You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D - Episode 8

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You can't spell inclusion without a D, the podcast that explores the power of inclusion and why disability is an important part of the workplace diversity and inclusion conversation. Produced by the Ontario Disability Employment Network, with your hosts, Jeanette Campbell and Dean Askin.

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Well, hello and welcome to a new season of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D. I'm Dean Askin and it's great to be back at the mic with my co-host. Jeanette, how are you doing? I mean, can you believe it's what? Almost three years now since we launched this podcast? Well, I can believe it's been three years, but I look forward to the next three. And speaking of looking forward, Dean, we've got some great shows and guests lined up for 2023. So wherever you're listening from.

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Thanks for joining us for this first episode of the season and stay tuned because there's lots of great stuff coming ahead.

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That's right. This season we're looking at the state of disability inclusion in business in Canada, its past, present and future, the global state of disability innovation, disability in the media and more. And you know, in our work at Odin, we're always citing statistics and facts about the business benefits of disability inclusion from studies and reports. But they're usually from studies published by organizations in the US or the UK. That's right.

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That's why we're kicking things off this season with a conversation about some new disability in the workplace research that's underway in Canada. Now that might not sound exciting, but this actually is because there hasn't been research like this done in this country for a long time. Now

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The full name of this initiative is Inclusive Design for Employment Access. That's a mouthful, so it's known as IDEA for short. But there's nothing short about this project. It's a six-year research initiative being done with 9 million in federal funding under Canada's New Frontiers in Research Fund. This episode is the first in a two-part series on new disability research in Canada.

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Joining us for part one of this conversation are the two experts reimagining how Canadian workplaces can be more inclusive for people in this country who have a disability. So Dean, that's about 6.2 million people, or 22% of the population by the way. And then there's the over 600,000 employable Canadians who have a disability who want to work in these workplaces that are going to be reimagined in the idea initiative.

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kind of loosely here because as we all know, the nature of how and where people want to work has changed a lot over the last three years. And who knows what the world of work and workplaces will be and look like six years from now at the end of this project. I guess it's going to be an interesting research journey for our two guests. Dr. Emil Tompa is a senior scientist at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto.

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and an associate professor in the Department of Economics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He's also an assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Rebecca Goertz is an occupational therapist and associate professor in the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster U. You know, we were chatting before the show and I have to say, it was exciting for me, seeing our two guests getting excited just about the idea of talking about.

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this research project. So, Emile Thompa and Rebecca Goertz, welcome to You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation, Dean and Jeanette. It's a pleasure to be here. Now, I want to start by getting you to paint a bit of a picture for us here. Tell us a bit about what you're doing and from your perspective, why is this research initiative so important? Emile, whoever wants to kick it off, Emile, if you want to...

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Take it away. OK, I will start. And Rebecca, I'm sure has lots to add. So this project, the idea of social innovation laboratory that we've got funding for from New Frontiers, is a continuation of work we've been doing in this space for quite some time. Our previous initiative is called the Center for Research and Work Disability Policy, which was a seven-year funding envelope from a SHERP partnership at Social Science and Humanities Research.

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So we're continuing the good work, but what we realized was the importance of thinking about how we can help employers expand their capabilities, their capacity to be inclusive of persons with disabilities. A lot of effort in the past has focused on skilling up workers to become job ready, and that's really important as well. And then some work has been put into policy systems providing the wraparound supports and the...

05:10
income replacement programs that may support transitioning into the labor market through different funding envelopes, that maybe engage employment recruiters who specialize in equipment of persons with disabilities trying to do some job matching. And that's already great work. But the uptake has been really low, primarily because employers don't know how to do this well and they need some skilling up as well. So this initiative we're focusing on over the next six years is really focusing on building that employer capacity.

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I'll pass it on to Rebecca. I'm sure she has lots to add. Yeah, so I think, I agree with everything that Emile has said, but I think why this is so important is because work and employment is so important for people with disabilities. It's often the issue that is most commonly identified among young adults and adults with disabilities, among families of,

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people with children with disabilities, you know, what's gonna happen to my child in the future. And it's also important from a social perspective for society in terms of ensuring that people have income and that people can fully contribute to society. Not that there's not other ways that people contribute in important ways, but right now, especially in 2023, we find ourselves in the middle of a...

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pretty significant labor shortage. And we, many people predict this is, you know, labor shortages are gonna be a thing in Canada in the future and worldwide. And so it's really important to take a look at our labor market, to take a look at people who are laborers and better understand how to better prepare people for work

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how to prepare the workplace for the diverse people that could enter it. So that's why it's important is because we need people to work in Canada and people want to work. And this is not just in Canada, I would say worldwide. And our approaches to date have really focused on that first piece on how to prepare people for the workplace. And

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have not really focused on what they're being prepared for, about the context, the workplace, the labor market, and how to ensure that our workplaces are better able to successfully employ diverse people, people with different abilities and different diversities. So that's why it's important because without addressing that,

08:06
context, we haven't really been able to shift the dial and increase rates of employment among people with disabilities in any significant way. It's hard to be prepared for something if you don't really know what you're being prepared for, I guess, kind of thing. I mean, we mentioned that there's always research coming out of other countries like the US and the UK and sometimes Australia and even India.

