Plus side of hiring disabled vets outlined

Plus side of hiring disabled vets outlined
By Tim Pennington  

Disabled soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make excellent employees, often requiring less training and providing higher retention than other workers.

That was the message delivered Wednesday to about 30 companies represented at a seminar downtown hosted by the Employer Assistance and Recruiting Network, a contractor for the U.S. Department of Labor whose mission is to show organizations why it is smart to hire people with disabilities.

“Workers who have disabilities stay at their job much longer, sometimes 50 percent longer, thereby lowering the costs of training and recruiting,” said Jane Rath, project manager for the Washington, D.C.,-based network, which came to Cincinnati as the second stop on a 10-city tour to get the word out about hiring workers with disabilities.

     @@START_COMMENTStartFragment @@END_COMMENT

“We hear over and over again from employers that their No.1 concern is high training and recruiting costs, and hiring someone with a disability lowers those costs and is simply good business,” she said.

While the seminar dealt with the overall issue of hiring disabled workers, the network spent a portion of the program talking about the 11,000 soldiers who have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the hundreds of thousands more veterans who are disabled from other military actions.

“Our goal is to dispel some misconceptions about people with disabilities and to set up a program where we can help companies find and hire these very highly skilled employees,” Rath said.

The network is not a resume bank or a job board.

Instead it uses a network of employment-service providers to match employers with disabled employees. The network also helps companies by providing technical expertise and guidance on topics such as job accommodations, legal issues and other management questions.

Gary Weaver, spokesman for the Disabled American Veterans national headquarters in Cold Spring, said disabled military personnel are still underemployed but have consistently rated as some of the best employees in corporations they have surveyed.

“There are some negative perceptions that need to be overcome, but when you hire a disabled vet you get a person who is disciplined, who follows orders and exerts leadership, who is very often well educated, and who follows chain of command and is loyal,” Weaver said. “If you are an employer looking to hire, it’s hard to overlook those values in a person.”

On the Web: www.earnworks.com & www.dav.org

www.hireveterans.com
www.hireveterans.com