We asked our WorkingNation Advisory Board to share their thoughts on the most important issues and challenges facing the workforce and the labor market in 2024.
Matt Ater is the vice president of Vispero, legally blind, and an advocate for the rights of the disabled in the workforce. Here are Matt’s thoughts on the future of work in 2024.
Here are his thoughts on The Future of Work 2024.
“I think that we have made some improvements in terms of awareness when it comes to large corporations investing in people with disabilities. I think there’s also a push that’s very focused on counting the number of people with disabilities that you have within your workplace, rather than just looking to make sure that your jobs are more accessible so that you can hire more people with disabilities.
“A lot of companies want to get credit for hiring people with disabilities – which I think is great and they should get credit for that – but the big cultural shift, up to this point, has been more about how can we get everybody to self-identify and how can we get more people counted in that number.
“What that means is that you’re self-identifying folks who maybe are not visible in the community, which is fine, whereas a big chunk of folks who are disabled have visible disabilities and, therefore, are counted anyway.
“I still believe there is a big miss on solving the problem of trying to reach the large underserved community of people who have a visible disability and corporations need to still invest heavily in this space including creating more accessible methods for applying for jobs, recruiting, onboarding, and overall employment, and the accessibility of employment settings.
“While I think that we’ve done a nice job in terms of some improvements, I still think that we have a long way to go.”
Read more from our WorkingNation Advisory Board members on The Future of Work 2024.
