Hello, my name is Christina Schneyder, and I warmly welcome to you in our video series “Tips and Tricks for Companies When Hiring People with Disabilities.” I am the Managing Director at the Austrian Federation for Vocational Inclusion. Our goal is to support both companies on their journey toward an inclusive workplace and individuals with disabilities in their search for employment.

This time, I’ll give you tips on the topic of onboarding and orientation for people with disabilities.
Some of the following points you may already be familiar with, but I want to address them again as they are particularly important for a new employee with a disability:

Discuss with your new employee before they start work whether the team should be informed about ‘the disability and its relevance to the work situation’? If so, at what point and who will inform the others? The new employees themselves? The supervisor? Often, these pieces of information concern working hours, work pace, or potential technical aids that may require workplace adjustments. How about having the rest of the team also share what’s important to them in their everyday work to create a conducive working environment?

Assign a mentor to the new employee: they will be the first point of contact, able to explain, support, review results, assist with problem-solving, and introduce them to the company culture.

Prepare an orientation plan, for example, for the first three months. You assist the new employee in getting oriented and let them know what is expected of them. Plan regular feedback discussions together with the mentor to identify where adjustments are needed, where repeated support is necessary, etc.

Include the job description in the orientation plan, where the tasks are clearly outlined.

As a supervisor, inform your employee about the explicit rules of conduct in your company, such as dress codes, safety measures, break regulations, work start times, etc. Discuss with them where exceptions may be needed due to their disability and how these exceptions will be communicated to the rest of the team.

In addition to explicit rules of conduct, all organizations have implicit rules, such as celebrations, meetings with colleagues, etc. The introduction to informal rules can be handled by the mentor, who can point these out.