in a given organization. So the spectrum is large. But there are certainly some employers that do integrate and keep interpreters for more than just the periodic select meeting. >> JACQUIE: This question says very interesting research. I would like to hear more about the aging/disability issues. I worry about that as our employees age. Can you discuss some specific strategies for accommodating the older population who have related disabilities? >> SUSANNE: That's a topic on to itself, Jacquie. This is what I will say broadly. The comments I make about the aging work force is not to alarm. If I am, I am appreciative to be able to say that this is not something to be alarmed about but send us to proactive activity. Our aging work force are a precious resource and with the demographics right now we need to keep aging workers in place. We have an opportunity to do so. We have learned a lot in the last 15 years through the Americans with Disabilities Act. We can apply those to the working age force. Both in time and location, about to use augmentation devices that don't have to be very expensive for visual and hearing losses. There are easy low-cost resources to do that. I encourage you to use your local resources around for sensory impairments and the experience of the employee and the aging work force. That does not need to happen. >> JACQUIE: I think that's all we have right now. >> SUSANNE: Thank you, Jacquie. So we are at a place where we would like to move on to focus on workplace culture. With this I'll just make a few opening comments. I am pleased to have with me Lisa Nishii who has been working with us on helping us to inform our prior research with a new look with workplace culture as a focus. We think that's an important next step for Cornell. It was focused on culture context in the environment. The way to create a real experience of inclusion with people with disabilities, it is a much needed area. We need research now on how a company's culture is affected. And by culture, Lisa will tell you more about that. By culture we mean the values, the norms, the policies and practices that facilitate or hinder the inclusion in the full engagement of people with disabilities. It's definitely time for us to do that. And with me we have someone to very much help us to understand how we might do that using best practices from what we know from diversity research and inclusion research for other populations. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to Lisa. >> LISA: Thank you. Hello, everybody. I'm not sure I can answer all the questions about culture but I can get us thinking more about the factors within organizations that are likely to influence the experiences that people with disabilities have once they are hired. I would like to start with slide 19. I would like to point out our observation within the research and within the organization and that is it seems with all the attention that we have right now to diversity issues, a specific kind of integration of issues related to people with disabilities is often lacking from the larger diversity discussions. So we definitely see this in the research. There's a heavy emphasis on race and gender issues, but there isn't a sufficient kind of integration of disability-related issues from our perspective. And I think that is also true maybe to a lesser extent to organizations to diversity and initiative also focus on race and gender issues more so than issues for people with disabilities, which might be treated sometimes as a separate issue. We think there's a lot to gain by talking about these issues together in large part because we have learned quite a bit in the last 15 to 20 years about the factors to organizations that influence the experiences of what some people call nontraditional employees. This really explains the partnership that we have developed. Susanne is an expert on disabilities and I have been focusing on diversity issues. We are trying with our partnership to get this integration out there in literature and the practice a little bit more. So for now what I'm going to talk about in regard to workplace culture and inclusion is drawn more generally from the diversity area. So I'll be extrapolating what we know from that research what is likely to be important for people with disabilities. Earlier on slide 9, Suzanne showed us a graph on how percentage of people who filed charges are about significantly higher than the percentages for gender, age and race. I think that these findings suggest that what I'm about to talk about comes from the diversity research more generally are likely to be even stronger for people with disabilities. So I turn now to slide 20, and I would like to just start by talking about inclusion. What is it? I'm sure most of you have heard people switching kind of their language from a focus on diversity to inclusion. Sometimes they are talked about today. Some say D and I for diversity and inclusion. I think there hasn't been sufficient attention to really differentiating the two. What is the switch? Why are we talking now about inclusion? What is the difference between inclusion and diversity? And the way I see it is diversity focuses much more on EEOC claims and on representation and on access discrimination. That is, getting people into the organization. But the focus that we see now on inclusion takes that one step further. So it focuses on the experiences that people have once they enter the organization so the more subtle forms of discrimination that they might experience. The idea here is getting people into organizations is, of course, critical. It's very, very important. If they continued to experience exclusion at some point, our work is not done. We need to understand why they are not included once they are in the organization. A question we might ask is do people have to assimilate in order to accepted? Do they have to show some form of their true identity in order to blend in and fit in? Is that the only way that people can be accepted and move ahead? If that's the case, the environment cannot be considered inclusive. Our differences changes in our culture. Are those differences seen as a