Dan: Hello everyone. Welcome to our idea social innovation lab webinar series. Uh my name is Dan Sanos. I'm an assistant professor at Queens University in the employment relations studies department. Today we have Monique Chinyak with us. Uh Monique is the scientific director and senior scientists at the Institute for Work and Health. Uh Monique will be sharing uh some research with us. Uh the title is supporting workers with disabilities and their workplaces and sharing some really interesting resources and kind of tools that both workers and workplaces can use. So excited to to hear from Monique today before we get into the presentation. Captions should be available. If you have any issues with the tech with Zoom, please send us a message uh within the meeting. We are also recording this so you'll have a version of it later as well as a version of the slides later on too. We should also have French interpretation available. Uh and beyond that I'll just briefly go through the structure of the webinar. So our webinar is 1 hour today. We'll wrap up at 100 p.m. Eastern time. Uh after this intro Monique will share a presentation and then we'll have a chunk of time at the end for Q&A. So, please use the Q&A function on Zoom at any time during the presentation. Put your questions in there. And then at the end, I'll moderate a discussion between Monique and you, the audience, and ask your questions. We don't always get to get through all of the questions. Sometimes there are some really amazing ones that don't get through. Um, so please send us an email if we don't get to your question and it's something you, you know, really want to explore with the speaker. Um, that's it for me. So Manique, I'll turn it to you for your presentation. 
Monique: Okay. Thank you very much, Dan, and thank you to everyone for joining today, uh, morning, afternoon, wherever you are. Um, I appreciate the opportunity to tell you about a couple of new tools we've developed that are aimed at supporting workers with disabilities and their workplaces. Just to give you a sense of where I'm going to go, I'll start with a little bit of scene setting and talk about some of the disability numbers that we have here in Canada. You may be familiar uh with these, some of you. Um talk about what they mean for workplaces and then I'm going to move into disclosure of a disability. Why are disclosure decisions so difficult? How do workers make a decision? And that'll be a leadin to the first of the tools that I'll talk about which is decide. It's a decision support tool for making a decision whether to share information. And then I will finish with some um description of the job demands and accommodation planning tool along with a little bit of research in this area. I'm going to start also with my takeaway messages and they are that many workers do not share uh health or support needs at work. Disclosure decisions and support requests can be complex and stressful for workers with health conditions and disabilities. We also hear in addition to workers, organizational representatives and health care professionals are often unclear about what to focus on in workplace discussions and what kinds of accommodations uh might be helpful. So the decide tool helps workers consider whether to share personal information and the job demands and accommodation planning tool or JDP helps identify different types of job demands that are challenging and provides support and accommodation ideas. And I'll also note uh that we I'll talk about worker and organizational versions of the JDP. Um although I'm here presenting today there's really a very large team behind this research. Uh we called ourselves ACET accommodating and communicating about episodic disabilities. Uh you see a lot of names here. People had a really wide range of expertise research web design um clinical expertise. We also had an expert advisory committee of people with lived experience of different uh conditions and disabilities. And we were joined in our work by a number of um organizations particularly notfor-profit health charities that covered both physical and mental health conditions. Um and they were terrific participants. And we were funded finally by two mostly by two of Canada's um federal granting agencies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. We received a small amount of funds also from Canada Life at the beginning of the grant and some funds from Mars and Employment and Social Development Canada. All right, let me um just talk a little bit about disability in Canada. Statistics Canada tells us that there are about 8 million Canadians who report living with a disability. It's about 27% of our population. Um, of interest is that most of them, 61% of them describe their limitations as episodic or dynamic. In other words, people will have periods of time with few if any limitations and other times when they experience more difficulties. Sometimes um limitations are progressing. A disability is getting worse over time and that fits about 23% of people. Um sometimes there's a lot of change um with no real predictability. That's about 13% of cases. And then you have about 25% of people who say their disability is recurrent. They have periods of a month or more, sometimes years with few if any limitations and then flares or episodes when um their limitations return. Another couple of things that are important to note is that many people will say their um their disabilities are unpredictable. uh they can they're doing everything they should be doing, they can be doing and still have um difficulties. And often others aren't aware that someone is living with a condition that creates limitations. So sometimes this gets described as an invisible disability. I've put down a number of examples of physical and mental health conditions that are often considered episodic or dynamic and there are others. With that in mind, the changing and the unpredictable and invisible nature of many disabilities creates challenges uh we hear in two main areas. One is around communicating or disclosure of a of needs and the protection of privacy and the other area is in trying to provide support or accommodations to help maintain productivity or a job or return to work. So those are the areas that we focused on primarily for this research to make something that's very complex seem simple. Um there I've got a little graph here you where you so someone might say I have a problem or a support need and the two questions we heard we've heard a lot about are should I say something