Awareness to Action: Understanding Employers’ Motivations for Building Disability Confidence

This community based participatory research project will seek to understand the motivational, capability, and opportunity factors that enable SMEs to hire people with disabilities, and to investigate what kinds of messaging strategies are effective in encouraging employers to develop their capacity for disability inclusive hiring. The project will be conducted in collaboration with the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW – a national disability employment non-profit service provider) to enhance their advocacy efforts by informing effective communication strategies, including how to design messages that are persuasive to employer audiences. Methods will include a literature review, in-depth qualitative interviews with disability inclusive SME employers across Canada and co-designing recommendations for the development of employer-informed marketing and communication tools for CCRW to use to motivate disability inclusive hiring among other SMEs across Canada. The findings from this research will allow the organization to reach new employers by communicating the value of disability inclusion, and the benefits of engaging CCRW for support and resources on workplace inclusion. The findings from this project will benefit Canada by developing evidence-informed employment service provision to help close the gap between the employment demands of SMEs and the supply of potential workers with disabilities.

Faculty Supervisor:

Alexis Buettgen

Student:

Partner:

Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology

University:

Wilfrid Laurier University

Program: