Agencies to boost efforts to hire more disabled employees, report says

The federal government is missing an opportunity by not reaching out more aggressively to people with disabilities to replace retiring employees, according to a report released on Monday by TMP Worldwide, a recruitment advertising firm.

"Public sector agencies lag seriously behind in recruiting and retaining people with disabilities," wrote report authors Mark Harvard and John Bersentes. "To call this result perplexing is -- at the least -- an understatement....Research has demonstrated that the typical individual with a disability is a more engaged, more loyal and more technologically adept employee than the average worker in the general population."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in 2006 that the number of disabled federal employees fell from 1.18 percent in 1996 to 0.94 percent 10 years later. Disabled employees often are not found in senior leadership positions: only 0.46 percent of the Senior Executive Service was disabled in 2006.

The National Organization on Disability concluded in a 2003 study that 68 percent of Americans with disabilities were unemployed, despite two-thirds stating they were willing and able to work.

Harvard and Bersentes said advocates in and out of government told them that disabled people tend to face more employment barriers in the hiring process, such as prejudice and skepticism about their ability to perform a certain job.

To that end, the firm has been hosting job fairs since 2007 on TMP Island, a location it set up in Second Life, a virtual world run by Linden Lab. Companies like T-Mobile and Microsoft have participated in the fairs and TMP would like federal agencies, some of which are using their own virtual worlds for training and recruiting, to join as well.

"We've found that candidates, and particularly candidates with disabilities, feel empowered by this prejudice-free zone, if you will, and tend to present their true potential more confidently," said Harvard and Bersentes.

They noted that the benefits of recruiting virtually and advertising by means other than written job postings can extend beyond finding and hiring talented disabled employees.

"We're all so accustomed to making ourselves clear in purely textual modes that we forget how effective the use of other communications styles can be," the report said. "Broadening your agency's communication 'bandwidth' to include what has come to be known as rich media can enrich your interaction not with Generation-Y (a no-brainer), but with team members with certain disabilities as well."