and what can I do and so that's where we focus these two different tools. I have a website link here. It's going to show up on a lot of the other slides. In fact, you can type a or jdap or decide and these come up very quickly. Um, so I'm going to tell you a little bit about these tools, but first I want to just um talk a bit more about disclosure of a disability. Why are these decisions so difficult and and how do workers even make a decision? What we know from surveys, and many of these are Canadian surveys, which is important because legislation does differ in in different countries, is that anywhere from about a quarter to nearly half of people will say that they have not shared any information at work with their supervisor. People are less likely to share often if they have a mental health condition, a little more likely with a physical health condition, but often people aren't sharing. There's a lot of reasons why people don't disclose. And that's important to keep in mind because sometimes those reasons are that people are managing well. Um they don't need to share information, others don't have the right to know, and their health isn't affecting their ability to do their job. But there are other reasons and people often have more than one um including um that there's no point in discussing uh because nothing can be done which is um concerning because of course supports often are available. People may also be concerned about their career and the impact that sharing might have. They don't feel secure in their job or they're worried they'll lose it. um or they've sometimes had negative um experiences in the past or seen others have negative experiences. So, lots of reasons for not sharing and no one right decision. Um people will sometimes say they have shared and the outcome was very positive. They got support. They got greater understanding. It was the right decision. Sometimes though people will share and they say now everybody's watching me. I feel I have to prove myself all the time or they experience stigma or gossip or a loss of reputation. For many people that means well maybe I won't share and that can work out. People may experience less stress, less concern about how others view them. But there can be negative negative aspects of not disclosing and that includes not getting support uh because people don't know you need it and there can be misperceptions about reasons for job difficulties. We hear this um a fair bit with uh mental health conditions with chronic pain or fatigue that sometimes people are kind of leaking signs that something's not right. others are noticing difficulties someone's having with a job and in the absence of um not knowing this is a health condition often the assumption is this is a productivity problem um someone is not motivated they lack skills um they don't get along well with others so that can be a negative consequence of not sharing it's also really difficult for people often to make a decision there's a lot to consider and they include very broadly sort of what I've called here the mechanics of disclosure that you don't know what the outcome's going to be and that you're not necessarily always sure what to consider. So for example in the mechanics of disclosure people are going to need to consider whether to say something, who to speak with and when. And this is usually not a one-time decision um but involves a lot of different decisions over time. Um a person's health can change, their job changes, their co-workers change. So people find themselves having to go through this process a fair bit. I've already mentioned that often people don't know what the outcome is. So people can have a number of concerns about what this will mean for their career, for what others think of them. Um, and again, we do find positive and negative outcomes. It's not all negative. And then there's what kinds of informations should I use to to make a decision? Um, should I prioritize some information over others? And are there patterns that maybe can help us here? And we focused a fair bit on this last uh issue, this what to consider as we were creating the decide tool. So let me give you some examples. When we look at the research that's out there, there are a number of kinds of buckets that people often take into account when making a decision. They'll think about what is the impact of their health on work right now? What's going on in their job? Are there changes to their health or their work? People will have goals in making a decision. Do I want to get support? Do I want more information? Do I want to just protect my job and my reputation? Uh people will have also personal preferences. Some people feel they have an obligation to share. They're happy to tell you. Um others value their privacy. They want to have more control over information. And of course there's the workplace. What have you actually got available to you? And how do you feel about the workplace in terms of it being a supportive or not supportive environment? And a challenge is that while you're trying to juggle all this information, some of it may be encouraging you to share some information and some of it may be discouraging you from sharing information. So, let me um give you an example with some research that we've done. We interviewed about 591 people with either a physical or mental health or both types of conditions. And we heard in this particular sample nearly half of people, 49% said they had a considerable impact of their condition on their work and they had needs for support. They often said sharing was helpful. They believed for meeting accommodation and information needs and 78% of them had supports available. So this information from our sample seems to encourage people to say at least something um to get support to meet their needs. At the same time, however, we heard that the top goals that people had actually were protecting their jobs, their financial security, and their reputation. Although about nearly a third of people were willing to share, we had 37% who were reluctant and 20% were really torn. Um, in terms of the culture people had, we had 58% said they had a pretty positive culture in their workplace, but 16% were really unbolent. They saw positive and negative, and one in five said the culture was really not conducive to their sharing information. So, oh, let me just go back there. So, when we looked further at these patterns, um, as you can see, people are kind of simultaneously being encouraged and discouraged from sharing. Um, what we saw when we looked