by Katherine Harms

Created on: May 06, 2008

You should hire people with disabilities, because those people also have abilities. Their ability to get your job done will help your business to prosper and their work ethic will make you proud. There are a few things you might need to learn about people with disabilities.

People with disabilities are not defective people. This is the first thing any prospective employer should understand. If you have ever broken a leg or cut your finger or fallen so hard that you knocked yourself out, you know what it is to have a disability. Any of us at any moment can be struck with a disability. Maybe we can't walk easily, or at all. Maybe we can't understand quantum physics. Maybe we can't easily tie a knot. These disabilities, temporary or permanent, do not make us defective. We have limits, but we are still completely human.

People with disabilities are completely human. They have the same variety of interests, the same kind of likes and dislikes, the same delight when somebody cares about them, that anyone else has. People with disabilities may not have developed the same ability to analyze a problem that some other people have. People with disabilities may not be able to write reports with the same vocabulary some other people have. When I worked as a consultant, I learned that people have widely varying skills and abilities. Some skills are simply beyond some people. We are all different.

Do not hire a person with disabilities in order to be kind to him or her. Lots of people are kind to them, but only a few people can put them to work. Only a real job pays real money and allows them to go shopping for their own clothes or pay for their own apartment or buy tickets to a baseball game, just like everybody else.

So why should you hire a person with disabilities? The only reason for doing this is to get an employee who will be at work predictably, do the job you ask, and help make your business successful. People with disabilities can do all these things, and more. I have seen people with developmental disabilities learn how to inspect glass bottles and assure that only perfect ones get to the assembly line. I have seen people with disabilities assemble small parts with complete attention to the work, producing volume and quality that supported a busy manufacturing enterprise. I have seen people with disabilities do many tasks, and I have seen them show concern for quality, quantity and timeliness.

So, why should you hire a person with disabilities? The answer is, in order to get the job done. If you hire a person to do a job for which that person is not qualified, you will be disappointed with the outcome. However, if you identify the qualifications you require, it is possible that a person who has disabilities irrelevant to the work will meet all those qualifications.

I recommend that you examine your open employment opportunities and then examine the people with disabilities to determine if their abilities, not their disabilities, make them a good match for the job you need to have done. Abilities, not disabilities, make a good employee. People who have disabilities still have many abilities, and those abilities might make money for you and for them. You should not hire a person with disabilities in order to be nice to someone. That is silly. You could be nice to your brother-in-law or your cousin, but that won't necessarily get the job done. Hire the right person for the job, and you might be surprised to discover that the right person has some disabilities.

Learn more about this author, Katherine Harms.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.