Policies and Issues in HRM & ER: Disability Recruitment in Australian Organizations

Running head: POLICIES AND ISSUES IN HRM & ER
Policies and Issues in HRM & ER
Essay
Topic: Are organisations in Australia diverse and inclusive in the context of Disability
Recruitment/Hiring?
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

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POLICIES AND ISSUES IN HRM & ER
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Employment for people with disability in Australia........................................................................2
Barriers faced by people with disability during recruitment...........................................................3
Reasons behind Australian organisations abstain from hiring people with disability.....................5
Benefits of employing people with disability..................................................................................7
Theoretical frameworks of disability...............................................................................................8
Disability recruitment policies, frameworks and laws in Australia...............................................10
Government’s support to the disabled people in Australia in recruitment and workplace to make
the organisations more diverse and inclusive................................................................................13
Conclusions....................................................................................................................................13
Reference List................................................................................................................................15

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POLICIES AND ISSUES IN HRM & ER
Introduction
. Human Rights Australia has observed that people with disability associate and
participate less in employment than other people in Australia and the disabled people continue to
experience extremely poor outcomes in participating in mainstream employment. Therefore, to
make the workplace diverse and inclusive, the government of Australia has taken some current
initiatives addressing the subject of disability issues in hiring or during the recruitment.
Disability is different from other types of diversity like gender, race, ethnicity, culture and
language (Wen, 2016). Inclusion in the workplace occurs when different and diverse people feel
respected and valued to access resources and opportunities and use their talents at the workplace
to develop them. The thesis statement of this essay is to show diversity and inclusiveness in the
Australian organisations in the context of disability recruitment. In the first section, barriers
faced by people in disability are discussed and challenges faced by organisations to hire people
with disability are also explained. This essay highlights the recent development of the regulatory
framework regarding the disability in the workplace.
Employment for people with disability in Australia
Disability brings barriers to the Australians when disabled people find the discriminatory
behaviours and attitudes during the recruitment and in the workplace from the colleagues and
from the employers. Disabled people sometimes do not aware of the rights of the work and
disabled people face the lack of availability of the jobs. Australian Government published the
new research named Employ Their Ability, where it showed that almost 77% of Australian
employers in small and medium scale organisations are open to hiring the disabled people as
they think that the workplace must reflect the tendency of showing diversity by including the

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POLICIES AND ISSUES IN HRM & ER
disabled people (Eps.org.au, 2018). In Australia, almost five million are disabled and it shows
the large part of the community. As stated by Murfitt et al., (2018), when the employers do not
consider the disabled persons as a candidate, the employers not only delivering the personal
disservice, the business venture is missing the part of the creativity. Following table shows the
clear picture of Australians’ disability:
Disability in the workplace actually means the mental or physical condition which may
limit the person's sense, movements or activities (Wiesel & Bigby, 2015). Disability Employment
Australia provides provision to find the employment results to the disabled people and this
particular agency advice, inform, train and advocate the events of disabled people’s employment
(Scott et al., 2017). As stated by Darcy, Taylor & Green (2016), if all the organisations in
Australia can reduce the employment gap between those without the disability and Australians
with a disability, Australia can increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by almost $43 billion in
the next decade.
Cisco Australia is an equal employment opportunity employer as it is consistent with
applicable law and it provides opportunities and access to those with a disability. Cisco Australia
provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with a disability and it provides access to the
company to the online application to the system. Cisco Australia has made extensive
accommodation to the disabled people by giving extensive efforts (Cisco.com, 2018). Cisco
Australia made workplace modification and they arrange some special equipment. Cisco
Australia also designs the job, hours and procedure in a way so that disabled people can work
better. Cisco Australia also provides workplace education on the employees’ disability and the
management does the performance appraisal as well.