Develop Inclusive and Accessible Hiring Policies

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the difference between universal design and accommodations.
Evaluate each stage of the hiring process and incorporate accessibility into each.
Differentiate between implicit and explicit bias in hiring decisions.

Your organization might already be making strides in creating a more inclusive culture. Your digital platforms may already align with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for universal design. You might offer remote working options and focus on amplifying the voices of employees with disabilities. Your team might even celebrate National Disability Independence Day and Disability Employment Awareness Month.

These are all wonderful steps to take in creating a more inclusive work environment, but what are you doing to foster disability inclusion from Day 1 of the hiring process?

In this module, you learn why it’s so important to design your hiring process with disability inclusion in mind—and steps you can take to make your hiring process equitable and accessible.

The Shift Left Mindset and Universal Design

You’ve likely heard of the shift left approach as it relates to product design. The idea is that by considering accessibility at the beginning of the design process—or “shifting left” in the process—you prevent issues from coming up as much as possible and create a better product that works for everyone. This is also an important concept in disability inclusive hiring. When you incorporate accessibility into your hiring initiatives from the start, you’ll attract a wider pool of applicants and include more people with disabilities.

Woman in a blue dress holding a cane and wearing a badge stands next to a graph demonstrating shift left, where the shift left appears earlier in the planning stage on the x-axis and higher in attention to quality on the y-axis than the traditional design curve.

The shift left mindset is closely related to the concepts of universal design and inclusive design. Both universal and inclusive design include proactive steps to include everyone. In general, universal design is one-size-fits-all; the goal is to design one solution that serves all people with minimal adaptation. Inclusive design is one-size-fits-one. It’s all about relying on diverse perspectives to recognize exclusive practices, solve them, and extend those benefits to all.

Still, no matter how universally designed a system may be, there is always the possibility that an individual will require an adjustment—called an accommodation—to perform effectively.

Let’s walk through each approach. By first understanding these concepts at a high level, you can apply them to your inclusive hiring efforts.

Approach

Definition

Examples

Universal Design

Designing products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation.

A sloped approach leading up to the main entrance, rather than stairs.

Large, color contrasting fonts on signage and bulletin boards.

Inclusive Design

Designing solutions that offer a diversity of ways for people to participate in and contribute to an experience. The design process intentionally includes diverse voices and perspectives.

Captioning in a company’s promotional video.

Curb-cut sidewalks.

Accommodation

An after-the-fact adjustment to a job or work environment that makes it possible for an individual with a disability to perform their job duties. Accommodations can include specialized equipment, modifications to the work environment, or adjustments to work schedules or responsibilities.

An employee who is blind or low vision might need someone to read information posted on a bulletin board to them.

An employee with diabetes may need regularly scheduled breaks during the workday to monitor their blood sugar and insulin levels.

It’s important to note that not all people with disabilities—or even the same disability—need the same accommodation. For example, one job applicant who is deaf may request a sign language interpreter during the job interview, while another may not use sign language and prefer closed captioning instead. Everyone’s experience is different, and it’s up to you to make sure you take the time to understand what each person needs on an individual basis, rather than making assumptions.

The bottom line? You should always be striving to incorporate universal design through a shift left mindset. Still, it’s also important that you remember that disabilities are as varied and unique as the people that have them, and you need to be willing to make accommodations when they help individuals perform their jobs better.

Inclusive Hiring Best Practices

Too often, hiring managers recruit for resumes—not individuals. In reality, candidates are much more complex, nuanced, and talented than one piece of paper might show.

Anytime you’re hiring for a new position, there are five inclusive hiring best practices to keep in mind. They help ensure you’re recruiting the best candidate for the role, regardless of access needs. As you walk through each best practice, consider this scenario to help analyze the importance of this process.

Scenario:

Amara and Tony are both applying for the same position at a marketing firm. They found the role on a common careers site. Both have relevant degrees and similar experience in the field. Their resumes have made it to the desk of the hiring manager who is narrowing down the list of candidates who will be moved forward to the interview stage.

Hiring manager, Kate, sitting at desk, examining two resumes.

Seek to hire the most qualified candidate for the job.

The ultimate goal of recruiting is to find the best fit. That means looking beyond simple resumes in many cases, and seeking to understand an individual’s skills and ability to execute. Unfortunately, biases toward people with disabilities still exist among hiring managers. You may not even be aware of your own biases, so be sure to consult your company’s equitable hiring policy (or create one if it doesn’t exist) when making hiring decisions.

In the case of Amara and Tony, statistics show that Amara’s resume would likely be treated as “less than” Tony’s, only because of her diverse and female name. Instead, the resumes should have had names removed before they made it to the hiring manager’s desk.

Strive to have a candidate pool that reflects your communities.

Diversity is what enriches our teams and ways of thinking. If everyone in a candidate pool looks the exact same, talks the exact same, and has an identical background, that’s a problem! A truly diverse candidate pool increases the likelihood of you finding a diverse candidate that is the perfect fit for your role.

In Amara and Tony’s case, they both got access to the application through a common careers site. This suggests the hiring process was fairly open, although hopefully the company worked with diverse organizations to source a wide variety of candidates.

Ensure hiring managers have resources and tools for an equitable and inclusive hiring process.

Even hiring managers with the best intentions struggle to hire for disability inclusion if they don’t have the right tools. Make sure they have the education, resources, and leadership support to truly foster an inclusive hiring process.

In the example case, hopefully the hiring manager has received diversity training and understands their own biases. For instance, if the hiring manager is a certain race, they might be more inclined to hire either Amara or Tony based on which name sounds most likely to align with their own background. The manager should request that names be removed before they receive the resumes.

Map candidates to core competencies and your values, not culture fit.

The idea of “culture fit” excludes candidates who may think differently or seem unlike existing team members, when in actuality their diversity in thought and experience might be just what your team is missing.

What’s truly important is the idea of values. Do your candidates align with a specific company value? In the example, during interviews the hiring manager might ask Amara and Tony which of the company values resonates most with them.

Design the hiring process with inclusion and equity in mind.

By taking a shift left mindset and including diverse voices in the hiring process, you can ensure your hiring process includes everyone from the start.

In the Amara and Tony example, the hiring manager should make sure that all communications with candidates are accessible. Do important images in emails include alt text? Are all the videos shared with candidates captioned?

Now that you know the best practices for inclusive hiring, let’s talk about how you can design a hiring process to include them from the start.

Follow the journey of hiring manager Kate as she works to implement these practices throughout her recruiting and hiring process. Please note that this is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a checklist to help guide HR professionals.

Step	Best Practices for Disability Inclusion
Post job to company website and various recruiting sites.	Ensure there is a clear way to request accommodations. Include alt text for any graphics. Make sure link names are clear and descriptive. Test the job application using only the keyboard to make sure it can be completed without using the mouse.
Respond to qualified candidates via phone or email to set up an interview.	Make sure to share the platform ahead of time, for example, Google Meet, to allow candidates to set up their platform appropriately.
Conduct interviews.	Be flexible on in-person or virtual interviews. Make sure to ask if interviewees require any accommodations.
Make offers.	Highlight company benefits, especially those that include Employee Resource Groups or affinity/support groups.
Sign contracts.	Test contracts to make sure they can be completed by keyboard only. Ask experts for help and review if available; for example, reach out to your company’s Office of Accessibility if it has one.

Continue to follow Kate’s hiring journey in the next unit as she creates an accessible onboarding experience for her new hires.

Looking for Help?

Develop Inclusive and Accessible Hiring Policies

Learning Objectives

The Shift Left Mindset and Universal Design

Inclusive Hiring Best Practices

Resources