DISABILITY INCLUSION
WHAT IS CONSIDERED A DISABILITY? Lesa Bradshaw “Disability Inclusion” is a prominent topic among Human Resources, Transformation, and Business Executive stakeholders, driven by the imperatives of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) compliance and the allure of Skills Development incentives, which are high on the business agenda. Despite the prioritisation of this agenda, statistics indicate minimal progress in terms of the representation of disability as a form of diversity within African organisations. A recent survey by the World Health Organisation across 51 countries reveals a 52.8% employment rate for males with a disability and 19.6% for women with a disability. While these statistics underscore the double discrimination faced by women with a disability, the glaring fact that should be evident is how far behind African organisations are in their journey towards equal opportunities and inclusion. Taking South Africa as an example, the 18th Commission for Employment Equity Report shows that South African employers report the following disheartening results for the inclusion of persons with a disability in the meaningfully employed workforce: • Top and Senior Management, as well as Professional Occupational Levels, reflect 1.3%. • Semi-skilled and Unskilled Occupational Levels reflect 0.9%. Overall, since 2015, these results indicate a significant decline in the representation of persons with a disability at all occupational levels. Essentially, as employers, we are moving in the wrong direction despite the increased focus on achieving compliance. At this point, I imagine that many of those reading this article are throwing their hands up in exasperation. “What are we doing wrong? We invest in learnership programmes and spend money on skills development for persons with a disability, so why are we not making headway?” There is no doubt that the talent is out there, but the numerous barriers to inclusion continue to prevent the access of persons with a disability to permanent careers. Many organisations have been lured to the dark side of the ‘quick fix’ approach as the pressures of compliance loom before us. Scorecard strategies, which include those seen in many outsourced learnership programmes, simulated learnership solutions, and segregated off-site learnerships for persons with a disability, are detracting from efforts to build more disabilityinclusive organisational cultures. While these solutions may present as ‘hassle-free’ solutions to creating an inclusive disability culture, this is not the case in reality, as these solutions move disability inclusion from the transformation agenda to the compliance one, principally fuelled by financial efficiency and favourable Black Broadbased Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) scorecard outcomes. DEI in the Global South | Edition 1
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