Disability no barrier as business benefits

EMPLOYMENT agencies have welcomed new federal government rules that remove a cap on the number of disabled people they can support in the workforce.

Employment Participation Minister Mark Abib announced the government’s Disability Employment Services programs last week.

These changes are also a boost to the many businesses in Western Australia that are finding benefit in employing people with disabilities.

Founder and managing director of EDGE Employment Solutions, Susan Robertson, told WA Business News the changes would enable many more people with disabilities to find employment.

Ms Robertson, whose not-for-profit organisation is the largest of its kind in WA and is celebrating its 25th birthday this year, said more and more employers were finding a business case for hiring people with disabilities.

Jo Atkinson, employment coordinator at South West employment provider Forrest Personnel, also welcomed the changes and agreed that organisations like hers made it easy for businesses to recruit disabled employees.

This view was supported by a 2002 survey of employers by Deakin University’s Joseph Graffam, who found that it costs businesses less to recruit people with disabilities when using a disability employment service provider than it does to recruit non-disabled employees.

Ms Robertson believes this is typical of the feedback received by EDGE and the people it places.

Ms Atkinson said it was the ability of service providers to match potential employees with suitable vacancies that made them so useful to businesses.

The federal government funds EDGE and 25 other members of the Disability Employment Network (DEN) throughout the state.

DEN members receive funding for every person whose situation they assess and take onto their books, and within a year they are obligated to have found them employment. They also receive further funding as the people they support continue their employment for periods up to 26 weeks, after which their need for support is reassessed.

Ms Roberston said Wesfarmers was the largest private employer of people with disabilities; having provided jobs to 367 EDGE-supported employees, including 65 who continue to be supported by EDGE.

She believes that the work of employment service providers not only creates a business case for employing people with disabilities, but also reduces the burden of people with disabilities on the economy.

Ms Roberston told WA Business News that for every dollar the government had invested in EDGE’s services over the past 25 years, the community had received a return of $1.40 in reduced social security payments and higher tax receipts.

Ms Robertson also concurred with Mr Graffam’s findings that showed employees with disabilities took fewer days off and had only 18 per cent of the workers’ compensation incidents and 12 per cent of the health and safety incidents of ‘average’ employees.

The increased government support, combined with a tightening labour market in WA, is likely to lead to increased use of disabled employees.

The Bureau of Statistics has reported that the workforce participation rate of people with disabilities was just 53.3 per cent in 2004, compared to 80.6 per cent for people with no disability.

Ms Robertson believes the federal government’s new uncapped provisions will allow members of the DEN to help businesses improve this participation rate by increasing the provision of employment support for more people with disabilities