The corporate culture across the globe, regardless of whether there are formal procedures in place, is currently bending towards being inclusive. Inclusivity spans across the spectrum, covering everything from gender to race to ability. Over the years, there has been an increase in the number of companies employing persons with disabilities (PwDs) across various roles and functions depending on the employee’s capabilities. This increase, however, is gradual and the ratio of abled to differently-abled employees in an organisation remains skewed towards the former set. The list of companies who have hired PwDs consciously and strategically is long — Accenture, Mphasis, Capgemini, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Big Basket, Rediff, Amazon, Redbus, Make My Trip, Café Coffee Day, Costa Coffee, KFC, Lemon Tree, ITC, Taj, Titan, Tesco, Britannia, Shell, DOW Chemicals, Big Bazaar, Reliance Retail and Tata Tele Services. While this is clearly a good start, hiring PwD employees as a hygiene practice, however, might spell a long road ahead.
Mentoring and training
With hard to curb attrition rates and short-term solutions being nothing more than cosmetic, companies have to eventually look at a sustainable, rethought hiring strategy that not only makes business sense but is inclusive at the same time. Nishchae Suri, partner, KPMG India, points out that the change, however small, has come from companies realising that they are hiring differently-abled people, and not disabled people.
Accenture has set up three initiatives towards hiring PwDs in India. First, the India Accessibility Programme identifies accessibility and usability requirements and establishes strategies and processes to integrate accessibility throughout the organisation. The programme has four work streams — physical, technology, assistive technology and attitudinal. Second, the PwD Champions Network was created in 2015 to bring together employees who are persons with disability, supporters and friends for networking, collaboration, mentoring and awareness-building. Lastly, the PwD Mentoring Programme is designed to help mentors on mentoring persons with disability. Parag Pande, global HR geographic services delivery lead and global talent operations lead for Accenture says, “A diverse, highly skilled workforce helps us provide services that better serve consumer’s needs.
We recognise that we have a role to play in fostering change within the environment that we are a part of, and therefore PwDs are also a part of our CSR focus — we run skilling programmes with various NGOs focussed on PwDs.” Bengaluru-based Enable India, a not-for-profit organisation assisting companies in recruiting PwDs, has catered to over 600 companies across sectors over the years. Based on the company’s mandate, different models and approaches are suggested. Enable India provides employability training and the actual domain training is undertaken by the company. Shanti Raghavan, founder, Enable India provides that companies hire around 200 people from the organisation in a year. “In one hiring cycle, the maximum we have seen is around 30,” says Raghavan. “We engage companies in the train-and-hire model to ensure more conversions even when hiring can be tough, for example, during recession times.”
Employability and inclusivity
Almost a decade ago, a pilot initiative of hiring a batch of 10 hearing impaired candidates in Bengaluru was carried out by CCD. Today, the company has recruited and trained over 152 PwDs. It created a special induction programme for the speech and hearing impaired. This programme is designed to aid the use of PwDs’ strong sense of smell, vision and taste effectively. For CCD, once the candidate is chosen, she is given a two-week coffee training, followed by a practical and theoretical test. Venu Madhav, CEO, Café Coffee Day, notes that hiring PwDs builds confidence of a company in its retention rate. “What sets apart PwDs is that they value the position that they have been given and do not take things for granted,” he observes. “They are keen to keep their jobs, rise above and work to their full potential.” There is no major additional investment for the brand except for having a sign language interpreter to help communicate and train PwDs. This level of inclusivity commands respect for diversities from other employees within the company and that a greater sensitivity at the work place can only add to the overall productivity of the organisation, he adds.
Now consider KFC’s project for the hearing and speech impaired, which was initiated in 2008. The brand currently has over 170 specially-abled employees across 20 stores in India. It flagged off this project in India first and other international teams have since then followed suit. It invested in creating the KFC Academy (formerly known as Yum! Academy) to develop the right skill sets which increase employability not just with KFC, but also across the retail sector. The idea was to go upstream and make the hearing and speech impaired youth employable. A fully sponsored programme for about 11 weeks (60 hours, covered in five-six weeks) teaches the deaf youth English and critical skills (English communication, realistic job preview, food safety, industry familiarisation, life skills and grooming) for employment in the retail and hospitality sector.
Rahul Shinde, MD, KFC India, believes that for the brand, it is about giving back to the community. “Our initiative has helped elevate the confidence of these team members — and helped integrate them into the mainstream,” he says. “Our customers are delighted with this initiative and have appreciated this effort through their feedback.”
Suri of KPMG believes that organisations that embrace the inclusive hiring philosophy are more likely to have higher employee morale and win leadership confidence, even in tough times. This is in addition to coming across as a responsible and progressive employer brand in the consumer’s eyes.
Agreeably, the practice of hiring PwDs finds its roots in CSR initiatives and in a fair number of cases, CSR is the stage where the practice of inclusivity really is. But with experience and HR policies maturing, inclusive hiring is tying itself intrinsically to what makes business sense in an organisation. Although brands continue to be cautious about how many and how frequently they need to hire PwDs, they understand the need to strengthen internal attitudes and infrastructure to accommodate them