at patterns is that we were actually about six groups. Um a couple of the groups um people were quite um prepared to share information or had shared information but we had uh at least some people one important group were very torn very ambivalent and unsure they were experiencing high degrees of stress didn't know what to do and then we had a couple of groups who were unwilling to share some of that one of those groups they really didn't have a lot of impact at that point in time and so that maybe is okay. Um but there were certainly a number of people unwilling to share who had high needs. Um and so this is a group of course then to be concerned about as to whether they can sustain work. So it's thinking about that and about information um that we created um the decide tool which stands for decision support for communicating about disabilities that are episodic. Um, and we were really trying to help people make decisions that were better for them. Our goals for the tool tools um were to adopt much more of a prevention and support framework to help people be less um crisis focused and reactive, more proactive. We wanted a tool that was personalized, something interactive and accessible. There is a lot of dos and don'ts, pros and cons you can find on the web, but we wanted this to be something about um an individual's own experience, something relevant to a variety of conditions and jobs and that would give feedback because a number of tools that are out there, they get you to think about a lot of things, but they don't actually tell you necessarily what's next. How do you distill this information and move on? So, we hoped by creating something like this, it would improve the process. Privacy was always extremely important to us. So, these uh I've just got some screenshots here. You don't have to worry about them. Um the tool is available in English and French. And the way it works is you don't have to scroll through a website. You basically click on the tool and it asks you questions. So there's an introduction page uh that tells you about the tool, how it works, and then you move into five different areas. You would answer some questions about your needs, your goals, what your preferences are for communicating, what you have available in your workplace for support, and your work culture. The questions are pretty basic and easy to answer. They're yes, no, I don't know, or they're a series of statements and you can say you disagree or agree with those statements. Once you finish each section, the tool programming puts you in a category, so you don't have to add up things or anything like that. Um, so maybe if you were filling out the work culture questions, you might um get back a message that you've indicated that you feel your workplace culture is largely supportive or you don't think it's supportive depending on your answers or you seemed really torn based on your answers. So you get put in a category and from there you get uh we distill the information into more manageable chunks and you get things to think about. So what are some of the potential positive benefits drawbacks to where you are right now in your thinking around this dimension? So you do this for five sections and at the end you get all of those sections in a single table and you can save a PDF of it. We don't ask um any personal information. We don't save any data. So you've got your information and then the tool provides you with some things to think about for next steps and links you to the JDAP to do more thinking about accommodation planning if you want to. Um the next steps um include you know are there things I can do if I don't want to share information? What should I be thinking about? And if you are willing or thinking this maybe is the time to say something, there's um information that goes back more to those mechanics of disclosure I mentioned earlier. You know, if you're thinking who should I speak with, what should I say? And so there's some information to help walk you through some of that. So that in a quick nutshell is the decide tool. I want to turn for the remainder of the presentation to accommodation planning. And I'll do the same thing here just to set the stage um tell you a little bit about what we hear are some of the challenges that workplaces face and workers face when they're trying to plan um support uh meeting support needs. There is research out there and we've done some of this that has looked at um some of what workplace support providers say. So I'm going to talk here a little bit about some research. We did a qualitative study with human resources uh disability managers, union representatives, clinicians, uh labor lawyers, all of them were participants and we asked them about support processes in workplaces and what the successes and challenges um were. There were seven themes that came up in the research, but I'm just going to touch uh briefly on three of them. One theme was um very much that a lot of organizations are still relying primarily on what you might call a medical model in that they're reaching out or they require workers to reach out for physician notes to verify that there's a problem to in some ways legitimize it and to get some help with accommodation planning. Although that's still happening a lot, we are hearing more and more that it's not working well. Um that there's this recognition that it creates delays. It's hard for workers. It undermines trust sometimes. The letters aren't always particularly helpful. and that there's a need to really implement more of a social model where people work workplaces are aware of their own policies and practices, the work they're asking people to do and how that's creating limitations that need to be addressed. Another issue we heard in from a lot of individuals were that they had misgivings about one another. There were usually quite a range of people involved in the support process. Some support is informal just between a supervisor maybe and a worker but a lot is involving others and you have these concerns about skills and training and motivation. So supervisors took a hit a lot. Um people feeling they're very variable in their training. It might be fine, but you don't get a lot of consistency and transparency and sometimes they're just not um aware of what should or could be done. Human resources sometimes gets criticized as being really too much for the organization and not the worker. Union representatives sometimes are there for disciplinary um actions. they're not sometimes there early um or aren't sure what