Manufacturers Urged to Open Hiring to Workers With Disabilities

Published with support from our sponsors

Factories that cannot fill jobs are leaving a large group of candidates out, according to experts at a Manufacturing Institute webinar. The group is people with disabilities, and the speakers framed hiring them as part of the industry's answer to its labor gap.

The gap and the group

A 2024 study by the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte projects a shortage of 3.8 million manufacturing workers by 2033. About 1.9 million of those jobs are expected to go unfilled.

Sabrina Zarifi of the institute's Step Ahead retention program spoke at the Sept. 24 event. She said manufacturers are passing over workers who could help close that gap. The CDC puts the share of Americans living with a disability above a quarter.

Beth Sirull, CEO of the employment nonprofit National Organization on Disability, said the issue touches close to half of a company's workforce. In her view it belongs at the center of talent strategy, not on the side.

Settling the questions before the offer

Michelle Barnhart joined The Timken Co., an Ohio-based maker of engineered systems and components, in 2016. She started at its New Hampshire facility and is now at her third Timken location, as manager of operations workforce development, according to her LinkedIn profile.

At Timken, the questions about how the job would work were settled before she was hired. Interviews included questions on how the process would work, and a short tour of the manufacturing floor showed what worked and what did not. Barnhart said this recruiting approach brought people with physical disabilities into manufacturing successfully.

She called for a review of everything from job descriptions to interview steps, so that there is room for people with all kinds of disabilities.

Barnhart's earlier route back to the floor

Getting hired, she said, was a different conversation from keeping someone after an injury. In 2013 an ATV accident left her paralyzed and using a wheelchair. She was 26, a few years into her career, working the floor as an hourly operative at her previous employer.

That employer first moved her to an office job in customer service. She wanted the floor back and made her case until the company heard her out. HR staff walked through various tasks with her and asked whether she could handle each one. Sometimes she had no immediate answer.

The method was what she called a "go-and-see mentality": she went to the floor in her wheelchair and tested things, such as the effect of the shop floor on her tires and whether she could get through doors. "At no point in my early career of being disabled did someone assume what I could or could not do," she said.

What managers can ask

Sirull said that quizzing an employee who seems to be struggling about their health conditions crosses a legal line. She proposed what she calls empathetic curiosity instead. Therapists use the practice to understand clients through careful listening and a curious attitude, according to a paper from the National Library of Medicine.

At work, Sirull said, it takes the form of a question to the employee about where the employer could lend a hand with the job. To do it well, everyone who manages people, up to the chief executive, needs training.

The framing is positive rather than accusatory, Sirull said. It lets a manager open a conversation that some employees are too scared to start. Because the talk is private, the details do not reach the team, Sirull said, and colleagues see the kind of manager someone is, which builds trust across the team.

Our Take

The steps in this webinar are small: raise accommodations early, walk the floor with candidates, train managers to ask. The coverage does not say how many manufacturers already work this way, or whether one company's experience carries over to plants with other layouts and equipment. Hiring data from employers would show whether these steps change who gets hired.

Source: HR Dive