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Why do you think it's taken we Canadians so long to undertake some kind of new research like this particular kind of? Maybe, do you wanna start, Emile? Sure, I'll try. So it's a really good question. It's a tough one too. So I do think there's lots of good work happening in Canada research-wise, but also in the policy. I think we are setting a precedent with our...

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the Accessible Canada Act that became law in 2019, and lots of great initiatives at the federal level. The accessibility standards Canada was created to develop some best practice guidance for for various areas, priority areas in the Accessible Canada Act. There's a new program for wage and income replacement for persons who are working age and unable to work. So there's lots of great initiatives happening. I think on the research side,

09:28
There has been a lot of effort, including ourselves, or as I mentioned, the Center for Research on Worse Disability Policy. I think that a lot of countries are struggling to better understand how we can develop systems that are inclusive of the diversity of people that are in human society, and in the labor market in particular in this case. We are working very closely with a number of renowned international research centers, a couple of them in the US.

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in Australia that are key partners and participants in our initiative. I think this has to be a joint effort. You know, this is not a Canadian issue alone. It's an international issue. A lot of countries are doing some good work to advance employment opportunities for persons with disability and are now struggling to make headway. I think

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the difference that we're taking, and some of our partners have started down that path as well, is to think about the systems level approach. In a way, it's not about a specific program or a recruitment program or onboarding program or a specific approach that a manager might take single-handedly to accommodate a person's health needs. It's really, we have to take a systems level approach, thinking about changing the whole landscape.

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of employment and labor market contracting practices that's inclusive of the diversity of talent that's out there. And to take it even a bigger scale, I think it's not even about the employment landscape, but society, just inclusive approaches to all aspects of human society. All the various roles that we play throughout our lives need to be inclusive of that diversity. So that ultimately that's a culture change, a new normal.

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And we are only starting with the employment side because that's been our area of focus and expertise over a number of different initiatives that we've done over our careers. But we are trying to promote culture change. And I think employment is a really good starting point because as Rebecca pointed out, employment is transformative for people, adults of working age, it just changes everything about their existence, I guess. If you're a...

11:46
If you have the agency to be a consumer and to live independently of autonomy, it makes such a big difference from being dependent on social transfers that are often well below the poverty line. So it's a really good starting point where we wanna make some substantive, transformative change in the norms of our society. And I'll pass on to Rebecca. Well, I'm gonna jump in actually, because you're making me think of something. So Rebecca, previously you talked about

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prior approaches. And you talked about the need to, you know, keep shifting the dial. And Amil, I'm really glad you talked about, you know, all the good work that's already happening in Canada and has and definitely, you know, in the policy area and in research. So as we're talking about this sort of concept of approach, can you tell us about, because it's very interesting, if you can talk about the approach that you're taking in this project, like what's different?

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about your inclusive design for employment access initiative compared to what people might think of as traditional research about disability and employment that's done before? Yeah, and I mean, we have argued that our approach is a big difference. It's really important, and it's in some ways radical. And I would argue that it's not just new in Canada.

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We have in designing idea, we spoke to partners and researchers and others in different countries. And many of them also agreed that this focus on building employer capacity or building demand side capacity is not something that has really been done in the employment and disability realm.

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before, at least not to the scale. What we have found is throughout Canada and throughout the world, there are really exciting innovations, but they haven't really been studied and scaled. And so that is part of what we're trying to do. We're not trying to...

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reinvent the wheel, we're trying to discover those innovations, those promising practices that people are doing on a small scale and evaluate them and look at ways they can be scaled. And then also leveraging ideas that people have in this space that could be turned into promising practices. So that's what's really, I would say,

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different and unique is that focus on rather than changing the disabled person and saying there's something fundamentally wrong with the person and that they need to, we need to deliver services and supports and interventions to help them to fit to the workplace. We're saying no, none of that. What we actually need to do is look at the workplace and how the workplace can be more welcoming and inclusive of

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diversity and how to take people with disabilities as they are and help them to be contributing members of various workplace environments. What is it that they can offer to the workplace? Yeah, exactly. And there's a number, actually, we're being innovative in multiple fronts. Certainly, our approach to kind of what we think is the essence of the issue.

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is really important, focusing on employer's capacity and skilling up employers is really central part in terms of the subject matter. We're also trying to be different in how we do our researches as well. In the past, a lot of research has been done a bit separate from the real world where it's supposed to be affecting. And then you push it out the door and promote it after the work is done. We are partnering with all of the key...

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parties in this policy arena, the stakeholders, you know, they are our partners and they're co-leading all of our incubator hubs jointly with our academic leads in this initiative. So we're working together to identify the priority areas, you know, working together to identify the best solutions and then evaluate them in small scale trials in the field and then work to scale them up across the sector, you know, the things that we find that work really well.

