Why & How
Disability Inclusion Is An Opportunity, Not An Obstacle!
Making your business accessible to people with disabilities is simply good business. Accessibility and inclusion ARE the law, but here’s what you may not realize…
Studies have shown that organizations that embrace & engage customers, job candidates & employees with disabilities enjoy the following financial benefits:
Why?
So why would marketing to people with disabilities (PwD) increase revenue by 28%?
- 20-25% of Canadians live with a visible or invisible disability, our largest minority by far
- We have purchasing power worth $55 billion annually in Canada and $1 trillion globally
- We influence the buying habits of family, friends & neighbours as well
If you’re not accommodating customers with disabilities you may as well stand at the door of your shop and turn away every 4th or 5th customer. How would that impact your daily volume?
Click on images to enlarge
And why would hiring PwD double net income and boost profit margins by 30%? There are a whole host of reasons but here’s a start:
- PwD tend to take less risks so health & safety costs are lower
- Our absenteeism and turnover rates are lower
- We have a positive imact on company culture and employee morale, driving productivity and profitability
If you’re not recruiting from and marketing to this massive untapped population, you’re losing out on manpower, suppliers, sales and revenue. Can you afford to leave that much business on the table?
If You Haven’t Yet Fully Engaged People With Disabilities
You Are FAR From Alone!
“It seems that many organizations have been on autopilot when it comes to disability recruitment,” and that needs to change, says
Alex Alonso, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP SHRM’s chief knowledge officer.
only
25%
of organizations have explicit goals for recruiting and hiring people with disabilities
only
1/3
of organizations offer disability awareness training to all managers and supervisors
and
51-61%
of HR professionals and managers have not participated in any disability awareness training either
Lean on Us, We’ve Got This Covered
Trish Robichaud, our CEO and Founder, is a Work Life Inclusion Coach, Accessibility Compliance Consultant & a Motivational Speaker who lives with multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and bipolar disorder. She is Owner and Founder of Changing Paces.
Trained in the facilitation of adult education, support counseling, self-advocacy, social action, and life skills, Trish has been providing coaching, counseling and advocacy support to people with chronic illness or disability for well over 25 years. Along side that work, whe has been facilitating disability awareness training and consulting with organizations in the proviate, non-profit, public and municipal sectors for over 15 years on the topic of disability inclusion.
Trish is a warm and funny, powerhouse of a woman who says that while she may have mutiple disabilities, she is definitely NOT disabled. She’s gifted at taking clients by the hand and walking them through their development process, one doable step at a time.
"Trish is a very engaging and knowledgeable speaker in the area of corporate disability inclusion. She has creative methods for sharing best practices.”
“The training is effective because it allows people to put themselves in the shoes of the traveler that has a disability and gives us insight into things we may personally be doing that are unintentionally wrong. Once learners can connect with that, they are more likely to remember those lessons and correct their own behavior.”
“Interactive discussion, well-led and summarized. Great insights and suggestions. We could have talked longer! Everyone was wonderfully engaged.”