Recruiters cold to differently-abled, only 15% hire from this set: study

61.74% of the respondents agreed the biggest challenge in hiring the specially-abled was the attitude of co-workers; 21.2% said engaging them led to losses in productive work hours

Hiring of differently- or specially-abled professionals by Indian recruiters has still a long way to go, if the recent survey findings by recruitment and flex-staffing firm Genius Consultants are anything to go by. 

The survey finds that the bulk of recruiters, or about 85 per cent of the respondents, have either not hired or are companies in which such a concept is still in pipeline. Effectively, only roughly 15 per cent of the respondents actually have specially-abled employees on their rolls. 

This is despite that fact that close to 40 per cent of India Inc believes in hiring differently-abled for exploiting untapped skills, while another 30 per cent does so to meet corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations.

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According to Genius Consultants, roughly 2.13 per cent of India's population is differently- or specially-abled based on World Bank's definition of eight per cent disability in the form of loss of locomotor skills, vision, hearing, speech and mental faculties. The survey was conducted across companies, psychologists and specially-abled job seekers and employees across sectors such as auto, BFSI, construction and engineering, education, FMCG, hospitality, retail, telecom, and logistics, among others.

Further, 57.24 per cent of recruiters said that they were not yet ready to invest in infrastructural changes or processes before employing differently-abled people.

When asked if hiring differently-abled was important to them or not, 78.8 per cent recruiters responded positively, while 21.20 per cent said that it was not important and led to losses in productive work hours and employable workforce. 

What's more, majority of recruiters, at 61.74 per cent, agreed that the biggest challenge in employing people with special abilities was the attitude of co-workers.

Though Indian corporates are working towards finding the most effective way of utilising differently-abled people, but still 44.06 per cent are yet to explore the untapped pool of manpower.

Almost one third or 27.58 per cent of corporate think that they are helping differently abled people to integrate normally into society whereas only 21.39 per cent do so for an integrated workplace, creating a sense of equality among employees.

Career pathing and moving specially abled people up the ladder is a challenge. Also, 61.74 per cent of corporate think that due to biased attitude among co-workers, there has been less number of specially abled employees in the corporate sector. However, 57.24 per cent of recruiters are ready to invest in making work places specially abled friendly.

As per specially abled employees, 54.16 per cent admit that there are only 10 or more such people hired at their workplaces, though 95.83 per cent want to continue with their current employer.

Meanwhile, 40.83 per cent of specially abled employees said that their salary was at par with industry standards and that their co-workers treat them equally. A bulk of specially abled employees, at 76.33 per cent, responded that they held frontliner roles and not managerial despite staying in an organisation for more than 4-5 years.