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contextualizing appropriately for the different contexts in which they might be most beneficial for different sectors to adopt. So it's a joint partner process. I think that's very different, particularly for a lot of social policy research in this space. In the past, it's been separate, the research part from the knowledge mobilization part, and it's all woven together for us. So very,

16:58
It's solution driven and it's also rapid. We try to do this quickly. We, we hope we six years seems like a lot of time, but that's going to go by very quickly. And if we're going to make an impact, we can't spend two or three years trying to figure out what the problems are. And I think a lot of people out there in the field have a good handle both on where the biggest challenges and also some, probably some promising practices that we just need to uncover, evaluate more rigorously, understand.

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you know, how to tweak them to work in different types of contexts, and then help scale them up across a particular sector across Canada. So we're not reinventing things as Rebecca says. Our first start is to build on field knowledge that's already out there. And then I think another innovation that we're taking is, I think I alluded to it already, is a systems approach. It's not about how do you accommodate a person's health needs, you know, on a case by case basis. You know, that's a...

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retrofitting thing that it needs to be done, certainly at this stage of the game, but in the future, we wanna think about how we can create a world of work that's inclusive of the diversity of talent that's out there so that we're not retrofitting on a case by case basis. We need to create a new normal. And some of that capacity needs to be built up at different levels. At the immediate level, it's the employer capacity, but some of that capacity is also on the...

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academic side, you know, credentialing people to be taking a disability lens and everything they do, whether it's in architecture, engineering, management, training. So some of the front end we're doing is some micro credential training programs that we're developing to help get people already out in the field up to speed. But ultimately we want to change how the curriculum is developed in post-secondary education or institutions, but also maybe in primary and secondary school too.

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from the get go should be inclusive. When we get out into the world as children and see the world with a different set of eyes that is accepting of that diversity and that we're all included, whether them marginalized populations. And it's hard to fix things after people become young adults and see the world in a certain way. So those are layered approaches that we'll deal with shortly. Their front end is really about the immediate employer capacity and getting them up to speed.

19:23
Well, it's interesting too because, I mean, for Odin, we focus a lot on that, as you call it, the demand side capacity and building capacity within the employment space, helping businesses to understand, to learn, to be able to move. I like the terminology you're using, moving from this kind of concept of retrofitting into a systems approach. And this focus that you're talking about on...

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the young people on youth is also something that's really important and so needed right now. We know that all the previous research, even though we started saying there's not a lot of research, previous research has proven that the long-term success in the world of

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that early attachment, those first opportunities. And so the younger people are, so how do we work with businesses and families and the school system? So this is, it's not like a one solution sort of thing, which kind of leads me to a little bit to the next question is around the fact that

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know, people might be like, wow, $9 million. That's a lot of funding. You just unpacked a whole lot of work that's going to be done over six years. So with this with this funding announcement, if correct us if we're wrong, but I think it was announced really January 2022. So what have you been up to since then? Like, it sounds like a lot. Yeah. Could I just so a couple things, first of all,

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I think the other thing that's really important to keep in mind and is part of what we've been doing over the last year, but perhaps what we had already started doing is this is a really complex problem, right? Like it's not a, it's not, it's not, it's so complex because it's not that we have to fix one thing. It's that we have to redesign and reimagine what the workplace can do.

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can be like, and we have such, we do have great and innovative employers out there and service providers out there and organizations like Odin and others who are doing great work in this space, but it's about scaling and looking at how the work that people are doing at that local level can be expanded and evaluated in an evidence-based way.

22:11
But the other thing is even us as researchers, we come from various disciplines and this is such a complex problem that it's not discipline specific. It's not a health issue, it's not a social issue, it's not a business management issue, it's not a design issue, it's actually all those things. And the solution to it requires...

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full engagement with people with expertise from all those areas. And so, so part of the reason it requires so much funding is because of that complexity and the need to bring people together and fully engage and be compensated for for those efforts and and and to do so appropriately but but we also need time to come together and learn from each other to skill ourselves up.

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and then to look at what's out there and do those rapid, to rapidly review and identify promising initiatives. So over the last year, that's really what we've been, that's part of what we've been doing is organizing ourselves in multidisciplinary, multi-sectoral thematic hubs and identifying and scanning and scoping out promising practices, engaging partners,

23:36
and building excitement about this work, how identifying some of those really innovations that are out there, innovative employers, service providers, people with lived experience, all those things, and trying to bring that together so we can start to scale some of these examples, some of these initiatives. So that's part of what we've been doing over the last year.

24:06
And those kinds of efforts are often skipped in smaller projects because they have to have a narrower focus in order to meet timelines and budget restrictions. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Emil. I was just going to add, we've been super busy. It's hard to imagine how much work it is to set up a new organization, essentially. We are an entity unto itself.

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five incubator hubs with partners and leads that are entry points for our research inquiry. So setting up those things and the projects within them and getting all the teams up and running. We are also been recruiting for our national office, some core functions, our national manager, our website programmer, our engagement and social.

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engagement person is doing also all of our communication. So all of that recruitment been taking place. We've hired a web development company to develop our website. It's going to be a web portal. That's our goal to one-stop shop for workplace parties to access relevant information, to help support their capacity building efforts. So all of that's well underway. And we're planning to have an official public launch on May 18th to let the world know.

