India, Inc. extends a hand to the differently abled

NEW DELHI: The disabled friendly face of India, Inc. has finally begun to emerge. While the number is still far from satisfactory, scores of companies are now warming up to the employment needs of the physically challenged candidates.

They are stepping forward to set examples by increasingly hiring such people and help them integrate with the social mainstream. Companies that feature in the list of the ‘disabled friendly corporates’ of National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) include, NTPC, Apeejay Surendra Group, Progeon, BPCL, IBM and Accenture to name a few.

Industry watchers call it a positive attitudinal change, which others are sure to emulate. “Indian companies are increasingly adopting an equal opportunity policy, which implies that people are hired irrespective of their physical attributes.

They are being hired for being competent and are not rejected just because they are disabled,” says Gangapriya Chakraverti, business leader, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, India.

NTPC for instance, has hired over 165 differently abled people in the past 2-3 years with disability as high as 75-100% in some cases. The power major has a total of 406 differently abled individuals on its rolls currently.

In fact, the company conducts classes on sign language for normal employees to understand their differently abled peers. Apart from attitude change, there are enough reasons for companies to hire physically challenged people.

“They are competent and are much more sincere than their colleagues, in many cases. The best thing about employing them is that you don’t have to face attrition problems,” says GK Agarwal, ED, HR, NTPC.

Citing internal instances, he says, those who have physically challenged subordinates are most unwilling to let go of them due to these reasons.