People with disabilities can work and want to work. Given the growing body of evidence that demonstrates that workers with disabilities meet or exceed the job performance of co-workers without disabilities, the continuing high unemployment rate and low labor force participation rate of people with disabilities deprive the nation of a valuable pool of talent. Increasing the employment of people with disabilities produces significant benefits to the economy, the nation, and people with disabilities themselves.
The National Technical Assistance and Research (NTAR) Leadership Center at Rutgers University chose to address this issue by conducting research on employer and market-driven initiatives to recruit, hire, train, and retain people with disabilities. Using a case study approach, NTAR Leadership Center researchers selected 13 diverse examples from around the nation of partnerships — between employers and trusted workforce intermediaries — with a track record of helping employers recruit, hire, train, and retain employees with disabilities. Over the course of six months, researchers conducted in-depth research and interviewed and visited leaders and practitioners at the heart of these business-public collaborations. The goal of this research was to identify successful elements of these strategies and offer lessons that can be learned by employers and employer organizations, workforce development and disability service organizations, and federal, state, and local policymakers.
Work Products
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 – Challenging the Conventional Wisdom: National Employer Collaborations
- Chapter 2 – Winning Together: A Sector Strategy Model
- Chapter 3 – Preferred Solutions: How Job Brokers for People with Disabilities Meet Employer Needs
- Chapter 4 – Career Tracks: Placing Skilled College Students and Graduates with Disabilities through Partnerships between Employers, Colleges and Universities, and Intermediaries
- Chapter 5 – Bridging Workforce Gaps: Hiring People with Disabilities through Local and Regional Collaboratives
- Chapter 6 – Catalysts: Business-Affiliated Organizations Leading Disability and Employment Partnerships
- Conclusion
- Reader’s Guide to Terms and Governmental Systems Used in this Report
- Appendix: List of Interviews