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about what we're doing. So we've been super busy with that. And both myself and Rebecca each participate very actively in one of the hubs ourselves with our own research programs. So it's been quite a bit of work that's set up. And the recruitment process has been a challenge because we wanna find the right talent. We're giving priorities to persons with disabilities and making sure that...

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we have the right skill sets because it's a small operation in some respects, $9 million. We're really honored to have that money, but it doesn't give you a whole lot of leeway to be flexible. We really want to have the best and most cohesive team because it's a small team working together. And there's been a lot of outreach. We're really surprised how excited people are about this initiative that we didn't anticipate. A lot of folks from various areas from the...

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policy and senior policy folks at the federal level reaching us, right, reaching out to us for help to work to partner with us, other academics that were not part of our original fold coming forward, policymakers, you know, employers, labor. So it's really surprising. A lot of people are

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excited about what we're doing and realize the value of it and want to be part of it. And that's a really good sign. Everybody seems to be in the right space to think about we need to make a change and we want we need to work together. It's not an independent effort, you know, if we're going to transform society in the world of work. We need to do it together collectively across Canada and internationally as well because you know some of the things we'll be thinking about in the later

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research to practice or knowledge to practice program is looking at supply chains, you know, and the international labor markets, because this is not a silo Canadian thing issue that needs to be dealt with. And it's only going to work if employers around the world are going this direction. I think they need to, because there's labor shortages, as Rebecca's mentioned, there's a demand for talent, there's an aging of the labor force. And so the working age population is getting smaller relative to the overall.

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population size. So, so, and we firsthand realized how difficult it is to recruit talent and some of the people we were interviewing found other jobs while we're interviewing them. Right. So there's a big demand for, for talent. And I think this is a wonderful window of opportunity to help employers frame their labor market contracting practices differently to tap into that talent. It is a win-win.

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you'll learn how to do it well. It just becomes a new normal. You don't even have to think about it, right? And so we're just trying to change that normal to one that's inclusive of all the talent that's out there. And I think, you know, there's so much happening and there's so much intentionality. And I'm picking up on some of the things that you were talking about, about taking the time.

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to do this project right. And you know, Rebecca, you were acknowledging that for a lot of, in a lot of situations, people don't have the time to actually build that foundation. And we find, you know, and there's that saying, you're building the plane while you're flying it, kind of concept. And it does, it can really affect the long-term impact of the work that you're doing, but because you're being so intentional and mindful and making sure you've built this foundation.

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And as in the bedrock of this, and you're taking the time to create those relationships, to bring in the right talent, to source the right talent, it's just going to lead towards more and more outcomes and more learnings and more capacity being built at the end, right? So that whole thing about moving the dial is going to be realized a lot easier.

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with all of the heavy lifting that you're doing at the beginning of this project. So I wanna kind of bring you back, Rebecca, about thinking back to when you put in for this research grant. A lot of people put in for grants. Did you actually imagine you'd get it? And can you think about what your initial reaction was when you found out? Yeah. So...

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This was the first time this particular funding envelope was being offered. So, Emile and I were learning about it with the rest of the research community across Canada. So, but you know how it all started, believe it or not, it actually started two years before we were actually awarded the funding. And I would argue that it probably started even

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maybe longer, like four years, as we were working on the Center for Research on Work Disability Policy, that's where Emile and I first started working. It was an initiative that he was leading through the Institute for Work and Health at McMaster University. And I became involved in that work as I started my program of research.

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and started becoming more and more involved in the amazing work, because I really appreciated the multidisciplinary focus and the structure it provided me to do some of the work I really wanted to do with others and the partners that just add value to everything we do. And as that funding was winding down,

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Emile and I and others started thinking about what's next? What are we gonna do? How do we continue this momentum? And started exploring different options. And it was around that time that this funding call was first released as a new initiative. And so we started thinking that really what came next after this seven year focus on

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work disability policy that really what needed to happen was this really intentional focus on employer capacity, demand side capacity, disability confidence. Those were all really important ideas that were emerging from the work that we and others were doing at the time. Now, what we do know is that the whole journey started with a letter of intent.

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And we know that over 400 research teams across Canada put in a letters of intent. And we knew that that was going to be, like we knew that that was the biggest cutoff that the reviewers had to go through. And I'm sure there were amazing projects that didn't get funded from that pool. I know because we've heard of some of the projects that went in and...

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and somehow we stood out and were able to secure, we're invited to go to the next round. And I think that was when I realized that we may actually do this, that the fact that we got through that first cutoff, because it went from, I believe, over 400 to something like 31 teams, that was when I think Emile and I started to realize that we could potentially do this.

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Our success is first of all, the way Emile and I work together, but more importantly, so this is not something I could have ever imagined for myself, this was a team initiative and we had this amazing team that we had built over, that we had built over a decade of partnered research, multidisciplinary research,

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working really collaboratively with communities and service providers and people with lived experience. And it was because we were able to draw on that and build that, we spent many, you know, our focus over the pandemic was meetings and discussions and understanding the really fascinating work that people were doing in this area and trying to think of how to bring that together.

