Since 1988, Canada’s neighbours to the south have observed National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), with Canada adopting the practice in more recent years. In a recent Forbes piece, Jonathan Kaufman offers NDEAM as “a bridge to a greater understanding” of the changing world of work, saying “business leaders can look to the disability playbook to ascertain the importance of work [and for] elevating the lived disability experience in the world of work”. The immediate practicality of this approach is made clear as Kaufman explains “the need for disability employment as a vital solution to the great resignation”.
Notions of occupation, vocation, and work have long expanded beyond the narrow confines of paid employment. Work is not just a means of earning income, but a form of expression, a part of identity, and a source of deep purpose. In this way, access to work can be seen as a human right, one for which people with disabilities have long been fighting. It follows, then, that organizations – the formalized spaces of human work – have a role that goes beyond managing resources in a way that fosters profit: They must ensure the workplace supports human expression, and a sense of identity and purpose, with and for its workers.
“Embracing the disability ethos and seeing meaning and purpose as more than just ambiguous ideals … are essential in serving a competitive advantage for the future”.
— J. Kaufman
You can read more at Kaufman, J. (Oct 8, 2021). Mindset Matters: Why Supporting Disability Employment Is Imperative To Solve The Puzzle Of The Great Resignation. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2021/10/08/mindset-matters-why-supporting-disability-employment-is-imperative-to-solve-the-puzzle-of-the-great-resignation/.
