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November 06, 2007
Equal Opportunities for Training and Advancement
I encourage you to check last week's discussion on this forum about how to demonstrate your disability-honed skills in problem-solving to a hiring manager during a job interview.
You'll get some helpful advice about how to create "memorable presence" for yourself during your conversation with a hiring manager. And you'll pick up examples about how you can turn your ability to adapt into ways to make a workplace more efficient.
Thank you, Liz, Jo, and Barney, for your meaty submissions.
This week, let's examine how to align yourself with the
third-most-important recruitment strategy (out of a
total of 18) eSight members have identified for hiring managers -- those who seek to make their recruitment activities really inclusive.
All 18 strategies (and why they're important) are part of eSight's upcoming eBook, which will be available shortly.
That third inclusive recruitment strategy is this:
Offer employees with disabilities the same opportunities for accessible training, career development and internal advancement you provide those who do not have disabilities.
After a hiring manager has chosen and placed you in a job within your department, he has another issue to address: How does he or she provide opportunities for you to advance in the company -- opportunities that are open to any other employee who has been hired?
Equal opportunity in training and advancement for employees with disabilities is as important as equal opportunity in the hiring process. In many cases, those opportunities are not always as forthcoming as you might first expect.
Check "Clear the Way to Achievement for Your Visually Impaired Employees."
Please reply to this question:
Once you're hired, how do you make sure you're on an appropriate path for advancement and have equal access to the training and development resources available to all other employees?
Add your comments to this posting
Posted by Jim at November 6, 2007 05:43 PM
Comments
OK, I've got the job and I expect there will be opportunity for advancement. Reasonable accommodations have been provided and I'm fitting in with my colleagues and the boss. Through a blog or a network news flash, I learn of a training event I'd love to attend so I sign up. The employer sees my name and gets all nervous about my attending the training since it means: 1. Travel, 2. Dealing with companies who aren't educated about providing accommodations to people with disabilities, 3. The employer thinks he's done his job and tries to discourage me from attending. I suggest that this would be a huge detriment to his/her company and why. I offer to contact the company doing the training, to make my own travel arrangements and to assist the trainers in the provision of reasonable accommodations. Remember, there's a blog whereby employees can speak freely and I comment on the training opportunity and its positives for those attending. Is there extra expense in my attending? Not much, if any. Is it worth the company's baring whatever expense so I can have handouts of exercises or an agenda to review, etc.? YOU bet! Hey, boss, if you hired me just to be a good guy, SHAME ON YOU! If you hired me just to stick me in a back room forever, I don't want to work here anymore because I've already demonstrated my ability to do the job and with training, your company benefits and I get the CEU's I deserve! I expect to attend the training or seminar and I'll make the extra effort to be an equal participant as well as providing a class about what I gained from the experience. I will share my new knowledge and perhaps you won't need to send as many people away from the office.
Posted by: Jo Taliaferro at November 12, 2007 11:43 AM