The principle of employability as a fundamental tool for managing people with disabilities and/or vulnerabilities

M. Coggiola | Stellantis Country, Italy

Introduction. Employability is a set of conditions—skills, understanding, and personal attributes (including physical and mental health)—that make individuals more likely to perform a particular job and succeed in their assigned occupations, benefiting themselves, their coworkers, the community, and the business and social economy.
Disability refers to a person who has a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and medium- to long-term negative effect on their ability to perform normal daily activities, including work.
The aim of those involved in employability management is to ensure its applicability to people with disabilities as defined by the social security system or by the work suitability requirements/restrictions formulated by occupational physicians. This objective must be achieved through a road map of practical and feasible solutions to enable all workers to be truly included in the work process, ensuring well-being and productivity.
Objectives. Anyone with physical, mental, and/or cognitive limitations or who is otherwise diverse (including personal characteristics of the workforce such as age, sex, gender identity, and ethnic origin) must be allowed to work safely and productively by reducing occupational risks and eliminating the obstacles that stand in the way of this project.
The objective should be achieved by designing and implementing workstations that comply with threshold limits for physical work, cognitive and mental demands, and by early detection of physical and mental functional deficits in work capacity.
The first step is a proactive preventive approach to avoid having people with limitations and/or disabilities as a result of work activity. The second step is reactive and positive management of workers with disabilities/prescriptions and work fitness limitations.
In fact, not all workers can achieve the same productivity as a person without a disability or impairment, even with technical or organizational ergonomic measures, due to the high level of disability. These workers must also be included in the employability management process.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted in New York on December 13, 2006, uses “reasonable accommodation” as a synonym for employability. Reasonable accommodation consists of “necessary and appropriate modifications and adjustments” to ensure “the right to work of persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others.” . The United Nations' goal is to have “decent work” for all people.
The principles established by the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union on April 11, 2013, can be extended globally and to the extent of “reasonable accommodation”/ employability and could be applied, taking into account local legislation, not only to those who are recognized as disabled and handicapped by specific public bodies in accordance with the legislation of each country, but also to any worker suffering from a condition that compromises their full fitness for work, regardless of whether the disability is certified. Disability should not be assessed solely on the basis of the diagnosis of diseases, but by considering the overall residual functional capacity of each person and using standardized and validated questionnaires such as the ICF short version.
Results. There are several critical issues to be addressed in order to achieve a common global approach to managing employability:
Different legislation in different countries Resistance to accepting workers with severe disabilities or prescriptions/limitations that significantly limit their fitness for work (even if only in the short term) Different approaches are used in different countries for risk assessment.
Different tools are used to assess the risk associated with ‘ergonomic problems’.
Different criteria adopted to formulate the prescription/restriction by the occupational physician.
Consequently, the difficulties are:
Adopting a common strategy to map the risks associated with workstations.
Having a standardized approach to link the workstation analysis phase with the phase relating to the worker's specific limitations in order to proceed with work reintegration. Properly managing the principles of employability.
The employability of people requires awareness, knowledge, and commitment on the part of managers and leaders. They are key stakeholders in the efficiency of the employability management process. For this reason, one of the main issues is to provide and expand the culture of integration among leaders and managers to ensure that work is adapted to people with disabilities and specific physical/mental needs.
The approach to correct employability management is summarized in the flowchart below.

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By following the process shown in the flowchart, it is possible to identify certain priorities.
For the Worker/Restriction Phase:
All restrictions assigned to a worker to safeguard their health must be standardized using a code that can be linked to each workstation (at least country by country). Standardize the meaning of work requirements and restrictions between different sites/countries using a common language.
The Workstation phase requires:
Risk exposure data must be coded (chemical agents, vibrations, biomechanical overload) to map each workstation. The coding of risk exposure depends on the strategy adopted for risk assessment and must be linkable to the worker's restriction.
The allocation phase will be the result of an analysis of the compatibility between the results of the cross-evaluation of the work phase and the workstation phase; in the event of incompatibility, it will be necessary to analyze how to adapt (if possible) the workstation with engineering or administrative solutions.
The assessment of compatibility between the disability or chronic condition and the workplace can be expressed through a work plan defined in agreement with the worker's manager (team leader, supervisor, human resources member) based on the occupational physician's recommendations, supported by ergonomists in the event of ergonomic issues, and considering the health/ propensity of the worker, who modulates/avoids work activities/tasks that could be harmful or aggravate the worker's health conditions.
Only if it is not possible to adapt the workplace or identify a personal work plan will it be necessary to identify a new job/work position. This is because it is necessary to consider the difficulty, often associated with the lack of guarantees of maintaining productivity on the one hand and acceptability/professional satisfaction on the other.
Following the process shown in the flowchart, it is possible to identify some priorities.
For the Worker/Restriction Phase:
All restrictions assigned to a worker to safeguard their health must be standardized using a code that can be linked to each workstation (at least country by country). Standardize the meaning of work requirements and restrictions between different sites/countries using a common language.
The Workstation phase requires:
Risk exposure data must be coded (chemical agents, vibrations, biomechanical overload) to map each workstation. The coding of risk exposure depends on the strategy adopted for risk assessment and must be linkable to the worker's restriction.
The allocation phase will be the result of an analysis of the compatibility between the results of the cross-evaluation of the work phase and the workstation phase; in the event of incompatibility, it will be necessary to analyze how to adapt (if possible) the workstation with engineering or administrative solutions.