Hiring people with disabilities leads to increased psychological safety and increased labour productivity for companies

Despite legal requirements stipulating that companies must employ a certain number of people with disabilities, after a survey by Japanese Government agencies on 1 June 2019 only around 48 per cent of companies meet these requirements. Myths that people with disabilities are limited in what they can do and are therefore not suitable employees for certain companies present barriers to prospective employees with disabilities and also deprive companies of the synergistic benefits that can come from hiring people with disabilities. Professor Makoya Kageyama, Graduate School of Urban Social and Cultural Studies, Yokohama City University, Japan, is conducting research focused on these synergistic benefits and, through his work, is dispelling the incorrect belief that people with disabilities are not productive employees. Kageyama has found that the synergistic effects created from contact between people with disabilities and people without disabilities leads to innovation. His research involved interviewing companies across Japan, asking questions surrounding the employment of people with disabilities, enabling Kageyama to gather some promising data. An important finding was that overall labour productivity could be increased via the synergistic effects of hiring people with disabilities. He is empirically quantifying his findings in order to demonstrate to companies the benefits that can be afforded by hiring people with disabilities and to help eliminate discrimination.