Shaping attitudes to disability employment with a national disability insurance scheme

Abstract

AbstractApproximately twenty per cent of the world's population has some form of disability, but workforce participation of people with disability has been intractably low. In an effort to improve the economic and social participation of people with disability, the Australian Government introduced legislation in 2013 designed to provide individualised support and encourage communities and employers to be more receptive to people with disability. The authors surveyed 1,230 workforce members and 715 employer decision‐makers at three points in time (2010, 2012, and 2014) to examine how attitudes to people with disability and employer hiring behaviour are changing in response to the legislation. The evidence demonstrated that both groups are experiencing greater contact with people with disability, reporting more positive interactions with people with disability, and endorsing more reasons for employers hiring people with disability. However, these positive attitudes have not been accompanied by improvements in hiring: there was a decline in decision‐makers' hiring of people with disability from 2012 to 2014.