Top five ways to support disabled employees at work 

Celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month 

October 8, 2024
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People who face disability challenges play an important role in the success of businesses across the country. During National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), employers have the opportunity to recognize the contributions disabled employees make all year long.

This year’s, NDEAM's theme is “Access to Good Jobs for All.” According to Taryn M. Williams, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Assistant Secretary for Disability Employment Policy, “Good jobs change lives, and all workers — including disabled people — deserve the opportunity to prepare for success in high-quality, good-paying jobs in workplaces free of discrimination.”1

How does your organization support disabled employees at work? Here are five ways employers and their organizations can build an inclusive workplace that allows disabled employees to thrive and succeed.

1. Make sure your company policies reflect your commitment

Your company’s policies are the foundation of your culture. Signal your goals for an inclusive workplace in your policy statements and governance structure. The Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN)2 offers some ideas, including:

  • Affirm your company’s commitment to providing equal employment opportunity for qualified people with disabilities at all levels.
  • Establish a system to audit your company’s efforts to honor this commitment.
  • Assign responsibility for ensuring disability inclusion and diversity to a person or office.
  • State that your workplace will be free from discrimination or harassment of disabled employees.

2. Train your supervisors to support inclusion

Supervisors are the front line in fostering an inclusive workplace culture. To be effective, they need to be trained in policies and best practices.

Consider requiring an annual review of inclusion policies. Then, provide skill-building training on:

  • Managing employees with disabilities
  • Preventing harassment and discrimination
  • Recognizing bias
  • Complying with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements, particularly providing reasonable accommodations that help disabled employees return to and stay at work.

The good news is that much of this kind of training can be obtained off the shelf, making it accessible even to organizations without a learning and development department or staff. For example, the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) offers a series of free training modules on a variety of disability-related topics.

3. Build your internal culture through employee education

Top-down policies and management training are essential, but they’re not enough to build an inclusive culture. For that, you need bottom-up buy-in from all your employees. That’s why you also need to focus on continuous opportunities for employee education. Some ideas for effective education include:

  • Formal training like that provided for supervisors but with a focus on employee action — consider incorporating this training into your onboarding processes
  • Informal educational activities like brown-bag lunch discussions
  • Communications celebrating NDEAM and other inclusion events
  • Distribution of resources like disability etiquette materials
  • Using NDEAM to kick off a disability awareness campaign
  • Providing ongoing American Sign Language (ASL) training to help employees communicate and bolster your recruiting efforts with hearing impaired and deaf talent

4. Establish an Employee Resource Group

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) bring employees with similar backgrounds and interests together to share experiences and support each other. These groups, also sometimes called Employee Networks or Affinity Groups, can be valuable ways to make disabled employees feel included, give them a voice in organizational decision making and surface ideas for improvement. They can also help plan and conduct awareness-building efforts and act as a talent pipeline, bringing qualified candidates with disabilities to your company.

NDEAM is a great time to launch a disability ERG or to remind employees about an existing group. EARN provides an informative toolkit for establishing and maintaining successful ERGs.

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5.  Focus on inclusion year round 

NDEAM is a special month, but don’t let inclusion discussions and education end there — ensure that your communication and awareness efforts extend throughout the year. Ideas include:

  • Use the NDEAM theme to create a related activity every month
  • Include regular discussions of disability inclusion in all-staff and team meetings
  • Host a Disability Mentoring Day to give disabled youth in your community an opportunity to start building career experience.
  • Hold a series of lunch and learns about disability issues, possibly in conjunction with your ERG
  • Provide disability-related employee volunteer opportunities

More resources for employers

Check out the NDEAM website for more ideas on celebrating NDEAM and supporting disabled employees year-round. Other resources include information on:

Also, take a look at this sample email you can send to employees to help celebrate NDEAM.

Finally, one of the best ways you can help employees with disabilities is to offer disability coverage, especially from a carrier that provides strong return-to-work services and solutions that help you manage accommodation requests and comply with the ADA. Such services can help employees successfully transition back to work after a disability leave or stay at work without taking leave — helping them keep or regain their productive lifestyle. Chat with a Unum representative to learn more about the coverage and services we offer.

1 U.S. Department of Labor, Press release: Department of Labor announces ‘Access to Good Jobs for All’ as National Disability Employment Awareness Month’s 2024 theme, 2024.

2 Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN), Inclusion@Work: A Framework for Building a Disability-Inclusive Organization, accessed September 11, 2024.