Hiring Disable People to Avoid Staff Turnover and Enhance Sustainability of Production

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 13; no. 19; p. 10577
• Main Authors: Chajduga, Tomasz, Ingaldi, Manuela
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2021
• Subjects: Corporate culture; Employee turnover; Employment; Sustainable development; Workers with disabilities
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su131910577

Companies struggle with maintaining staff turnover at a low and sustainable level. Hiring a new employee means costs for the company, such as recruitment, medical examinations, and training, etc. In addition, new employees must learn to perform their tasks properly and quickly, which can take up to several months. Disabled employees change jobs less frequently due to the fact that it is difficult for them to find a new one. For employers, such an employee, if they have the same skills as a fully functional employee, can therefore be very valuable, for example, in relation to the reduction of costs associated with frequent employment of new employees. In addition, employing people with disabilities also brings social benefits related to counteracting social exclusion and the possibility of independent living by such people. The human factor is an element that greatly influences sustainable production. The objective of the research was to verify the potential of hiring disabled employees in order to reduce staff turnover. In other words, the analysis has been designed to understand if hiring disabled staff, making expenditures to prepare the workplace and training for them could be potentially efficient in terms of obtaining a higher level of sustainability of the employment in the company. The research has the form of direct (in-depth) interviews in the case of representatives of the companies involved, and a paper questionnaire for the disabled subjects (employees). It took place from September to December 2020 and was the basis for the statistical hypothesis testing. The conducted research was based on a statistical U Mann–Whitney test and fi Yule index calculation. The results showed that people with disabilities remain employed by the same employer longer in comparison to “able-bodied” employees, meaning it may be worthwhile to make extra expenditures to hire disabled persons who could become loyal employees for years. Moreover, it has been statistically proven that the key factor influencing the attractiveness of a given job for a disabled person depends on the type of disability they have.