Bridges to Business

Bridges to Business is an ongoing initiative to help employers to effectively recruit, hire, train, and retain job-seekers with disabilities; and to help agencies that provide job training and placement services to jobseekers with disabilities work more effectively with businesses.

Background

Employers frequently report difficulty accessing candidates with disabilities, and service providers often lack an understanding of business’ labor force needs. As a result, over 20 million working-aged Americans with disabilities lack employment or are underemployed. Bridges to Business is an effort to leverage NOD’s connection to corporate America to help effectively employ those jobseekers with disabilities.

Strategy

Bridges to Business takes a business-driven approach to employment for people with disabilities. With a focus on the needs, goals, and vision of employers, NOD will work with employers to:

• Increase the number of employees with disabilities within employers’ facilities;
• Make the retention rate of people with disabilities within workplaces equal to or greater than non-disabled colleagues;
• Ensure that people with disabilities receive promotion and advancement at a rate comparable to their co-workers without disabilities.

Reports

NOD will provide a quarterly dissemination of our findings to employers, service providers, and the community. Products will include:

• Informal quarterly updates on our progress to service providers, associations, and research and technical assistance centers.
• Presentations at conferences for service providers, researchers, human resource managers, recruiters, and diversity managers, highlighting the business leaders who will be involved in our project.
• An annual white paper for submission to various publications, such as the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation and the Society for Human Resource Management. In 2007, NOD convened a small group of leading employers and providers of employment services for persons with disabilities to identify practical strategies to increase the employment of people with disabilities. The lessons of this convening now form the basis of NOD’s Bridges to Business program. View the Bridges Convening Report