their role is. Clinicians, clever people don't always understand the work. Um so lots of concerns about how to make this work. And then finally, um formal communication in a lot of organizations still gets triggered often by absences. Um and people are finding themselves in um an attendance management program. Now planning is reactive. It's recasting disability as a performance problem that needs disciplinary actions. It's not um a support process anymore. So, these were some of the issues we heard from workplaces, from organizations where they were looking for ways to better address accommodation planning workers. There's a lot of studies out there talking to workers about challenges. I've already mentioned um issues related to disclosure. Um, people also workers often aren't aware of what's available in their workplace or think they can only make changes if they disclose a lot of information that makes them uncomfortable. There are online resources. Some of them are very good. Um, but it wouldn't necessarily occur to someone with migraines or lupus to go look at a cancer site or a mental health site because it's got great ideas. Um so you know finding information can be challenging and then that whole starting the process often things are not going well that's why people are needing to talk um it's a crisis but people aren't sure what to say and how to express their challenges. So the bottom lines are workers are looking for guidance on whether to say something and how to get support if they don't want to share information and what to share. Workplace professionals are really looking for something that's more transparent and consistent and comprehensive um and will address a range of really quite individualized worker needs and everybody would like more practical supports and accommodation ideas. So that was the impetus for us to create the job demands and accommodation planning tool. This was um multiple years in the making. The goals for this tool are similar to decide again to adopt that support and prevention framework. Integrate. We know we have to integrate with existing processes. Provide practical support ideas. Um be relevant to a range of jobs and be very um interactive and individualized. Again, there are some good sites out there and you can search them and you can find different kinds of ideas, but we wanted a tool where you don't have to do that. We'll ask you what you need to know and we'll give you back something with very little, you know, this kind of searching. You don't have to do that. What the tool actually does, and I'll go through it in a bit of detail, is it focuses on work demands that are challenging some of the time or regularly. It doesn't focus on a health or disability diagnosis. It walks a person through a series of questions about their job tasks and working conditions. And anywhere someone is having some difficulties, it provides some support ideas that are relevant to that particular job demand. And we hope this will help generate solutions. A worker can use it on their own or to discuss support needs. And there's organizational versions as well that I'll come back to in a moment. Back in 2022, we entered the prototype of the tool into an inclusive design challenge that was being um uh sponsored by Mars and CIBC and the JDP was actually the grand prize winner that year. Um but we've been working on it um a lot ever since. So what does it look like when not it doesn't look like this but when you go into the tool you'll be asked about 24 different job demands and those demands are broken down into the physical demands of work cognitive or thinking demands working with others and working conditions. There's three versions of the tool. You can select the worker version to self assess what your job challenges and needs are. There's also an organizational version. It can be filled out by anyone familiar with the worker. So that's HR, supervisor, union representative, an occupational therapist, anybody who's familiar with the worker. They can figure fill it out on their own or with the worker. And then there's a version uh we were asked to create. Um sometimes an organization isn't thinking about a particular worker, but they would like to make the job more accessible, more inclusive. And so you can fill it out with a thinking of a job in mind. For each of the 24 questions, um the uh let's say the worker or the organizational version thinking of a worker, you're asked um is this an important aspect? Is this job demand an important part of the job? If someone says no, they move to the next question. If uh the answer is yes, a worker is asked are you having difficulties related to your condition, your health and does this change over time or is it fairly constant? In the organizational version, is this worker having difficulty? Not asked to attribute it to health. Just is the worker having difficulty and is it fairly constant or does it change? From there, a person gets a personalized report and that links to the strategies and a PDF can be downloaded. You'll notice I haven't said anything about the type of job, the symptoms because the tool doesn't actually ask about any of that. It focuses on job demands. This is a screenshot. I won't go into what it says, but on the homepage, the landing page, you select which version of the tool you want and you select the language that you want, English or French. From there, everybody goes to an introduction page where um you're given, you know, how does it work, how does it help, what it isn't. It's not legal advice, it's not clinical advice. And then you go to the instructions. Is it important? Are you having difficulty? Does it change? We hear back a lot from people that this is really helpful um particularly uh workers who have neurodeiversity um or chronic pain or fatigue where it can be hard to work through these um kinds of tools or these websites. There's a simple pattern people get into it and it's very helpful. Organizations also found it really helpful to have such a simple pattern that gets repeated. From there you would move into the different job demands starting with physical demands. I've just put up here you know there's an example are doing activities that require physical endurance or stamina important not important. If you don't know what we mean by that there are lots of examples for every single activity. So you know what we're trying to get at here. You can add information at the end of a section about that gives more details and you can save a draft. Um the draft you can come back to for 