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in this proposal? Yeah, and I just want to add actually that, after the 31, it was reduced to 12, and then we were one of those 12 where we had to do like a dragon's den pitch and answering questions to a panel. And then it was reduced to seven that were funded. We were one of those seven. So we were really honored to be able to get to that stage. And even though...

34:58
We always feel that our work is the best. We knew it was important work. The funding envelope is called the transformation stream. So they're trying to transform Canadian society through this funding. So they want people to do something different that's transformative, having high impact. And we figured, well, where else can we make a bigger impact in society than transforming the labor market and the economy, hopefully. And it was just about convincing

35:28
the panel on the Dragon's Den that we were worthy of the funding kind of thing. It was stressful but certainly fun. We had an, as Rebecca pointed out, it was an amazing team. It's not a single-handed effort. You know, we have incredible partners from labor, from industry, from the disability community, from the policy arena and academics from across the country

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with us together to make this happen. And it's not been created at the get-go of the funding overload being announced because we've been working in this space already with a lot of these people for a couple of decades, right? So we're building this collective effort and knowledge base over a longer period of time, as talented from across the country. So this is just the next iteration of...

36:26
something we've been building for quite some time. Well, you know, congratulations on the, you know, you said 400 was the number of projects put forward. And then it got whittled down and whittled down and you ended up in the thirties and then you end up doing this Dragon's Den with 12, was it? And then in the end, seven of you came out successful. So that's, so congratulations on that. That's fabulous.

36:55
It's great to hear that this all sort of came out of the existing work relationship and past projects that you've done, because, you know, me being a lay person and on a writer communicator, I had this vision of like, you know, do research scientists come up, you know, get together with ideas or Starbucks and have a coffee and bounce things off each other just like, you know, like writers do. So that was great. You know, I'm wondering, you know, research always and

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research and scientific research, you always got to start with a hypothesis. So what's your hypothesis about Canadian workplaces? Going into this. That's a really good question. And there's probably multiple sub hypotheses, but I can start with the first one we have and we've alluded to that that we need to change our focus from skilling up workers to skilling up employers. And we need to change the norms that it's a systems level issue that we have to create a new norm.

37:51
inclusive rather than ad hoc accommodations on a case-by-case basis, right? You know, certainly there'll always be a space for that, you know, people needing to think about, you know, the design of a workstation for somebody's specific kind of abilities and needs at times, right? But if we can create a world that's inclusive from the get-go and universally designed in a way that meets the broadest needs of the

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the population in the labor market, we're up and running already. And the tweaking is marginal, not substantive, I guess, if we create the world that way. And at the front end there, there's a scaling up cost involved. People think, okay, what do we need to do to get up to speed? It's an iterative process to get up to speed, changing management system, workplace systems, labor market recruitment practices, all those things are, but after a while that becomes a norm, right?

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design of new ways of doing things. At the front end, there's some retooling costs, but then you think about the gains afterwards for decades and generations, it's a huge win. And we've actually done some number crunching to estimate the gains to society. This is some work we did as part of a precursor to this project to put a price tag on it for having a fully accessible, inclusive society. And the gains...

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And this is not just labor market gains, but on all social kind of roles that we play in society, it's about 17.6% of GDP in any one year. Right. So we use 2017 as our reference here because that's when one of the Canadian Civil Service site call was out. So we used data from that site call to identify the gains if in a counterfactual scenario, if our society was fully inclusive and accessible for persons with disabilities and also social roles.

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we would gain a value of 17.6% of GDP. That's a huge amount. That's not a marginal change. That is a huge, what when you impact of a change. And we can get there. I mean, it's not gonna happen overnight, but that our efforts and the efforts of other people too, to retool or rethink about how we create our world and to be more inclusive. Our part is in the labor market through employer capacity building, now there's your working other.

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spaces of our society, we can get there and capture a substantive part at 17.6% of our GDP. Yeah, and I would say we also hypothesize that there's some really great, and I think we hypothesize, but we also know that there's some really, that people are doing good work out there. That there's innovations that we can tap into.

40:41
And the social innovation laboratory structure is designed to leverage that work and really identify and evaluate those efforts in addition to designing new innovations when there's none to identify. But that we hypothesize that by bringing

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this diverse group together, that one of the things we'll do is identify some really promising approaches that exist in pockets out there. And so, Rebecca, thank you for saying that because this is sort of one of the things I want to unpack a little bit is when you're looking at the social innovation lab structure

41:38
this incredible amount of partnership and engagement and involvement from all these different representatives and partners and researchers and they're all going to be working together. And I think that in itself is really quite interesting. So how do you envision the actual approach working? What will it look like when this is running at full steam?

42:07
So we've created a structure of thematic hubs and cross-cutting hubs. So actually through a process of, we spent quite a bit of time identifying what are some of the main pressing issues in this space across Canada. And through that process, we identified these three thematic hubs.

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that are workplace systems and partnerships. The second one is employment support systems, which is really those wraparound supports and the service providers working in this space that deliver these supports, as well as transition to work and career development to sort of position employment and careers as journeys.