source of learning? They should be seen as -- you have all heard about the potential benefits associated with increasing demographic diversity within the work force. And all of that hinges on the assumption that all of us bring different ideas and perspectives to the workplace. We are diverse. And if we can utilize that great diversity of ideas and perspectives then we should arrive at better decisions but that will only be true if people are not checking their identity at the door when they come to work and it will only be true if those differences are valued and seen as a source of learning for the organizations. So these diverse ideas have been actively sought and utilized in order to improve organizational decision-making. There's a focus on learning and valuing these differences once they come into the organization. It's a very difficult thing to achieve. I'm not sure that many organizations have gotten there but certainly a lot of organizations are doing a lot to try to make their organizations more inclusive. I would like to turn to slide 21 and talk just a little bit about why inclusion matters so much and that is because the last 15 to 20 years of research clearly shows that when diversity increases, there are a number of negative outcomes associated with that. So stereotyping and group polarization can increase so people identify how they are different from oneself and they focus on that. When that happens we see higher levels of conflict between people and higher levels of tension within diverse groups. As a result, people report being less satisfied, and more stressful. People are more likely to turn over from the organization. It's obviously an unattractive scenario. And so the question now, this focus on inclusion is trying to avoid these things. To conclude this is always going to happen, to include that conflict will always be higher is a very frustrating conclusion to draw. We focus here on how to avoid that and more recent research is showing that indeed these negative effects, negative outcomes with diversity are greatly reduced when the work environment is inclusive. So when the climate is inclusive, and I will talk about what I mean by that, we see why people experience much lower levels of conflict and are able to work together much more harmoniously and the disadvantaged are much more engaged at work, much more likely to perform well and much more likely to stay and is what we are trying to achieve. Another point here is when managers are inclusive in the way they treat their subordinates we also see a reversal of these negative effects. I turn now to slide 22 to talk a little bit about the elements of an inclusive climate. So what do we mean by that? What does it look like when an organization has been able to create an inclusive climate? The first part of this is really a focus on the fairness and equity of employment practices. What I mean here is the extent to which the organization's HR practices ensure a fair and level playing field for all employees. So to point out the fact that when people feel mistreated by the organization's practices, they will be less inclined to engage themselves fully at work. If I'm not treated well, then I don't give back fully to the organization. There's an exchange that occurs between the organization and its employees. And, obviously, practices that are unfairly implemented will hamper representation in the long run by making it less likely that diverse people are hired and satisfied enough with their training and development, and pay and benefits, to stay. So really, this is a foundational issue and it's consistent with the historical focus on diversity managements. But this has to happen first. Absolutely has to happen. The second focus within inclusive climates is the openness of the work culture or work environment. That is openness to differences. It refers to the extent to which employees can be authentic and still be accepted and effective within the organization. Or is it the case that they have to assume a different identity when they go to work? I'm sure a lot of you have heard stories about people who put on a different kind of persona when they go to work because that's the only way they can blend in and therefore be accepted and do well. If people are doing that, they are leaving parts of themselves when they go to work. They are not fully engaged. We are all concerned with engagement and we are all concerned with that. Last part of an inclusive climate is this active inclusion and decision-making. The way the organization seeks and utilizes the ideas of its employees. For example, are people encouraged to use status quo thinking or are you punished when you disagree with what's been voiced? The quality of an idea, the value of an idea is just based on the quality of the idea itself and not who says it. I will turn now to slide 23 to talk about why inclusive climates matter. So research so far very clearly shows that when people experience an inclusive climate, they report higher levels of organizational commitment and satisfaction, and they report feeling much more supportive by the organization, much more cared for by the organization. And they feel like they can count on the organization to take care of them. We also see that people are more willing to engage in the kinds of citizenship behaviors that differentiate average companies from superior companies. There's a lot of research that says that it's when employees are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. That is above and beyond their narrow job descriptions to do what it takes to serve the organization, to serve co-workers and to serve customers so that an organization can enjoy superior performance. Employees hold back from engaging in those citizenship behaviors if they feel that the work contact is not inclusive. We also see that diverse groups with more inclusive climates indeed experience lower levels of conflict. And that's great because if diverse people are coming together and they are not experiencing conflict and they are able to say hey, why did I think you were different? Why did I think this was an issue at all? They are able to breakdown