72 hours and then the system gets wiped because we really don't save any of your personal information to protect privacy at the end. And here I'm showing again two screenshots not for me to go through in detail but at the end of filling out the 24 questions you get a report. the bottom left corner you'll see a 16 of 24. So this fictitious person has said of the 24 job demands 16 of them are relevant to their job. And then on the right there are some colored bubbles, eight of the 16 this person has said are difficult for them some of the time, but they've noted seven of 16 below change. They're not always a problem. So for the eight items or eight job demands that are difficult um this person will get now strategies things to think about. This isn't how it looks um on the tool, but if a person said physical endurance or stamina was difficult for them some of the time, they get some strategies of things they might try on their own, adjustments they can try at work that they may not need permission for, and more formal accommodations. Each of them breaks out into some concrete examples. So again, you can't always provide people with everything that's perfect, but this hopefully will allow people to brainstorm um ideas on their own. If the job demands changed, this is now concentrating for long periods. Now you get different ideas of things you can do on your own, adjustments you can try, and formal accommodations. Again, lots of concrete examples. You can already see that that's a lot of information. So people can click on anything that they think is the most helpful for them and create a personalized list that's much shorter to manage um where you go next. You can save all of this very easily by clicking uh save a PDF part of the report. All of it all of the the uh accommodations are just a personalized list. You choose what you want to save if anything. So that's the the JDAP. I'll just um talk a little bit about when we've heard it's best to use it and what we agree with and think is best to use. Um early in the process, this really helps set a foundation um so everybody's working from the same page and that is an important aspect of the tool and we also know it's helpful to use on a regular basis to assess changes um in needs. Um, people like using it because it focuses conversations on the job demands and not on work or personal characteristics. So, it's not judgmental. It identifies areas of work that are sometimes omitted in other assessment tools and it gives concrete ideas for support. So, I'll just finish very quickly with a little evaluation and a couple of comments and then I'll open it up for questions. We have done some work on we did early work for both the tools on needs assessment and some formative evaluation to understand the comprehensiveness of the tools and their relevance. We've done some um preliminary outcome effectiveness work for the JDP. It's been around for two and a half years. The decide tool is newer and we'd like to do more implementation in the future. In terms of some of the early JDAP work, we heard things like it seemed like you covered every piece, whether it was the physical piece, tedious work that's happening over and over again, or working long hours, traveling, so you've covered everything. That was a baker with ADHD and a skin condition. There were basically all of them that I had to go through in my job. It's basically everything I do at work. That was a truck driver with Crohn's disease. And I go in and just say, "I'm dealing with a mental illness." And my boss says, "What do you need?" And I say, "I don't know. I think the JDP might be better to help me understand actually these three aspects of the job are what are difficult for me. So, let's think about what we do with those." That was a government worker uh living with depression and PTSD. These are very representative of the kinds of comments we heard, but you can imagine I chose them because the jobs are very different and so were the health conditions that people were dealing with. uh as I mentioned we have done some evaluation work where we followed people over time this was a 9-month study we started uh we gathered a lot of information about people's health and work before they had seen the JDAP we gave them the tool 3 months later we went back are you using it has it been helpful why why not and then six months after that went back to them again people had physical andor mental health or cognitive conditions comments were very positive here again across disability types, gender, age, different types of jobs, which is helpful. The tool was working for a lot of people. People were using it over the nine months. We saw sustained changes in confidence, self-efficacy. People felt they were better able to problem solve, meet their job demands, and deal with stress. We saw a drop in productivity problems and reduced absenteeism. And most of these changes were highly significant with effect sizes moderate to large. And by an effect size, I mean you can get something that's real. It's significant, but it's small. Um, the changes we saw were mostly moderate to large, which would suggest you could see them, that there's something you would notice. And just to finish with these quotes, it was empowering to see how much one can do on one's own, especially when I'm hesitant about being supported by HR. and I used the list of strategies and accommodation plans, plus the language of the job demand summary to help me request a workplace accommodations plan. These tools were critical in helping me explain how my disability impacts my work and allowed me to think about possible solutions. Without the JDAP, I wouldn't have had the confidence to go through this intimidating process and advocate for myself in such an effective way. And intimidating is their words. These were written comments. Okay. So, just to finish up, um the tool is freely available. We don't collect personal information. It can be used by workers. It can be used by um workplaces. People can download and save their responses. Uh we don't as of August 31st, the end of the summer, uh the JDP has been available for about two and a half years. Um decide tool has been out almost a year. We've had about 36,000 visitors, unique visitors to the website and we know some people are coming back. We know there's organizational use where people are coming back and you can see here a wide range of um visitors from uh various places in the world and I will stop there. Thank you so much um and happy to address your questions or comments. 