43:05
So we've identified those areas. And then as well, we have these cross-cutting hubs that include inclusive environmental design. And the second one is disruptive technologies and the future of work. So we have these five hubs and within each hub, we have a researcher and a community partner working together to lead the hub. And then there are...

43:34
individuals within individuals and organizations and partners within each hub that are interested in doing work in that space. So we that's how we've tried to organize ourselves, knowing that we're going to have projects that cross that that are cross cutting. But having these hubs as as structures, I think enables us to and each hub will have a has a has a budget.

44:03
and can identify priorities. So that's how we've tried to tackle this complex problem by organizing ourselves that way. Wow. Emile. Yeah, I just wanna, this is something maybe Rebecca would speak to better, but I just wanna mention about just our methodology and we alluded to it already. I mean, at the front end, very deliberative processes to identify priorities.

44:30
rapid synthesis of existing knowledge so that we're not reinventing the wheel, whether it is literature synthesis, talking to stakeholders, consulting with them, getting a sense of what's happening out in the field, promising practices as Rebecca terms it, rapid prototyping and implementation evaluation in local small scale trials, and then scaling it up across. We really wanna be part of that process of scaling it up across a sector, across the country, and finding...

45:00
ways to do that in a good way through the champions that are involved in our initiative. We have an amazing advisory committee that are champions from various parts of the disability policy system. So it's obviously a very team effort to get this scaled up across the country and that's going to be a really critical thing that we're going to make an impact. As Rebecca pointed out, those hubs are just entry points for research inquiry. They're all interconnected.

45:26
For example, one of the projects I'm doing with Don Giland, who's the community partner in the Hub One Workplace Systems and Partnerships, we're looking at accessibility planning and reporting. This is an obligation of federally regulated entities under the Accessible Canada Act, but it's something that all organizations should be doing. It's really focused on management systems, workplace systems, and the notion of continual improvement.

45:51
assessing where you're at, where your key gaps as an organization, making a plan to make progress in those gaps, building in those gaps, and then revisiting that on a continual basis. You have some priorities at the front end, depending on where you're at in the journey of becoming fully accessible and inclusive as an employer. You know, I see some of them are starting from scratch and just learning how to do this well, and then moving down that path of

46:15
addressing some of those priority issues and continual improvement means you revisit those things once you reach some targets that you've set several you know maybe a year or two down the road you'll revisit kind of what else can we do to do a better job and you can there's always room for improvement even the best performing organizations are always thinking about ways how can we do better in being accessible and inclusive of the diversity of talent that's out there so so we're helping set a very um

46:43
formal process to do that in a good way through, but very much like, I guess, standards, Canadians Standards Association develops management system standards. I've chaired a technical committee that developed the standard of work to stay in management systems. I'm on an accessibility standards, Canada technical committee, where we're developing an inclusive employment standard. These are best practice guides that are out there for employers to pick up so that they don't have to invent this on their own.

47:11
And they don't have to pay consultants necessarily to do that because that can be very costly because it's there for the taking and to pick up and then contextualize for your particular organization. So that's a systems level approach that we're taking in getting organizations up to speed on thinking about how they can continually visit the notion of how they can do better at being accessible and inclusive, starting maybe with priority areas. Well, and speaking of that then,

47:40
you know, what's what might be missing right now currently in Canadian workplaces around disability and accessibility? Now, you've named sort of these five hubs. So obviously, we can't I can't ask you this question in general. Not gonna not gonna try. Maybe that'll be part seven of this conversation. So so I'm just gonna ask, like, if you and it might sound weird to say favorite. But if you think about

48:08
of the five hubs, if you could choose one, you talked about disruptive tech, you talked about inclusive environmental design, the transitions to work, the systems piece, the things from the service provider side. So these are all coming at this challenge in so many different ways. Choose one of those and say, what do you think it's gonna tell us is missing, maybe? Maybe I could take a stab at that.

48:38
I mean, of course I'm gonna say, and I won't end there, but they're all important, obviously, right? But I'll tell you what we hear people asking for the most. And I think many employers really want to do a good job. They really, well, I mean, I think they wanna do good in the world and they wanna contribute to society and do a good job.

49:07
do their work really well and obviously make a living. But some of them, many employers don't know how to do this. Like they wanna hire people who have had barriers to employment in part because they're having labor shortages, they're having trouble getting people to stay at work, but they don't know how to do it. And...

49:36
And then once they hire people, they don't know how to keep the people. And in essence, it's good because that matches, people with disabilities wanna work and they wanna have stability in their work. So, there's kind of this lovely fit. And for some reasons, for decades, we haven't been able to bring that together. So,

50:05
everything's important because especially those cross cutting hubs, nothing can work in the core hubs unless we have attention to how technology is changing the way we work and how we work and what we do for work and how our environments allow us to work. But really, I think Canadians need, Canadian employers, Canadian businesses need help finding talent and keeping talent.

50:35
And so, you know, how we can do that, how we can respond to that need is probably the most important transformative contribution we can make. If in six years, if an employer is able to identify a potential job candidate with a disability and is able to not have any hesitation.