any stereotypes they may have had before. So it's a very powerful thing to do when a conflict might occur when diverse people come together. Another interesting finding is if conflict is experienced within an inclusive climate, that conflict is not seen as threatening. Traditionally over years and years of research we have seen that when people experience conflict they are less satisfied. They are more likely to leave a work group because it's stressful. But if in an inclusive environment, that conflict is not stressful. It can lead to higher levels of satisfaction because people are able to learn and grow from any conflict they experience because they fundamentally respect each other. So given that, organizations will be more able to capitalize on the benefits associated with increased diversity and to reduce negative outcomes that we have so far seen. People who have historically been disadvantaged, those negative experiences that they report will also be reduced. This is all great also because it means that organizations will be more eager to increase diversity of all types within their organization. I turn now to slide 24 to talk about the role of managers in creating inclusive climates. So managers play a huge role in determining the experiences of their subordinates. And we find that those managers who create inclusive climates are also the kind of managers who treat their employees with respect and dignity. They are sensitive to people's personal needs. Treats them as people. They are transparent about the decisions that they make, how they go about making those decisions. They are very careful about collecting accurate information when they make decisions so that they can reduce any unintentional biases. They are also concerned about the fairness of the outcomes. So the opportunities that people receive, the rewards they receive and the scheduling they receive within a unit they want those perceived as fair. They are also careful about doing what they say. This is a big one, I think. You hear employees complain a lot about that that management doesn't want to talk. It breaches their trust and lowers their engagement and so this is an important thing and needs to be flexible. Finally, managers who promote cooperation and highlight people's different backgrounds end up creating inclusive climates. I think some managers try to highlight people's similarities. But the fact of the matter is, we're different. And when managers can get people to really value those differences, you end up with different groups that function more effectively. I turn now to slide 25 and I'm going to switch what I'm talking about just a little bit. I just talked about how an organization's policies and practices and culture and norms largely determine how included a person might feel within an organization. But another main quality of inclusion is the quality of the relationship that he or she develops with his manager. When we look at these issues in research we use these 7 items that you see on slide 25 to assess whether a person is in the manager's in group. You will see where the employees will tell us the extent to which how satisfied my manager is with what I do. I feel my manager understands my needs. I feel my manager recognizes my potential and if necessary, my manager would use his or her power to help me. I can count on my manager to support me even if I'm in a tough situation at work. And also this goes the other way. It asks about how much the employee would support the manager's decision if even he or she was not present and then there's an overall question about having an effective relationship with my manager. These issues are important because we find, as I have here on the top of slides 26, we find very clearly that those employees who report having a high quality relationship with their manager, they have better access to resources, opportunities and responsibilities, they enjoy higher levels of commitment and satisfaction and engagement. And they experience lower levels of harassment and discrimination from co-workers. I find that last point particularly powerful because it suggests that when a manager develops a high-quality relationship with the subordinate that that subordinate has high status within the group. It receives protection of sorts from the manager. So this suggests that the manager can really play a big with role in counteracting some of the socio historical kind of base for biases by themselves treating employees as ingroup members. We also see that the overall pattern of inclusion in a managers in group. Are all people within the group included within the manager's in group or is it a case that some people are treated as in group members and other employees are treated as out group members? Those treated as out group members we find that feelings of resentment and exclusion can hamper cooperation, cohesion and harmony within the group and ultimately that can increase turnover and group performance and will make it more likely for those excluded to leave the company. So through their behaviors, managers really play a large role in determining whether employees participate as full rather than marginal of the group. I turn now to slide 27 to talk about other aspects of the workplace and culture that matter. I talked about the importance of creating inclusive climates and the importance of inclusive managers and while these are very central to the ideas of inclusion, there really are a myriad of factors that need to be attended to in creating the kind of environment that can facilitate the full engagement of people with disabilities. The first category is the importance of people's experiences with and perceptions of HR practices. So this can be assessed by asking individuals directly whether they perceive their access to training and mentors and developmental opportunities and promotions to be fair. And also how fair their work schedules and rewards are. And unfortunately, what we do know from past research is that people from traditionally disadvantaged groups so much research focuses on today is we see that those individuals tend to report lower levels of fairness perceptions