The IOD has been awarded a $265,000 Signature Employment Grant by Kessler Foundation to conduct the "Kessler Foundation Employer Practices Survey." The IOD will collaborate with the University of New Hampshire Survey Center on the project.
"Many employers fully engage people with disabilities in their workforces--hiring, retaining, and advancing their employees with disabilities," said Andrew Houtenville, Research Director at the Institute on Disability. "This new survey will generate actionable information by identifying effective practices corresponding to specific barriers, as well as, identifying detailed information on existing and emerging practices – such as details about linchpin factors in the implementation of a given practice."
The IOD and UNH Survey Center will conduct a survey of 1,500 senior executives in the U.S. Senior executives will be asked three sequential questions related to experience with a past and/or present barrier, success in overcoming the barrier, and practice approaches attempted (successfully and unsuccessfully) to overcome the barrier.
The three goals of the Kessler Foundation Employer Practices survey are (1) to report the prevalence of the use of certain practices in the United States, (2) identify successful practices in sufficient detail to generate useful materials and motivate future study, and (3) identify barriers that are seldom addressed successfully and that require the development of new innovative practices.
The results of the Employer Practices Survey combined with 2015’s Kessler National Employment Survey will paint a full picture of disability employment from both the perspective of the employer as well as the perspective of people with disabilities who are either looking for employment or are currently employed.
