The Next Big Step | Role Model Companies and Partner Organizations | Get Involved

We are a Nation in which 2/3 of the working age population is employed, but only 1/3 of working age people with disabilities have jobs.

The Starkloff Disability Institute (SDI) observes two great causes of this disparity –

• First, many employers and fellow workers prejudge that a person with a disability cannot do a particular job.
• Second, the experiences and knowledge of people who have disabilities and those who do not are so separate that effective and productive communication cannot be accomplished without guided evaluation and training.

SDI has a program called The Next Big Step in which it has partnered with “Role Model Companies” and “Partner Organizations” to help the Role Model Companies find disabled job candidates through Partner Organizations whom they can hire, retain, and promote.

Our current Role Model Companies are:

• Centene
• Enterprise Rent-A-Car
• Enterprise Trust
• Maritz
• Nestlé Purina
• SSM Health Care

Our current Partner Organizations include:

• Life Skills
• MERS Goodwill
• Missouri Vocational Rehabilitation
• Missouri Rehabilitation Services for the Blind
• Paraquad
• Special School District
• Veteran’s Administration

The Next Big Step entails several activities including

• exploring with human resources departments and hiring managers why individuals with disabilities are not being hired,
• training individuals and groups within companies about how to effectively use the skills of disabled employees,
• identifying to human resources departments and hiring managers those candidates for jobs who have disabilities and want those disabilities disclosed,
• providing information to Partner Organizations about available jobs that their disabled consumers might apply for,
• stimulating Partner Organizations to keep job placement and career development in the forefront of their services to disabled consumers, and
• doing anything else that will facilitate an employer’s hiring, retaining and promoting individuals with disabilities.

FACTS:

• 18+ percent of America’s population is disabled. That’s more than 1 out of 5 of our families, friends, and neighbors.
• 69 percent of disabled people, age 16 – 64, are unemployed. Compare that to our current US unemployment “crisis” of 7 percent.
• People with disabilities continue to be the highest unemployed and underemployed of any social category – by far.

While 92 of the Fortune 100 companies have workplace diversity policies, disability is not consistently a diversity measure. Only 32 of these policies expressly mention people with disabilities.