Even as employers appear to make progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) employment numbers, the World Economic Forum reports that just 4% of global businesses prioritize disability inclusivity, despite 90% expressing a commitment to diversity, according to The Valuable 500.

Disability:IN, an organization that works to bring “disability inclusion and equality” to the forefront of diversity initiatives, released their eighth annual Disability Equality Index (DEI) Report on July 19. The 2022 report reviewed the disability inclusion progress of 415 companies—including ADP, Comcast NBCUniversal, and Boston Scientific, who have perfect scores—representing more than 14.9 million employees in the US and 8.8 million globally.

Companies that elect to participate in the DEI report are graded on an 100-point scale that assesses their workplace accessibility, inclusive employment practices, and disability inclusion at all levels, including in leadership. Despite the progress made toward disability inclusion, the results suggest businesses may still be struggling to encourage employees to openly identify as disabled, which is key to belonging.

Keys to inclusion. Some 79% of employers include disability in their diversity statements, according to the DEI Report. Of participating companies:

• 79% have employee retention and advancement programs that focus on or include employees with disabilities.
• 62% require that their digital products be accessible to job candidates and employees.
• 61% make all job interview candidates aware of the option to request accommodations when interviewing.

Of the employers that participated in the DEI study, 96% offer flexible work arrangements, which Jill Houghton, president and CEO of Disability:IN, told HR Brew is, “something that we, as people with disabilities, have been asking for for decades.” Keep reading here.—KP

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.

An early-morning church volunteer event. A cross-country motorcycle pitstop in Flagstaff, Arizona. A husband’s tuxedo fitting. Not one of these is a career fair, and yet they all served to make unlikely matches between recruiters and their next hire.

Though Joey Price, a Baltimore-based HR consultant, told HR Brew that recruiting in unexpected places—we’re calling it “recruiting in the wild”—is far from scalable, he thinks it’s a “helpful tool” to have in a recruiter’s toolkit. Given there were 11.3 million open jobs nationwide as of the end of May and recruiters have struggled to fill them, more tools can’t hurt. Price and other HR consultants told HR Brew that expanding their pipelines in out-of-the-box ways has helped them uncover some stellar talent.

Gone fishing. Julie Via, a senior HR consultant with over 20 years’ experience, can name numerous untraditional ways she’s found talent. If she’s looking to hire a food and beverage position, she posts an ad on Craigslist (she picked up that tip from a friend of her 15-year-old stepdaughter who worked in the industry); if she needs someone who can manage a night shift, she titles the job advertisement: “If you’re the type of person that sees the late-night comedians, we’ve got the job for you.”

She once needed to hire a person who was fluent in Spanish, so she went to a happy hour and, by happenstance, hired the beer-delivery guy. She said that hire happened just by being open to possibilities.

Via hasn’t always found success sourcing in untraditional ways. She agreed her approach is a bit like fishing: She posts an ad, waits for a bite, and either refines her approach or hops to another pond based on industry-insider advice. Keep reading here.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

We may be so over Covid, but Covid ain’t over us. As we round the corner toward the third anniversary of this global pandemic, yet another new Covid variant, BA.5, has become the dominant subvariant in the US, and it’s running wild.

The good news is that, so far at least, vaccines and treatments appear to be making Covid less lethal, even with this highly transmissible new subvariant. The bad news (but far from the only bad news) is that the symptoms of long Covid continue to be debilitating for many.

Last week, we asked industry leaders (that’s you!) if anyone in their organization had suffered from long-term Covid symptoms that impacted their ability to work. About one-third of all readers who responded said yes. Another third said no, while the rest said they didn’t know.

As we reported in March, long Covid is a condition that many employers will need to grapple with as the pandemic drags on. Economist Katie Bach was one of several experts who testified on July 19 before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. She said that of the 16 million people in the US estimated to be suffering from long Covid currently, “anywhere from 25% to 65% may have a reduced ability to work due to the condition,” Forbes reported.—JDS

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: CEOs of S&P 500 companies earned an average of 324 times more than the median employee wage in 2021. (AFL-CIO)

Quote: “The demographics alone tell us that we’re going to continue to have this challenge around not having enough people to staff the work that’s out there.”—Mike Bergen, senior partner at executive-search consulting firm Kingsley Gate Partners, talking about the dearth of candidates to fill the surplus of US jobs (WorkLife)

Read: In the remote and hybrid worlds, interning can be a lonely existence full of empty offices and devoid of meaningful experiences. (the New York Times)

Peep key deets on employee engagement. Workday’s State of Engagement 2022 report digs into why employee engagement is taking a dip. Learn which areas of your biz can strengthen engagement here.*

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