Dan: Thank you so much Monique. It's very clear how much effort and work went into all of these. Um and if if anyone in the audience if you haven't used the tools before, please do use them because um even if you don't need them for yourself right now or maybe you need them tomorrow or for someone else um they provide a really meaningful structure and language around accommodation and understanding job demands that I think is really important and really kind of has moved the the field forward in a lot of ways. Um so now we are in the Q&A portion of the webinar. If you have any questions, please type them into the Q&A function. I see some already. In case you weren't around at the beginning, uh we might not get to all of your questions. If we don't, please send us an email because we'll try to, you know, still get them to Monique and and see where we can go from there. Uh but our first question for you is with these tools with this side and with JD, uh do you have any advice for managers who might want to start using these tools? let's say uh within you know their teams that kind of environment. 
Monique: Um yes so thank you for the question. Um and we have had so because the tool is anonymous we actually don't know who's using it but people have come back to us and told us um that they are or how they're using it. So I'll give you an answer based on that. Um and if you do use it love to have some feedback. Uh so what we've we've heard from people and what we recommend is don't pick and choose as a manager what you think is necessarily going on. Um don't assume that um oh this job doesn't involve this. What seems to work best is for managers to actually perhaps ask a worker to go away and complete the worker version of the tool. Um, and that's helpful be and you can tell workers because there's a lot there that they can do on their own. So if you're hesitant, you can work on the tool. You can make some changes on your own, but then to maybe come back and the manager can also fill it out and you can compare where perhaps sometimes you are seeing challenges that the other person isn't or you didn't realize that they were having some challenges in a particular area, but um that you're both equipped. I will say and I forgot to say this earlier, the organizational version has a few strategies that aren't on the worker version and those strategies revolve more around larger changes that a worker can't make um usually. So a worker could perhaps ask for training but or or you know some of these kinds of things but there are suggestions for the managers and others around skills building or changes to the broader environment that can also be helpful. 
Dan: So so working kind of together I think is is a way that we are hearing from others is helpful. And we've had a few questions in the Q&A about uh about the outcome of the report. So, you know, does this result in a database of accommodation uh or some sort of like recommendations and what would those recommendations take in terms of their form? So, can you speak to kind of, you know, you mentioned there's this PDF output that you might get saying here's what you can do. Can you explain what that looks like? 
Monique: Yeah. So, um, and I'm not sure I completely understand the question, so stop me if I if I go off on the wrong track here. Um, so the the we know and and you will all know that um that because someone may want a certain accommodation doesn't mean they're entitled to it. It doesn't mean it's the only way to address an issue. And so by providing a wide range, we're hoping it will give people ideas for a variety of accommodations, permission still often has to come from the workplace. Um, and we hear a lot of this, for example, around work at home that I need a quiet space and things like this in the workplace. Well, we want you here. We can help you by creating that. So I I don't think it provides certainly there's it's not prescriptive. Um, if you finish the decide tool, you the there the worker is not being told you should or should not say something. It's trying to give it back to you. Here's your comfort level that we're seeing and you should know some of the advantages and disadvantages that you may be facing given what we're hearing from you. For JDAP, again, you get a range of accommodations, but we we know that these aren't going to work for every workplace. This is really intended to help brainstorm. So you can work together um to come up with an accommodation plan or you don't even need formal accommodations. We can make smaller changes to work to help you. Is that um what um you're looking for? 
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I have several questions around, you know, what is the output at the end of the day? What can they bring to the bring to their employer or bring to their employee? 
Monique: So that's it. Yeah. So we don't tell people that they have to bring anything to them. you. What we've heard from workers is that sometimes they do they bring in the package and they say, "Here it is." Some workers have posted it up over their work site and they remind themsel to do things. Sometimes workers will come in with one specific problem and request that they've distilled the information because it's it's can be a lot of information in the PDF and they don't want to share everything. They just want to share the one piece of information or one suggestion or problem that they're having. 
Dan: Yeah. And you mentioned I think it was 36,000 visitors which is amazing. Um and I know you also said that there's an anonymity component that people don't need to disclose you know their job or their industry this kind of thing. Um but in the case that you have gathered that kind of information or people have given it willingly do you see certain industries where the tools are working particularly well or it just seems across the board? 
Monique: Yeah. And that's an area where I don't have a lot of information. Um I can tell you we have heard back from a number of um we've heard back from multiple people in the healthc care sector um that this has been helpful. different hospitals, different clinicians, OT rehab folks using this quite regularly. Um, rehab people saying, "This is really helpful for me. It would take me two hours sometimes to find out a client what the challenges are. We can do this together and now I know where to go to, you know, you have to go into more detail often, but I I now know where to go." have also heard from education the education sector um where it's being used both for people in the employees of those sectors but also for students particularly college and university students. So that's another sector. Recently heard back from a large provincial utilities where so really quite different jobs including call centers to workers who were out in the field doing lots of physically demanding work that they too found that was helpful. and they noted there that um sometimes they have a really range of skills with workers in terms of education who aren't always comfortable and and sort of articulate able to articulate well what the what's going on. So um we've heard that we've heard with skilled trades same kind of thing um that you know again it's helping workers to think about it in a way that they're not used to that they don't usually have to with their jobs. So I don't have anything that it's working best in one sector versus another. I know for uh an area we'd like to learn more about would be um public safety first responders. They have quite unique challenges and also there are other jobs with fit for duty requirements that the tool has been useful for those but they have an they have extra layers um in those occupations. And so it certainly wouldn't be the only thing to rely on, but again, it provides a a a pretty good foundation even in those jobs because we've heard back also from some of that first responder kind of group. 
