Reimagining Inclusion at Work
Shifting Cultures to Include Employees with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
Willing Observers and Diversity Simplified led a five-month ethnographic research project to improve inclusion for employees with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) in the workplace. They partnered with Mann Centre, a non-profit whose mission is to improve the employability and livability of people with IDD in India.
The findings of this report ask us to do more than create accessibility.
It asks us to change our culture.
Neurotypical workplaces
The workplace is already biased… towards neurotypical employees.
Mainstream Employment is generally based on neurotypical beliefs, values, and norms that guide expectations for individual and organizational behaviors including:
Expectations around communication, which place value on verbal speech, direct communication styles, making eye contact, and using other nonverbal gestures.
Establishing norms that prioritize speed and high output as a measure of productivity.
Expectations that individuals conform to and are productive in environments that have high amounts of sensory stimuli, such as sights, sounds, and smells…
Neurotypical workplaces
And many workplaces falsely believe some disability stereotypes:
That disability is a deficiency.
That some disabilities are easier to accommodate.
That Persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities are “warm but incompetent.”
That Persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities are defined by their disability alone…
But the data shows otherwise.
Methods
Data collection occurred among all major stakeholder groups in the following ways:
24 employees with IDD participated in 3 focus groups
14 job coaches participated in 3 with focus groups
11 caregivers participated in 2 focus groups.
57 caregivers submitted survey responses.
14 employment site observations
20 managers participated in an interview
21 coworkers participated in an interview
How can we create less biased, more inclusive cultures?
In this report you will find:
Over 30 pages of data and data insights, and over 70 pages total.
Five major recommendations deriving from this data.
Four principles for disability inclusion and for conducting research on and with PwIDDs.
A thorough explanation of what we mean by culture and our methodology.
Our analysis on what kind of culture is needed to be more inclusive to PwIDD and all employees.