What Altereos has taught us
The 3rd Transnational Project Meeting took place in Lille on the 4th and 5th of April. All partners of the ACCESS4ALL project traveled from 6 countries (Greece, Italy, Austria, Spain, Cyprus and France) to discuss the progress of the project implementation and its dissemination activities. The consortium also had the chance to discuss ideas and possibilities for future collaborations ensuring the projects’ sustainability and exploitation. The agenda was enriched with visits to adapted companies such as Altereos, who walked us through their company’s particularity of employing people with a disability.
Altereos is a business that is committed to transparent diversity hiring; currently 82% of its employees are people with a sort of disability. What makes this company a best practice case it’s the added human value it carries. The great balance between fragility and performance – to offer quality service to their customers and sustainable employment to their employers – is the reason why this company is an excellent example to follow.
More and more companies and CEOs are learning that a strong business is one that includes people with disabilities as well as diversity in race, gender, and cultural backgrounds, and business leaders across industries have pledged to become more diverse and inclusive. Yet on the other hand employment rates of people with disabilities in the wider sector are lower than average, while their motivation to work is generally high. The combination of these two information alone would suggest that companies should be eager to hire people with disabilities. So why are so many people with disabilities still unemployed even though they are of working age?
A reason why commitment to disability inclusive hiring is limited may be low employer knowledge (Saleh and Bruyère, 2018), as well as lack of social support that leads to many social barriers. If only more companies could recognize the potential of disabled workers and manage to recruit the right person for the right job, it would be a win-win scenario.
#access4all #erasmusplus #iclusivesocieties
For more information:
https://www.altereos.fr/ https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/1201/1201
