Are workers with a disability less productive or less understood? An empirical investigation from an entrepreneurial business planning perspective

This study investigated selected work-performance data of a large call centre using the entrepreneurial business planning paradigm as a theoretical framework and tested the hypothesis that levels of productivity would be different for each group between workers with a disability and workers without a disability. On five measures of productivity, no significant differences were discernible but on a sixth measure, length of employment, it was found that disability workers remained in employment significantly longer. These results strongly refute the ‘intuitive wisdom’ that workers with a disability are less productive. The results support a growing body of corporate experience and descriptive research indicating that workers with a disability perform as well as or better than their non-disability colleagues. Yet workers with a disability remain disproportionately under-employed. The key to translating the growing evidence of this research into higher levels of employment of workers with disabilities will depend upon employers adopting an entrepreneurial approach to the planning of human resource management.