People with disability in Australia

Introduction

Positive attitudes of people with hiring responsibilities play an important role in reducing barriers to employment for people with disability.

Challenges in employing people with disability

Employers were asked whether certain aspects of hiring people with disability represent a major or a mild challenge at their workplace, or are not a challenge. In 2022, common challenges identified by employers were:

• finding qualified people with disability (76% of employers said this was a challenge, including 34% who said it was a major challenge)
• nature of work cannot be done by people with disability (named as a challenge by 66% of employers)
• cost to set up workplace (67% named high cost and 66% named unknown cost as a challenge)
• lack of knowledge about people with disability (71%) (Figure BARRIERS.1).

Only 1 in 8 (13%) employers thought that a lack of confidence in dealing with people with disability represents a major challenge at their workplace, and a further 49% said it was a minor challenge. Attitudes of clients, managers and co-workers are also rarely seen as a major challenge in employing people with disability (16%, 14% and 11% respectively), although they still represented a minor challenge to about 4 in 10 workplaces (41%, 37%, and 41%, respectively) (Figure BARRIERS.1).

Figure BARRIERS.1: Challenges employing people with disability experienced by employers, by extent of challenge, 2022

Note: Restricted to people aged 18 and over who were employed at the time of interview and have been involved in hiring employees in the last 12 months.

Source: DSS 2023.

Preparedness of workplaces to hire people with disability

Employers were asked whether their workplace hired someone with disability in the last 12 months and whether their workplace is currently more or less prepared to hire people with disability compared with 12 months ago.

In 2022, 38% of employers said that their workplace hired someone with disability in the last 12 months. About 3 in 10 (30%) of employers said that their workplace is now better prepared to hire someone with disability than they were 12 months ago, 7.6% of employers said their workplace is less prepared, and almost two-thirds (63%) of employers said there has been no change in the past 12 months in how prepared their workplace was to hire a person with disability (Figure BARRIERS.2).

Workplaces who had recently hired someone with disability are more prepared to hire people with disability in the future than those who did not:

• 1 in 2 (50%) employers from workplaces who hired someone with disability in the last 12 months say that their workplace is now more prepared to do so than 12 months ago, compared with 19% of workplaces who did not.
• 1 in 10 (10%) employers from workplaces who did not hire someone with disability in the last 12 months say that their workplace is now less prepared to do so than 12 months ago (Figure BARRIERS.2).

It should be noted that it is not possible to say from this analysis why workplaces with recent history of employing someone with disability appear to be better prepared to hire people with disability in the future. One of the possible reasons may be because hiring an employee with disability had given the employer a better understanding of what may be needed to employ a person with disability, and what supports may need to be provided in the workplace.

Figure BARRIERS.2: Workplace preparedness to hire people with disability, by whether hired someone with disability in the last 12 months, 2022

Notes:
* Relative standard error of 25–50% and should be used with caution.

1. Restricted to people aged 18 and over who were employed at the time of interview and have been involved in hiring employees in the last 12 months.

Source: DSS 2023.