51:02
in how they're gonna interview them, on board them, maintain their employment, we've accomplished something really big actually. Exactly, yeah. It should be a non-issue. That we've done our job. What do they have to offer in their skill sets and their talent? And that's all they should be thinking about because doing the other stuff of meeting people's needs to help tap into that talent should.

51:30
be the way you do things in second nature. Yeah. They've kind of answered a couple of questions I had in mind. I mean, that was so, so insightful. I wanna know what your, you know, that's obviously all of this is going to be result in a sort of a global, you know, perspective on how things can be re-imagined and perhaps redesigned, but what's your personal re-imagination,

52:01
the new Canadian workplace. Rebecca, if you want to jump in first there, I can see you kind of chomping at the bit there. Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, I'm a parent, I have three kids, and my personal goal is that their work experiences are inclusive, that they themselves and the work that they do and where they end up, that you know, that

52:30
Diversity is not only accepted, but leveraged that we see that having diverse people coming together will only allow the Canadian, that will allow us to innovate in every space. So I think that's personally what I'm hoping for.

52:59
at the end of this. And I hope that idea is part of that. It contributes a small part, or maybe a large part to that process. And perhaps that Canada, you mentioned, we opened this podcast with this idea that we have it Canada hasn't really been known for innovation in this space. And can Canada be a leader in diversity,

53:29
building workplaces that revolve around diversity. Yeah, definitely. And I think that would be my goal too, to see Canada be a leader in this. I think we're on that path already, Canadian Beans. We're doing a lot of great stuff at various levels in the policy arena. And we just wanna help contribute to seeing Canada.

53:56
be a leader in this space and that we can as a society, not just in Canada, but internationally tap into the diversity and the talent. It's a win-win. We can be more creative and innovative if we tap into all the great talent that's out there in the working-age population and capture all the gains that could be realized by building on that win-win opportunities. And I would like to see just at a practical level,

54:22
at all levels of organizations, at the senior levels, that diversity, that it should be a reflection of Canadian society. Then we've done our job, I think, in terms of our initiative, trying to, it's not about just entry-level getting people employed, getting them into careers and seeing that diversity at all levels of organizations, because that's the way it should be. There's talent to be capitalized on, and that we do well in those senior level positions if given the right.

54:51
environment to be able to build their careers in those directions. And you know that leads me to to think as as this conversation progresses, you know it's almost as if you're intuitively picking up on the questions we're going to ask before we even ask them. And because this there's just this great flow here and and what you're what you're doing just makes sense.

55:19
And the need for it makes a lot of sense. So I guess really my question now would be, what are the key things that you think employers, so those not the people who are engaged in your project right now, but the businesses that will be the beneficiaries of the findings and the systems change and things, what do you think the key things are that they should understand about this project?

55:47
and why should they be paying attention to this as well? So that's a good question and I would say that large employers are probably doing a lot of, some of them are doing some great work in this space, but small employers right now in the current labor market are struggling and so I would say that employers

56:16
should pay attention because I'm hoping and I'm committed to idea of responding to some of their, some of the things that they're struggling with on the ground and that, you know, not only should they pay attention but maybe want to get involved if they're doing something if they have found something that works around retention of diverse

56:43
if they started hiring summer students and found something worked really well, we'd love to hear from them. And if they're having some challenges, again, we wanna hear because our goal is to be responsive to the needs of Canadian employers and Canadians with disabilities. So I think...

57:11
all of Canada should pay attention because this impacts everything that people do. And yeah, and hopefully we're going to be responding to some of the challenges that people are experiencing every day. Yeah. Yeah. And employers are super busy as we all are. So, so sometimes they're really just focusing on survival. You know, it's a competitive market out there. Some

57:38
Some can sustain and continue to grow out, many don't, and they're just putting out fires oftentimes. So it's a tough thing to get their attention, but I think hopefully they'll realize that if they try to take that longer term view, in the breathing space that they might have to reflect on planning the way forward in a more intentional way, that the...

58:05
It's in their interest for sustainability and productivity, being getting the right talent on board, and making sure the environment's right to sustain that talent. It is in their interest. We just have to find as an initiative, creative ways to get their attention in small pockets, to get their buy-in and uptake of what we're doing and help them realize the...

58:30
the gains that could be had if they are more intentional in the way they recruit for talent and environments they create to sustain that talent in the workplace. Wow. Of all of the messages, I mean, you've both had some great insights. I mean, if there was one of all the points we've talked about, if there was one message that you think is the most important one for employers who might be listening to this podcast, what's that?

58:58
one singular most important message you wanna get across to them? It's hard because I do think that I don't want the message to be that we think employers are the problem. I would say that's maybe important because I do think that's been one of the challenges of doing this kind of work.

59:27
Employers aren't the problem. I think employers are the solution. And yeah, so I think that maybe that's the message is, we really wanna innovate in this space and I'm looking for creative ways to innovate in this space and reimagine how things could be better for everyone.

