Disability advocates are calling for businesses to take a closer look at how they can employ Kiwis who live with disabilities to help fill holes in critical industries.
By 2028, it’s predicted the country’s engineering workforce will need 16,930 more workers, and manufacturing will require a further 23,323. Logistics will need 17,897 more workers.
Meanwhile, the country’s disabled workforce continues to be underutilised, with 11% unemployed – more than double the unemployment rate for non-disabled Kiwis.
One company tapping into the workforce is a scaffolding yard in Hamilton.
For two days a week, a group of friends clock in together at Industrial Site Services to service the fittings.
“—,” Jack Forsyth said.
Their employer is Jack’s mother Nicky Forsyth, who was driven to act after a work broker was unable to find him a job.
“It certainly knocked his confidence a little bit,” she said.
The employees with disabilities are managed by a funded support person.
“If it wasn’t these three guys with disabilities, then we would have bought somebody else in to do the job because it has to be done. So yeah, it is meaningful,” Industrial Site Services’ Nicky Forsyth said.
The Hamilton business was part of new research which surveyed 300 disabled employees and employers about their work experiences in a bid to solve two entrenched problems – the high unemployment rate among disabled Kiwis, and a massive skills shortage.
“The economic potential of employing more people with disabilities is huge and purely from an economic point of view, we’d be silly not to really consider our employment strategies,” Hanga-Aro-Rau Workforce Development Council deputy chief executive Samantha McNaughton said.
The research found that interviews are a challenge.
“For example, people would just be asked point blank about their disability, which is not an appropriate question to ask in the workplace. What would be appropriate is asking, ‘Hey, what supports do you need to do this role?'” lead researcher Grace Stratton said.
Many jobseekers also reported feeling like they were discriminated against from the outset.
“They would turn up to the interview and they would just get a look from the person and they would know from the jump that they were not going to get the job. Like it was just in the person’s body language in the way that they received the person. There was an ingrained belief that it just wasn’t going to be possible,” Stratton said.
McNaughton said the research is practical, laying out simple ways employers can change their behaviour.
“If it was easy, it would’ve been done so we know that. But I think it’s about, in general, how we upskill, educate our employers to really think beyond their traditional recruitment ways,” she said.
