Disability in the Workplace: Legal Barriers Affecting Human Resources Management Practices and Workplace Accommodation for the Persons with Disabilities in Sri Lanka - A Review of Literature

Disability can be defined as a physical or mental condition that barred such individual from properly interact with physical or social environment. This difficulty provided root course for historical marginalization of persons with disabilities in the society and visible in various fields ranging from education to employment and being analysed by various scholars. This literature review explores the question how various scholars approached the social political and legal issues arise out of low employment rate of the persons with disabilities and expressed their views on how to solve them. Since a systematic literature review has not been conducted in Sri Lanka on this topic, to answer the aforesaid research problem, author will evaluate multiple scholarly approaches towards the barriers affecting human resource practices and workplace accommodation for persons with disabilities and explore solutions available in the existing literature to resolve such issues. This research will be based on literature review methodology and first of such work in the field of disability rights in Sri Lanka. Thereby, results of this research will be produced by collecting and synthesizing previous research for advancing knowledge and facilitating theory development. However, literature survey was limited to the works which recently published in English language and meet certain scholarly standards.

Caught in the middle: a thematic analysis of the experiences of Korean-Canadian caregiver-employees in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area

Background The objective of this study was to investigate the experiences of caregiver-employees (CEs) from the Korean-Canadian community in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Methods Nine participants were recruited and invited to partake in data collection, which consisted of the completion of a sociodemographic questionnaire as well as a qualitative, semi-structured interview. The interview transcripts were thematically analyzed. Result The thematic analysis revealed four primary themes, each of which had three sub-themes. The four primary themes are:: (i) tensions, (ii) adaptations to the dual role of being a CE, (iii) coping mechanisms, and (iv) desired changes to the status quo. Conclusion The result of this study suggest that Korean-Canadian CEs, as a consequence of their position at the convergence of Korean and Western cultural values, would be best supported through the provision of culturally sensitive supports and greater workplace accommodation.

Coming home: Why veterans with disabilities withhold workplace accommodation requests

Veterans with disabilities are often hesitant to request an accommodation in the workplace, despite the fact that many intranational legal frameworks require employers to provide reasonable accommodation. This study draws from social identity and disability help-seeking theoretical perspectives to examine various factors – veteran identity, disability attributes, and workplace inclusive climate perceptions – which shape feelings of psychological safety and the decision to request a disability accommodation among military veterans with disabilities. Findings suggest veteran identity strain (an incongruence between one’s civilian work and military identity) is related to withholding of an accommodation request through decreased psychological safety. We also find veteran identity strain is less likely to be associated with decreased psychological safety when an organization is perceived to have a strong climate of inclusion, especially for military veterans with higher degrees of disability invisibility. The current study sheds light on why veterans with disabilities might not engage in help-seeking behaviors, and contributes to research streams on workplace disability and veteran workplace integration. Practically, we encourage employers to be especially aware of the needs of vulnerable employees and to develop inclusive climates in order to better support all military personnel transitioning to a civilian workforce.