Introduction
Generally speaking I am reluctant to favour such an idea, were it not for the fact that bias in recruitment persists. If we can address the bias issue effectively, that might improve things.
However, bias is baked into the very processes of recruitment – not just in terms of obvious disability but also diversity factors like neurodiversity (which isn’t inherently a disability) and forms of anxiety that might be triggered by the selection process. Non-conformity with an assumed norm activates our instinct to be biased. Bias isn’t a sin, just a reflex out of place.
And then there’s the occasional matter of roles that directly concern disability. We might assume that targeted recruitment makes clear sense – only it doesn’t, unless we are subtle in our approach.
Recruitment method reform is a complex topic, so I will leave that for last as I reflect on these themes.
Thinking about disability specific roles
Disability specific roles aren’t all that common so it’s easy to miss that they are not infrequently just a component of, for example, a DEI role. Do you then privilege disability over any other diversity attribute? I think so, for the following reasons.
Disability is singular among the spectrum of diversity groups in that it requires the addressing of accessibility needs that may be physical, sensory, or behavioural. This may require specialist knowledge and insights.
Not all disabilities require such accommodations and not all people with a particular disability have insight into other disabilities. So, we can’t assume that recruiting a person who has a disability is going to be as useful as we might imagine.
A potential area for targeted recruitment is disability-related policy, procedure and practice where remedies against bias and exclusion are developed.
This can be a problematic area because what seems like a good idea can be ineffectual. A classic example of this was the NSW Public Service Commission’s Age of Inclusion campaign which had offensive descriptions of people with disability that I had removed from its website after over a year of lobbying, and content which remained that lacked any real practical value in my view.
The offensive comments included an assertion that people with disability were adept at problem solving because having a disability means you have to meet accessibility challenges caused by one’s disability. And there was an observation that people with disability might be preferred because they change jobs less often and are hence more stable. You can safely bet there was very little informed input from people with disability in what was claimed to have been a $1m campaign.
Some of these impediments might be overcome if an organisation engages its disability ERG as a consultative body – provided it isn’t persuaded to use this option to duck hiring a suitable person with disability. But here we have the problem of tokenism. People with disability are ‘consulted’, but they are not often part of the decision-making process. They have ‘a voice’ but no power.
A singular problem in this area is that well-intentioned people without lived experience of disability may imagine that their sense of sympathy for people with disability is sufficient to guide them to make good decisions. But sympathy doesn’t generate empathy or insight, and empathic insight is what gives us good policy, procedure and practice.
There can be a temptation also to assume that ‘lived experience of disability is inherently sufficient. But, like having a disability is not assurance of being universally aware of the spectrum of disability. Having exposure to disability in some meaningful fashion isn’t an assurance of anything beyond, perhaps, sincere empathy. This doesn’t mean such a person may not suit a role, just that it can’t be assumed. Empathy and insight trump sympathy and asserted knowledge.
When I became DCJ DEN Chair I had experience of living with mobility and grip disabilities. I had some insight into other disabilities but not enough to be useful. In 2018 I created a Guidance and Action Team (GAT) of 15 members with a wide array of disabilities. The GAT promptly set about schooling me on how different disabilities impacted the work experience. The DEN’s subsequent success was down to the GAT.
Having a disability doesn’t magically confer universal insight or activate empathy and compassion. People with acquired disabilities may have ongoing emotional challenges in processing the grief that comes with catastrophic loss of aspects of one’s life capabilities. That’s something too little acknowledged or explored. Disability doesn’t necessarily make you a hero or a saint. It can make you distressed and angry, traumatised in fact.
Many of us live with the after affects of trauma. It can stimulate passion but also impair empathy and impede the development of insight.
So, there no simple solution to the question of whether employing a person with disability is the best option. It is preferable if the right person is selected – but this opens a vigorous can of worms about recruitment methods. How do you know you have found ‘the right person’?
On doing a better job of selecting the best person for the job
I recently had an experience which drove home to me just how fundamentally exclusionary standard public sector recruitment practices can be. I will do a separate piece on that shortly. What starkly struck me was that the role I applied for was specifically for people with disability and yet the recruitment methodology worked against people with anxiety and people who are neurodiverse. I will repeat my assertion that not everyone who experiences anxiety, or who is neurodiverse has a disability, in their view. But the recruitment methodology would have adversely impacted some people who don’t identify as having a disability, as well as those who do.