Dan: Yeah. And to to echo that, we've had a few comments um about people who have actually been using the tool or who have recommended it. Uh and so one person mentioned uh that it was recommended to be used within the Ontario health care system and not just employees but specifically HR and managers were feeling empowered with the knowledge that they understand what kind of accommodations might be used or what those accommodations might look like uh within the workplace. So that's really exciting. Excellent. Yes. And I'm going to just turn off the stop sharing. I'll stop sharing here. Um there we go. All right. So you had mentioned that the JDAP is a longerterm project and that decide has come up more recently and so we had a question about evaluation of decide and whether um you're conducting research now on its efficacy or anything of that nature. 
Monique: Yeah. So, um, we have we're finishing up some of I guess I would call it more of that initial validity work. Um, that it it seems to that so the tool seems to be comprehensive. It seems to be measuring what we think it's measuring. we're hearing that it's relevant and it is uh that some of that those patterns that I was talking about that we were seeing seem to be discriminating what you would expect. So for example, if you said oh uh if the programming said you don't seem to be you don't feel that your culture is very supportive, you don't feel or you feel you don't have much needs or your your goals are really to protect you know um what you're doing. We are seeing people who are saying who are not disclosing. So it's it's kind of got that that sense of um discriminative validity. um based on the tool. So we've we've done that and we're and some of that is new and it is coming out. Um we do need more money to do more more research and so we will have to wait for some more of the evaluation work to come. 
Dan: And so the next are kind of two questions about some of the details I think of the JDAP but the decide might also come in as well. Um in the JDAP there was a section around work conditions. Mhm. Does that also include um factors around work? So, you know, something we often hear uh from folks is that transportation to work is one of the main barriers to getting, you know, to accessing employment, this sort of thing. Are those factors considered or it's really like what's happening in the workplace? 
Monique: So, that touches on a really hot flash point that I think we're going to see a huge amount in the future. um we will talk about traveling related to the job. So if you have to go if your work involves you moving around um or traveling it. So there is a question about working conditions like that um you know working in extremes of temperature you know so we're trying to get at some of that climate change stuff that's also happening. But if you if it's just your regular commute to and from work, we we're not tapping into that. Uh we're tapping into interpersonal work that you do. You have to see clients. You have to talk to others. You have a public facing job. We're not tapping into I get along with people in my work or they are they're a bunch of not nice people. some of that does get picked up in decide um where you are asked about the culture. Why I say this is a really hot topic is um many of you may be aware that commuting is there is a push to put commuting on the table for work arrangements that this is something to consider. It's not something currently you know I I'm talking to you from Kingston. I work in Toronto. That's my business that I live here. It's my problem to get to and from work. It's not, you know, something I can necessarily pull out and say I should be allowed to work at home because I've chosen to live in Kingston. That's the kind of dialogue now that's there's a lot of push back. So, we'll see where it goes. But for the moment, the tool deals with the the job demands, not the extra pieces that might influence work life balance. 
Dan: And for the next question, I'm thinking especially about the decide tool, but perhaps for the JDAP 2 um you know, I think it was last year possibly um organization, a Canadian organization, a really great one named Realize did a report on intersectionality and episodic disability. There were 12 other organizations I believe, I hope I got the number right, uh that that were a part of it. Um and the in the report described in in great detail how disclosure can vary depending on intersecting identities and the experience of stigma can vary as well in the development of these tools. Was intersectionality like a consideration is it a consideration going forward? Um and just like what was the process there? 
Monique: Yeah. Um it's great question. Realize is a great organization. They were one of the partners for both tools. So um they played a role in the development. Um we certainly tried um to sample as we were building the tools get perspectives from different groups with differing identities. Um our um expert advisory committee with lived experience had different racial backgrounds, gender backgrounds, um work um and backgrounds. they had very different um disabilities as well to try to kind of capture some of that. So in building the tool we we have tried to do that. Um the tool itself when we were look you know when we do some of the testing we try to look is it working equally does it seem to be equally working well for younger workers um and stage of career older workers um different people from different ethnic groups. I will say the tools being in English and French, you know, English as a second language can be a challenge for people. Um, but we we've tried and I would like to do more because the experiences are different, the perceptions may be different. So, we try to take some of that into account um in building decide um and and both tools actually. 
