Human Resources: Executive Summary: Disabilities in the Workplace

In an unexpected and alarming trend for U.S. employers and government policymakers, disability rates for adults in their prime working years have risen sharply in the past two decades, a 2004 RAND Corp. study shows. The number of people 30-49 years old who cannot care for themselves or perform other routine tasks jumped more than 50% from 1984 to 2000, and smaller but significant rises also occurred among those aged 18-29 and 50-59.

The numbers remain relatively small - about 2% disabled in the 30-49 age group - but the size of the jump foreshadows potentially huge issues for employers wrestling with productivity and healthcare costs. Another study found that, for the first time ever, hospital and healthcare expenditures are rising faster for people in the Baby Boomers' age group than for the elderly. Increasing disability rates were expected as the Baby Boomers aged, but they are occurring sooner and in larger numbers than forecast.

Overall, about a fifth of Americans over the age of five have a disability, and the majority of these people are of working age. In 2004, 35% of working-age people with disabilities were employed either full time or part time, according to a National Organization on Disability/Harris poll. That was up 3% from a similar 2000 poll. Of those who said that they're disabled but not working, nearly two-thirds said they'd like to work. Of those, 8% said they're not working because they can't find a job that accommodates their disability.

Has the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) helped bring the disabled into the workforce? One recent study conducted by the University of Michigan found that disabled people are indeed more likely to be accommodated at work than they had been before enactment of the ADA, and accommodations do a pretty good job of keeping them in the workforce. But the study also found that the increase in accommodations has been only modest and that most amount to adjustments of work schedules. Perhaps most worrisome is the finding that, despite the letter of the ADA law, disabled workers tend to be paid lower wages as a result of their accommodations.

The way in which the ADA is interpreted by the courts is another factor that influences the degree to which the disabled enter the workforce and the amount of accommodation they receive. A variety of U.S. court rulings, especially those from the Supreme Court, have generally limited the scope of the ADA since its passage 14 years ago. In one important case, for example, the Court ruled 9-0 that an assembly-line worker with carpal tunnel syndrome - a repetitive-stress disorder that kept her from performing certain job duties - wasn't covered by the ADA. "This is obviously not a court that is reading the ADA as expansively as people in the disability community would like...," said Sam Bagenstos, a leading authority in the field of disability law.

Limiting the scope has, however, made it easier for employers to win ADA suits. In 2003, they prevailed in 98% of federal court decisions, an annual American Bar Association study found. Employees have a better chance of winning at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where they prevailed on the merits 21.7% of the time in 2003. As court decisions have gone against workers, ADA claims filed with the EEOC have dropped from the 1995 high of 19,798 to 15,346 in 2004.

Still, U.S. employers face a variety of knotty issues. One is the complicated interplay among the ADA, the Family and Medical Leave Act, Social Security Disability Insurance coverage, and a maze of state and local regulations protecting disabled workers. Another issue is the different viewpoints of courts. For example, some U.S. circuit courts have ruled that employees who can't get along with others might be considered disabled under the ADA, while others disagree.

However the legal system plays out, people with disabilities represent a large and still not fully utilized labor resource that experts say will become increasingly important in the years to come. It's a source of talent that some companies are already intent on tapping into.

IBM, for example, has become a model for employing people with disabilities. In 1999 it launched Project Able, which assigns volunteer advocates to students with disabilities and helps streamline the application process for them. IBM also teaches its managers how to interview people with disabilities, and it's developed various strategies for accommodating them. Through such practices, IBM is able to increase the pool of talent from which it's able to draw.

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The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp, inc.) improves corporate productivity through a combination of research, community, tools and technology focused on the management of human capital. With more than 100 leading organizations as members, including many of the best-known companies in the world, i4cp draws upon one of the industry’s largest and most-experienced research teams and Executives-in-Residence to produce more than 10,000 pages annually of rapid, reliable and respected research and analysis surrounding all facets of the management of people in organizations. Additionally, i4cp identifies and analyzes the upcoming major issues and future trends that are expected to influence workforce productivity and provides member clients with tools and technology to execute leading-edge strategies and "next" practices on these issues and trends. i4cp is a for-profit company with offices in St. Petersburg, Florida.