Team Members With Disabilities Provide Fresh Perspectives

I had an interesting exchange a few years ago with a college student who wanted me to participate in research he was doing on people with disabilities in public relations. 

Look around and you may notice that there aren’t many practitioners with visible disabilities in the communications profession. However, there are more with “invisible” disabilities you can’t readily see.

It was in this context that we had our conversation.

When I responded to his survey, I noticed a pattern. While it sought to quantify the number of people with disabilities in public relations, it presumed that if the numbers are low, that would be due to systemic bias and discrimination. In my feedback, I said it might be more helpful if he spent more time on the identifying possible root causes of lower numbers.

The next time we talked, he told me his college adviser had decided it’s safe to assume that if the numbers were low, which they were, systemic bias and discrimination were the cause. I was curious. Did the college adviser have any experience with disability personally? “No,” I was told.

Given my familiarity with this subject, I counseled that they were making an uninformed assumption. While I don’t have specific data to back up my assertions, I do have decades of firsthand experience and analysis with these issues from every angle.

As I’ve seen, the PR profession and its practitioners couldn’t be more accommodating with regard to persons with a disability. In almost every instance, they not only do their best, but they also are more likely to bend over backward to accommodate. The challenge is, they need to learn what they can do (or not do) to help.

Adding fresh perspectives  

The PR profession does have a certain level of unconscious bias on disabilities that needs to be addressed, and if so, I believe it would improve the work.

Case in point. When I see photos of award-winning PR teams that are recognized for programs that touch on issues involving disability, they are usually — but not always — made up of “able” practitioners. Team members share nothing in common with the beneficiaries of their work.

Here’s a recommendation: Add someone with a disability to your team. Incorporate their perspective and their talents into the program and its implementation. You’ll see a difference.

It’s important not to overlook some inescapable facts. People with disabilities are in a statistical minority of the working-age population. Disability is not a singular thing. The term represents a myriad of physical and nonphysical challenges, many of which limit the individual’s ability to perform certain job duties. These factors contribute to why you don’t see a lot of people with disabilities in communications. But that’s not an excuse for why you see hardly any.

Let’s go back to that work. If you’re an employer and you have a project centered on an issue involving disability, then can you find someone with firsthand experience with that issue to be a part of your team? That’s an easy fix, but it’s just a start.

From there, you’re likely to find that those same people will add fresh perspectives, bringing a diversity of thought and experience that will improve team performance, regardless of the project or subject matter.