in regard to HR practices. Another perspective of HR practices to focus on is the distributive, procedural, interactional justice. These are slightly academic terms so let me explain what they refer to. We know that justice and fairness perceptions are a big driver of their engagement and retention. Distributive justice really focuses on the distribution of outcomes. And so is it fair who gets what? Is that fair? When people think about what they put into something is what they got out of it considers to be fair. Procedural justice is on the outcomes arrived at. And what we see is that procedural justice is often more important than distributive justice. That is, how the distribution of outcomes is not always as important as the process by which those were allocated. If people felt the process was fair they are more acceptive of the outcomes. People evaluate procedural justice on whether or not the process used to arrive at the outcomes was consistently applied across people and over time and whether or not the people making the decision, usually the manager, did not insert his own biases. Whether or not the process is based on accurate information and whether or not people have an opportunity to appeal unfair decisions and whether or not the needs and preferences of all people who might be affected by the decisions has been considered. Interactional justice refers to the interpersonal treatment and communication by management to employees and whether or not that is perceived -- not fair but whether they are treated with dignity and respect. We are looking right now in our current research and we will talk more about this in a second to see whether or not people's experiences and accommodation processes are characterized by distributive, procedural and interactional justice and how those justices affect those people with accommodations. We see this as an important issue. I always talked about climate for inclusion but it's also important to think about things people may be experiencing. This may be of course we focus on people with disabilities but organizations focus on aging workers, women and so forth. Perceptions of managers I talked about the quality and relationship of the manager but also important are the behaviors of managers that end up role modeling the appropriate behaviors. That is, the kinds of behaviors that help a unit really value diversity. Finally, there are also people with the relationship more generally. To the extent people feel supported by the organization and cared for by the organization differ. Do people's perceptions of how well their values fit with those of their co-workers or how well their skills fit with the demands of the job? Do those perceptions differ for people with and without disabilities? And what about psychological empowerment that people enjoy on the job and how meaningful they find their ever day job to be. What we hope to see is that there are no differences in whether somebody has a disability. And finally the comfort they feel with their co-workers and something I address in prior slides. I turn now to 28 that, unfortunately, past research shows that people's perceptions of workplace environment differs significantly based on their demographic background and based on race, gender, hierarchal position within the organization, people tenure and sometimes age as well and we are now extending this work to look at people with disabilities. These perceptions, these different perceptions matter because they are what drives engagement. They are related to people's commitment, satisfaction, turnover and willingness to engage in citizenship behaviors. I turn now to slide 29 just to wrap up and say that very little of the diversity literature that I just referenced has focused specifically on people with disabilities and what we need is research that focuses explicitly on their experience and leadership and so forth to identify the specific places where organizations might focus their attention in order to improve the experiences of people with disabilities once they are on the job. With that I would like to take some questions before we wrap up for the day. >> JACQUIE: All right. We have several. Do you think that the reason disability gets shorted in employer diversity programs and becomes more difficult? What I mean is for other classes of people, race, age, gender, the only requirement from the employer's side is to treat everyone the same. But with a disability, there's a requirement to affirmatively do things like providing an accommodation or making a place accessible. Do you think this extra burden affects how disability is viewed in terms of diversity? >> LISA: That's a great question. I honestly have not had these conversations with companies to know why. I suspect that's a reason. >> SUSANNE: I think that there is an added burden because I think it's a misperception about the cost and the difficulty of accommodation. There is a decided response that is needed to a specific accommodation. But I must also say that that is not unique to disability. Employers make accommodations for all kinds of reasons all of the time. We just don't recognize it as an accommodation necessarily. Our research would suggest that employers -- when they are asked to make an accommodation or if individuals are asked if they have been accommodated, they will say yes. It is not the majority of people with disabilities who respond. It's the general employee population. So I think rather than this being a fact of experience it's more a perception that there's an added burden where a disability is concerned. It partly could be that, but I also think that people are not used to thinking of disability issues as a culture issue, a diversity issue and it's a part of why education is dearly needed in this area. It's our general responsibility to create an environment that's inclusive for all and that's that includes people with disabilities. It's why we see this as very, very important. If you speak to companies who are further along on this, they will say it takes a while to get to this point but they are slowly including people with disabilities in the conversation. It's something