People with disability question recruitment methods while people who have diverse needs feel they have no right to seek equity simply because they are ‘different’. Disability inclusion advocacy reaches far beyond people we recognise as having a disability to embrace those with diverse needs and those with circumstantial or situational disability – all of whom may be adversely affected by insensitive recruitment approaches.
The clear impression I got was that while the recruitment exercise was specifically to recruit people with disability, it was controlled by people without lived experience of disability of a nature that could sensitively inform the recruitment process.
A major feature of the recruitment exercise was the provision of interview question 30 minutes ahead of the interview. However, because the interview was conducted remotely via MS Teams there was a sensible requirement to activate the Teams link 10 minutes ahead of the interview to avoid any last-minute problems – thereby effectively reducing the preparation time to 20 minutes. For a variety of reasons even 30 minutes preparation time can stress people with cognitive, emotional, sensory, and motor disabilities and lead to poor interview performance.
The same can also have adverse impacts on people with no declared disability or who have a ‘situational’ disability arising from a variety of ‘normal’ life events that may trigger stress, anxiety, or other cognitive impairment (e.g. lack of sleep – which a new parent might experience).
There is, so far as I know, no rational informed reason why interview questions may not be provided several days ahead of the interview. The whole logic of what interview questions are supposed to demonstrate is in need of serious review. I am aware that Aboriginal recruitment specialists are more inclined toward an opportunity for a yarn that can bring out a candidate’s personal attributes in a more relaxed atmosphere. This could be a way of enabling a recruitment process to be psychologically safe so that ‘non-normal’ attributes can be expressed.
Let me balance this with the observation that we have become accustomed to assume that what we have now works well, despite overwhelming evidence it does not. We are still recruiting managers with low psychological intelligence, low empathy, an aversion to innovation, and a disinclination to engage in ongoing professional development – precisely what sound research tells us we must avoid. I argue that regular recruitment practices favour the less sensitive, less empathic, and less diverse candidates.
There is a larger reason for this – entrenched cultures prefer those who conform to their in-group model. Hence, we are less likely to see a neurodiverse person being recruited to a management role than a person who is psychologically ill-suited to contemporary management challenges.
There are other critical issues about interview questions which adversely impact candidates with some disabilities. Questions can be unclear or may be ‘doubled-barrelled’ – making one question effectively 2 with no extra time to prepare or respond. This can mess up a neurodiverse person regardless of whether they identify as having a disability.
Recruitment practices should aim to be inclusive and not rely on candidates self-identifying as a person with disability and hence entitled to an adjustment. The mere act of asking for an adjustment may be sufficient to trigger bias in the recruitment panel.
But if a workplace culture favours the ‘normal’ there is little incentive to take the extra effort to embrace the diverse and unfamiliar. Organisational leaders must champion the development of recruitment practices which favour capability and diversity over conformity to a comparatively insensitive norm.
To add to the challenge, recruitment panel bias is potentially a huge issue when staff who constitute the panel are not recruitment specialists. Anti bias training doesn’t work well enough to assure a candidate the panel they are about to front is not disposed to bias. In fact, some researchers argue anti bias training makes matters worse because participants wrongly believe that the fact that they have undertaken the training was all that was needed. Bias will, I think, realistically remain a problem for a long time, but which can be ameliorated to a degree by two approaches:
- Ensure all candidates get interview questions at least 3 days ahead of the interview.
- Ensure all panels have a genuine independent. I have argued for certified independents who having standing in their organisation to hold the panel convenor to account in instances of perceived bias (I have detailed some thoughts on this matter elsewhere).
Conclusion
No recruitment process will ever be perfect. We can engage in harm reduction by steadily evolving how we recruit through intentional actions. I spent 4 years in recruitment, and I have been in the public sector long enough to know how often poor choices are made. We don’t routinely get it right because our assumptions about how to recruit well haven’t been updated for decades. Knowledge about how to recruit better is available, but it requires a genuine commitment of effort to shift from insensitive to sensitive recruitment practices. We must progress beyond defending the insensitive norm.
Considerations that make recruitment fairer for people with disability and those who simply diverge from the ‘normal’ will benefit more people than will be disadvantaged. A genuine commitment to diversity means that the bog standard one-size-fits-all approach which is insensitive (and favours less sensitive people) can’t remain the business-as-usual model.
There are superior alternatives, but it will take a willingness to surrender habituated practice, and it will take an articulated demand for change in the spirit of equity and inclusion that goes way beyond the theme of disability and genuinely embraces the ideals of true diversity.