Rotary Employment Partnership
Up one level
The Employment Partnership
Employment for People with Developmental Disabilities
The Rotary Employment Partnership is a project between District 5370 & 5360 Rotary Clubs, the Alberta Association for Community Living (AACL), and Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) Program and Community Boards (Alberta Seniors & Community Supports). The purpose of the Partnership is to create meaningful employment opportunities for people with developmental disabilities in association with Rotary business owners and employers. To-date more than a hundred jobs have been created.
As people with developmental disabilities seldom find employment through conventional job recruitment strategies, the project is essential as it creates employment opportunities that simply would not be available otherwise. Without the Partnership, businesses and employers would not have access to a workforce that is motivated, reliable and ready to work. In addition, the project provides the necessary support to employers, co-workers and people with developmental disabilities to ensure everyone is successful.
Many Rotarians are making an invaluable difference by helping people with developmental disabilities “get their foot in the door” of business and industry - to have a chance for real jobs. In turn many Rotarians are learning about the contribution people with developmental disabilities can make from improving the bottom line (e.g., by reducing turnover) to increasing customer satisfaction.
Typically, employers create jobs according to the needs of their business but without necessarily understanding how an employee with developmental disabilities could fill existing or future positions. Partnership staff help business owners and employers to think about how jobs can be re-defined so as to maximize efficiency and productivity while creating the possibility of an employment opportunity for someone with a developmental disability.
Employers often re-organize work and assign jobs to staff that best suit their skills and talents. In this way, employers create more efficient business practices and more satisfied employees with higher job retention. This is simply a common means to structure a job to make the best use of an employee’s skills and abilities.
The same strategy is effective when hiring someone with a developmental disability. Employers can build a position description for a person with developmental disabilities by putting together job functions taken from existing jobs. This can create a more productive operation by ensuring critical work demands are efficiently assigned. Many existing jobs contain performance requirements that vary in their complexity and importance. By re-assigning less complex but still essential functions to individuals with developmental disabilities, non-disabled employees are able to concentrate on the primary demands of their work.
So just how does an employer go about hiring someone with a developmental disability? Employers may think, at first, that they simply do not have any jobs for someone with a developmental disability. However, our experience and that of an increasing number of Rotarians, demonstrates that many jobs exist when an employer has the support and opportunity to think about the benefits of hiring someone with a developmental disability.
If you are an employer, here are some questions you could ask:
• Are there jobs that are left undone at the end of the day because your staff cannot or do not make them a priority? Ask your managers and staff to consider make a list.
• Is this unfinished work causing stress for you or your employees?
• Are higher paid, more qualified employees doing tasks that take them away from more important priorities?
• Would some of these tasks provide “added value” for your customers?
• Would it be more efficient and cost effective to delegate these tasks to a part-time employee?
• Could a person with a developmental disability do this work?
Do not feel that you have to create a job that will fill up a 35 or 40-hour workweek. A good job can mean working part-time. As more skills are learned and mastered, more work and hours can be added later on. The possibilities are endless and you do not have to figure this out alone. If you are not sure how a person with a developmental disability can fit into your business, call us. We can give you a realistic idea about the jobs that someone can do for you.
Click here to view some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the Employment Partnership program.
For more information about the Employment Partnership program, please contact :
Wendy McDonald, President, AACL
1-800-252-7556 Ext. 222
Email: possibilityworks@shaw.ca
Bruce Uditsky, Chief Executive Officer, AACL
1-800-252-7556 Ext. 222
Email: buditsky@aacl.org
Robin Acton, Director, Employment Partnership
1-800-252-7556 Ext. 222
Email: racton@aacl.org