Who decides whether a corporation employs people with disabilities?

Accountability and decisions · 17 February 2024

In February 2024 I tried to identify who really decides about employing people with disabilities in a large organisation. The list was long: administration, procurement, the board, tax, HR, talent acquisition, ESG, payroll and operations. Everyone could see their part. There was no director of the whole problem, and no KPI that rewarded getting the project to an outcome.

Key points

• The financial upside is shared, while the work, risk and extra effort land in local teams and budgets. A rational manager may decline risk for which there is no positive accountability.
• The financial owner, process owner and operational owner need one common outcome rather than three separate objectives.
• Architectural and technology barriers are real, but often become visible only after an initial attempt. They cannot stand in for that attempt for years.

What this means for a company

This entry traces the development of a framework; it is not a current calculator or a guide to employee entitlements. It shows that the problem did not begin with a lack of candidates. It began with the absence of a place where the budget, the work and the authority to decide could meet. More than two years later I described this more precisely as “two green lights” and more broadly as the PFRON maturity test. The 2024 lesson for B2B sales still holds: until you know who can say “start”, you are not running a sales process. You are exchanging correspondence.

Originally published 17 February 2024.

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