课程: Inclusion and Equity for Workers with Disabilities

Inclusive processes

- Much of the time we're led to believe that we're being inclusive if we've considered or acknowledged that employees might have different needs, but awareness is only an initial step and alone, awareness is not an act of inclusion. In order for a process to be truly inclusive, we must ensure that every individual has equity in their access to that process. We need to take action to be inclusive, not just acknowledge the need for inclusivity. By this we mean that every individual should have a fair opportunity at all times to present their best self, utilize an effective working environment, and access equipment that optimizes their performance, without being at the mercy of someone else's discretion. Processes need to be designed to include freedom of choice for an employee and ideally, not require justification for that choice. An example of an inclusive process would be having more than one way for a person to demonstrate their capabilities and experience when applying for a role or a promotion, for instance, job applications with options to fill out a form, speak to a human, or upload a video file. When completing an assessment to show their capabilities, rather than having a hypothetical situation that they have to verbally respond to, you might set up a live task for them to complete or give them the opportunity to walk you through previous work in their portfolio. Processes should always allow an employee to present their best self, regardless of their circumstances, and should avoid referring to additional needs, reasonable adjustments, and special requests. Needs are a necessity. Nothing about necessity should be considered additional. What's reasonable is subjective and anything subjective has the potential to be unfair or inaccurate as it rarely considers individual factors. A request is a formal ask for something. Special implies that it would be a greater ask than what's usual. If a disabled employee requests something that they require, it is still a request. It doesn't need to be overemphasized as non-typical because it would be simply them advocating for what they require in order to be successful as any employee without a disability would also do. And most importantly, if anyone is deemed to be making a special request or needs to make a special request, then that is a certain indicator that the current process is not inclusive.

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