we have not done but are becoming aware of. >> SUSANNE: We are excited about some research that we are not quite ready to be able to present to you, but I can say that we are collecting the kinds of data that we think can help some of these misperceptions. Like about the cost of accommodations and also the assumption that it's just people with disabilities that ask for accommodations. So we hope to start to move people in the right direction by debunking some of these misperceptions. >> SUSANNE: Thank you for that and those of you who are HR managers I would suggest that you think and use these issues as a way to integrate across all your different diversity populations because the interest in people with disabilities transcends all of the other interest groups and special populations. Disability doesn't know any boundaries where gender, ethnicity and age are concerned. It attacks all of us. So in that regard it can be the great level to bring about common interests around in a special consideration. It's something we all either now or over time will need to think about. So it can be a source of conversation about bringing all groups together and I will encourage employers to think about that once they have their diversity conversations with their employees and managers. And Jacquie, we will take the next question. >> JACQUIE: I like the idea of inclusion as opposed to tolerance, although as a person with a disability, I feel more often tolerated in the workplace rather than being included. Can you explain what's meant by slide 23 by citizenship behaviors? >> LISA: Sure. Citizenship behaviors are also called roles. They are not part of your job description per se. They are say above and beyond the call of duty type behaviors. They are the kinds of behaviors that people are willing to engage in when they are very committed to the organization. They feel they have been well-treated. So it might be, for example, when a new person has joined the organization and it's not your responsibility to socialize them but you know it's important to make sure a newcomer is properly socialized and they feel welcome. So you go out of your way to find out they are doing okay to help them, acclimate them even if that means you are being taken away from our own work and may have to spend more time on your own work to get it done. That's an example of citizenship behavior serving co-workers. But we also have citizenship behaviors directed at customers so you have no doubt that in a situation where you are in a store and you ask an employee for help and you are made to feel like you have asked them for something ridiculous because they don't really seem like they want to serve you and that can be an indication that they are not well-treated on the job. They don't want to go and do what it takes to satisfy because they have not been satisfied by the organization. So that's what I mean by citizenship behaviors. And in the earlier parts of the question about feeling tolerated as opposed to included is exactly what I feel that I've been talking about is the difference between an inclusive organization and one that is not inclusive. Rather than feeling tolerated in its ideal form, in an inclusive climate it shouldn't matter whether someone has a disability or someone is a racial minority. It should be a nonissue. >> JACQUIE: Okay this one is actually just a comment that says whatever you may have thought a few months ago would be the prevalence of age is no longer active now that retirement accounts are collapsing. Another question is can you talk about how and if inclusion works for people with hidden disabilities? >> SUSANNE: I'll just step in for a minute. This to me is related to that question that was asked previously, which was why is regarded as important and why does it appear to be increasing? Of course, these again, is a conjecture, but I think people who are different are discriminated against and I think some people with hidden disabilities it may not be obvious but there may be something about them that is slight about them but applying it to other people they experience this feeling of difference in being discriminated against. I think it does apply to people with unseen disabilities at least in the initial value. It applies to all of us. Experiences of being included of justice and fairness in the workplace all of us respond to. This is such important work because it's truly work that puts disability in the mainstream of consideration. The factors that are affected for main stream employees and being embraced in the work place and being effective in the workplace are also things that work for people with disabilities and that's why it's such an important conversation for us to be having. If we can only bring home the fact for employers if they create these types of environments, many of these distinctions and problems melt away for people with disabilities as well as for other populations, and I will pause there. I don't know, Lisa, if you want to add to that. >> LISA: No, that's great. >> JACQUIE: I have, hello, thank you for an interesting and informative webcast. You said about visual impairmentS having access to the printed page and the internet. What is your recommendations of the different methods for providing this access? >> SUSANNE: I will step in here for a second here. This I think is an exciting and important area and we have conducted some research in looking at employer practices around information technology accessible. And I will give some very broad ideas here. This permeates every part of the workplace process so it's important for employers to think about how people with disabilities might be included in accessing employment, through online recruitment and once they are in the application process, once they are in the workplace our employee communications is done by the Internet that people could be precluded there. I think we use less and less paper now. So the issue is much more about accessing information technology that comes through web-based mediums. I must also say our work has told us that if we as employers take a look at this more broadly, there'll be better websites available