この記事は次の言語でも読めます：日本語
Hi, it’s Mizuki!
I went to Minnesota and Wisconsin for 2 weeks last month to interview for my research.
That is why I couldn’t update my blog for a while.:(
Now I’m working on summarizing those interviews and hopefully I can update one by one in this blog soon!
I met so many great people over there, so look forward to the posts!
During my research trip, Jeff and I hold Big Smile Online Gathering no.12.
Here is the report.
The topics we covered includes:
1. Difficulties people with disabilities are facing
2. What are the reasonable accommodations at work?
This time, we are lucky to have one guest from England and one guest from Japan.
The guest from English has a child who has hearing impairment and a hard time finding a job in the UK because of the disability.
The other guest from Japan has mobility impairment.
Summary of the discussion:
1. Difficulties people with disabilities are facing
In United Kingdom, recruitment agencies play very important roles in the recruitment process for junior IT jobs, but sadly they could be discriminating people with disabilities.
The agencies blatantly do not want to deal with disabled candidates.
said the guests from England
The current recruitment methodology is designed to evaluate able people’s performance.
For example, a deaf job applicant needs an interpreter’s assistance to communicate with others in a test.
The communication barrier has slowed down the deaf applicant’s interactions and self expression in group tests.
As a result, the deaf applicant may receive much lower scores in those group tests.
Sadly, because the deaf applicant receives a lower score and that fact led the employers to spend more time on other able applicants, who generally have higher scores.
According to the guests from England, there are some NPOs who help talents with disabilities to find a job.
However, as long as the talent screening system is not changed, people with disabilities are usually at a weaker place in the system even though they are completely capable of doing the job they wish to apply for.
On the contrary, in Japan, recruitment agencies may be important in some cases but it is also common for job applicants to skip recruitment agencies and contact corporates’ HR department directly and apply for a job directly.
People with disabilities in Japan are facing a different kind of difficulties.
In Japan, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has implemented an act to force corporates, which has more than 50 employees, to hire people with disabilities at least 2% of the total employees in the corporates.
When an eligible company reaches “the quota” the company generally stops hiring people with disabilities.
Disabled job applicants are usually not evaluated with other able job applicants.
The job vacancies available for people with disabilities are also limited even though the applicant’s disability does not counter the job description.
2. What are the reasonable accommodations at work?
People with disabilities is a general term but the support and help required by each person with disability can not be categorized or summarized easily.
They are all different.
US companies in Japan offer appropriate accommodations required by the job applicants to job applicants who meet the job description during recruitment.
After entering the company as an employee, the employee with disability can skip his or her direct supervisor, if he or she chooses to, and contact HR department directly to request for reasonable accommodations.
The guest from Japan shared her experience with us.
The company she works for encourages job applicants to disclose their disabilities and express what the required accommodations they need during the recruitment process.
The company has experienced hiring a person with hearing impairment, who did not disclose her disability due to the fear of being rejected.
As the result, the people who work with the person with hearing impairment were not able to support her at work.
The fear of being rejected is often the main reason disabled job applicants decide not to disclose their disabilities.
However, without adequate communication, employer and employees may have misunderstanding and wrong expectations.
In the session, we were able to share personal experiences and ideas.
It was a very nice session.
We noticed this is a topic worth discussing again so we are planning to host another session on the same topic.
As soon as the date is confirmed, we will post it on Moon Rider 7 page.
Stay tuned!