59:54
So that might be the message. I'm just gonna jump onto what Rebecca said and then we'll come back to you in a second because I just wanna highlight the message that you just said, Rebecca, because it's a, I think that that is a very important thing for businesses to hear because it's, you're changing the conversation. And you've come out and you've said something that I really hope listeners are gonna take away and share this with others, is that,

01:00:24
you're not looking at the fact that employers are the problem. What you're doing is looking at the fact that employers are the solution. And that really, I think, is a conversation and a shift that we haven't heard. And I think that that is going to influence almost a culture shift for the business world, because it's...

01:00:52
you're changing the dynamic of the relationship just in that statement alone. So thank you for that. And so, and so, Emil, my apologies for jumping in front of you on that one. But I really wanted to highlight what Rebecca just said. So please go ahead. Oh, no, I want to do this exact same thing. I totally agree with both of you that it is about employers are this issue. They are just, they are in that position where they can make a difference for themselves.

01:01:21
and for persons with disabilities and the labor market and society overall, they are in that privileged position where they can make a big difference for a win-win that they can help us as a society capture and tap into those opportunities. And so we feel like focusing on that aspect of their capacity, we were hopefully helping leverage the knowledge base that we're building and growing, expanding.

01:01:51
that can be applied to help them do what they want and intend to do in the best way possible. I don't know about the rest of you, but this has been a just a fantastic conversation with so many insights and we've just covered so much. I mean, I'm fresh out of questions. We covered so much and I'm wondering, you know, is there anything we haven't?

01:02:17
know, that we haven't talked about, you know, that you think is important to mention here? I would just love to be able to come back and share findings because right now we're talking about what we're going to do. And we, I think I can speak for all of us with an idea that we'd love to come back and share our successes and some examples of things we've achieved together down the road. So hopefully that would be something we could do.

01:02:47
Yeah, I think it's we would like everybody, you folks and every to be part of this journey, because we're doing it together. And so, you know, a visit every so often to hear about what we're up to would be great. Well, I can I can say yes to those things. Absolutely. Anyway, that we can engage in and participate and and learn from and support.

01:03:12
amplify GIF platform to the work that you're doing. We're more than happy to do that. And more than most definitely, you're going to have to come back. You're gonna have to have some future conversations with us please about all the work you're doing, the updates about some of the things that you're discovering about workplaces, these promising practices, these models that are working, the systems change that's happening. We just really would love to hear all about

01:03:42
what you're discovering about workplaces and how they can be reimagined for more disability inclusion. I completely agree most definitely, Emile and Rebecca, you're going to have to come back and share some of these insights along the way. Now, you know, I guess I'm I guess I'm kind of going to exaggerate here a little bit, but I find myself wondering how you'll take six years of research at the end of all of this and compress it into

01:04:11
You know, an engaging report that gets action. How do you compress that into something that's not the length of war and peace? That's a tough one. But I think we're planning to have really great products and knowledge based, you know, being transformed into kind of practical guidance throughout our six years. It's not going to be a tune that we publish at the end, but.

01:04:35
We're gonna do good work throughout the process so that we'll just look back hopefully and see all the stuff we've done with all the great people that are involved in this initiative and just reflect, we've done a great job and probably think about what do we need to do next? And just to say that we'll be sharing all of those products on our website, which is in development, but should be released probably.

01:05:01
later this year and everything will be available for people to browse and download and look at. Well, and I think that's great and obviously from everything that you've been talking about today, this isn't the standard sort of concept when people think about research. So you're going to be coming out with all these different tools and resources and

01:05:31
real tangible things that are going to help change things. So much learning along the way. So we do, and like I said, we look forward to having more conversations with you as your work progresses. So at this time, Amil and Rebecca, I would just like to say thank you again for helping us to kick off this new season of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D. By talking with us about this exciting new initiative, and I'll remind our listeners,

01:05:59
that it's the Inclusive Design for Employment Access, also known as IDEA. And thank you from me as well. For our listeners, I'll let them know that for the second part of this April two-parter on new disability research in Canada, we're going to be heading out west to find out about a new initiative happening at the University of Calgary. Be sure to catch that episode. It's coming later this month.

01:06:23
And so that wraps up this first 2023 installment of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D. I'm Jeanette Campbell. And I'm Dean Askin. Thanks again for listening wherever, whenever, and on whatever podcast app you're listening to this episode from. Join us each episode as we have insightful conversations, much, much like this one, and explore disability inclusion in business and in our communities from all the angles.

01:06:52
You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D is produced in Toronto, Canada by the Ontario Disability Employment Network. All rights reserved. Our podcast production team. Executive producer and host, Jeanette Campbell. Producer, Suda Faux. Associate producer and host, Dean Askin. Audio editing and production by Dean Askin. Our podcast theme is Last Summer by Ixen. If you have feedback or comments about an episode, contact us at info at odinnetwork.com.

01:07:20
That's info at O-D-E-N-E-T-W-O-R-K dot com. Join us each episode for insights from expert guests as we explore the power of inclusion, the business benefits of inclusive hiring, and why disability is an important part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion conversation. Listen to You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D on Podbean or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.