for the general population. So it's important to start with procurement and making sure that one procures hardware and software that has built into it the ability to respond in a universal kind of way to address these issues easily from the get-go. >> JACQUIE: Okay, we have one last question and you sort of addressed it in your other answer. Can you provide any best practice ideas on how to train nondisabled employees to be more inclusive of those with disabilities? >> LISA: That's a good question. >> JACQUIE: Can you address it more generally? >> LISA: I'm thinking here about some of the best practices that we've heard from companies in the past. Wallgreens comes to mind Suzanne and from what I remember, their key initiative has been exposure and getting people to the point to create a normal culture that really encouraged people to ask questions. So if there's something that you want to know that you don't understand about a co-worker with a disability, for example. Let's create the kind of environment where it's safe for you to ask and you don't have to feel like you might potentially step on toes by creating that kind of culture. They were really able to get a lot of dialogue going and that allowed people to get over any sort of misperceptions and stereotypes that they may have had and to start to see people with disabilities just like any other co-worker and they attribute it to this open learning culture. That's really the only way. It comes down to not knowing and the only way to get over that is to create the kind of environment where people can get the kinds of answers that they need to understand better. So I think that's a very important first step and this is something that applies to diversity in general that is part of the inclusive climate that I spoke to you and that is to create that kind of environment in which learning about other people is possible and nonthreatening and allows people to be seen by others as they see themselves. When you can achieve that, you know you have gotten there. >> SUSANNE: May I add to that. You remind me of something to add. One thing our prior research is most of the focus is on training has gone to HR professionals. Likely with an eye being concerned about regulatory compliance. That's understandable and important. But we really understand more clearly as we get into our next wave of research how critical managerial training is to encourage your organizations to not only inform HR practitioners but your managers about the importance of accommodation and disability issues, especially around this inclusion and diversity issue as well. So training more broadly in the organization and training more broadly in the organization is something else I add to Lisa's comment as well as I want to elaborate a bit about her comment about exposure is a really important one. Throughout our work it comes back time and again that when people have a family member with a disability, when they have a co-worker with a disability, they are understanding acceptance, their tolerance, their willingness to accommodate is much greater and we would encourage workplaces to create natural ways for people to have this exposure and we have seen some really interesting practices in terms of summer internships for youth. Mentoring kinds of experiences. Alliances with local organizations for people with disabilities that really are wonderful win/win kinds of activities that will raise awareness naturally and it does have an impact over time in terms of people's responsive to co-workers with people with disabilities as well. >> JACQUIE: Well, I think we're about out of time and we are out of questions. So this might be a good time to say something in closing. >> SUSANNE: Just a couple more things in closing. We have a couple more slides. First of all, we have given you teasers about forthcoming research, and indeed we want to mention that a part of the work we have been doing is funded by a new project by the Department of Labor. A grant was issued to Syracuse University for us to work on besides Syracuse, and Cornell, Rutgers -- a survey of managers, employees as well as conducting focus groups and interviews in a particular organization. So we are pooling our respective experiences in this study to come up with some bigger picture ideas of what works and what continues to be problematic in terms of workplace cultures. So we wanted you to know you will get more information in the future. After the first of the year we hope to share more of our findings there. Stay tuned. >> JACQUIE: We will bring you back for another webcast. >> SUSANNE: We will be happy to do that. >> JACQUIE: Thanks so much. >> SUSANNE: Our last slide shows continuing research. It gives you our contact information and brochures on the Cornell website. Www.hrtips.org and policies and practices. We also have information on disability statistics but more broadly the Cornell IRL website has a lot of best practices and particularly the EDI site on disability best practices. So we would encourage you to seek out Cornell resources. And with that I am going to thank you. Lisa, would you like to add anything else. >> LISA: No. Thank you for the opportunity. >> JACQUIE: We really appreciate both of you agreeing to this today and getting the PowerPoint to us and being able to have that available for both the viewers now and also the people who will access via our archives. It's really great. Of course, to all our listeners feel free to share the archives with your colleagues. They will be available tomorrow at IRLU.org. Don't forget to complete the comments. We are interested in getting your feedback. Thanks to the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research our sponsor for today, and we hope you will join us for our next webcast on November 19th, next Wednesday when our focus will include the new ADA amendment act and it's implications for the future of the ADA. So thanks very much to our presenters today. To Suzanne and Lisa. This webcast would not be possibly without our webcast team. John Searle's technical expertise and our captioner today Lauren Kellmann. Thank you for joining us. Have a dazzling day.