Dan: And so our next question is a bit of a broader one. uh it's from an attendee who is launching uh an organizationwide kind of modernization of their accommodation process. It's a really important moment I guess in their organization and they're aiming to shift away from the medical model, but it seems like there's a bit of a struggle on how to do that. So, do you have suggestions on how to continue shifting away from, you know, a model that requires medical documentation when someone needs accommodation? 
Monique: Yeah. And um I'm glad that people are thinking about it. I don't have all the right answers. I don't have necessarily the answers at all. I will say that um what we are sometimes hearing that seems to work for people. Um first of all is kind of trying to think about where maybe you still do need to have some expert input and particularly also in the accommodations and everything. So sometimes that is still important. Moving completely away is not necessarily always realistic depending on the type of work that people are doing. But if you know for example there are a large number of the support requests you get are for basic ergonomic improvements. You know making the environment um more accessible in terms of lighting and things like that. giving people opportunities to have control over when they do some of their work. So, you know, you can do some of the harder tasks in the morning when you've got the energy and some other things later. Just thinking about the work tasks and where you really need those notes and when you don't. Recognizing if it's chronic, it's not going away. So, please don't ask for the note every six months. Um, you know, these are hard to get. People pay for them. they can't always get them. That's something to consider. Also, I'll just very quickly um sometimes we hear from workers with mental health problems that they will take the hit and be seen as a bad worker rather than share a mental health. a note often coming from a psychiatrist kind of outs you that you know this is something mental health and so you know maybe thinking about that and don't put disability on the door because most of the people who have the conditions that we've studied do not actually identify as a disabled person um some people do and this is an area that it's very individual some people um absolutely do and others say I'm not a disabled person. I live with depression and rheumatoid arthritis. Um, and although this is creating a huge number of limitations in my life, I don't see myself as a disabled person. So, those would be a few things and I'm happy to have someone reach out and chat more about what we've seen in some of our other studies. 
Dan: That's great. And it it relates to a followup of like is is your team or perhaps other organizations uh are the areide or ject being used within like workshops for organizations to understand the tools or anything like that? 
Monique: Um, I know that there are some disability groups um in Ontario who have who who provide training to workplaces who have the tools on their list of um materials, resources um to share with others and I would absolutely say put it on your HR resources. We know of people who are um you know the link has to come through us because of all the programming in the tool. It's not uh you know just a simple read it and print it out. Um but you can absolutely share that link within an organization your organization um with others and we know it's being used in training packages and also by some consultants who've asked us permission to use it. 
Dan: Okay. Right. And it relates so there's one question that was asked that actually I'll I'll answer quickly because it's a really easy one and then I'll give you one more question and then we'll we'll wrap up. Um but the question was whether the tools are free or whether there's a subscription service and they are entirely free and correct me if I'm wrong which is really wonderful. 
Monique: Yeah, you can go to the ACE JDAP and decide websites and you can find them there. 
Dan: Um the the last question for you is these two tools there are amazing resources. Do you have any other tools in the mix that you're you're thinking of creating? 
Monique: um at the moment no but I that's that's more because of um we need to hear more from people about where there are gaps I having said no I I want to qualify that as I mentioned you know there are some occupations you know first responders or sometimes primary industries where there you know particularly again when you have fit for duty requirements or safety sensitive positions I think we'd like to think more about expanding some of the job demands and some of the support ideas to fit some of those occupations. Um it it wouldn't necessarily be we burn it down and start all over. It would be an I think an enhanced JDAP. Um you know that kind of thing I think we're thinking about. Um but if people say hey this is the big thing that I don't have, we'd love to hear. 
Dan: Nice. Well, yeah, if anyone in the audience has has ideas, uh, send us an email, send Monique an email. We go from there. Um, but thank you so much for your presentation. They're such meaningful resources and I'm glad we get to share within our community here. Um, this webinar, it's a part of our idea uh speaker series, our webinar series. Uh, we probably won't be having one for October, but instead of listening online, you could come in person. October 6th and 7, we have the idea symposium in Toronto. Uh so if you're interested in joining for that, please check out the idea website. Uh send us a message and hopefully hopefully you can join us. Uh I want to make sure to thank the team that makes these webinars possible. Akam Gowal, Theres Felanix, Reena Shri, Rebecca Gowarts, Emila, and our French language interpreter Gabrielle. Um, from there that's that's it for today. So, just thank you to our speaker, thank you to the audience and everyone who helped make this work. And yeah, have a nice weekend. Thank you everyone. Take care.