Employing the deaf community: challenges and opportunities for companies in the developing world

Abstract

This research investigates opportunities and challenges of employing deaf personnel in organisations in developing world. Though much research related employing people with disabilities is done in western countries, only a few similar empirical studies have been published in this part of the world. Hence an exploratory investigation is carried out adopting a grounded theory approach. Accordingly, five companies in Sri Lanka, both large and small, employing deaf people have been investigated. 23 operational-level deaf employees (DEs), with five supervising managers are the subjects involved. The results brought a number of opportunities for hiring DEs from strategic, productivity and customer satisfaction perspectives. Managers of all companies confirmed that their skills, ability to learn, concentration on work and the productivity are much higher than their parallel workers. The DEs are not provided with any special privileges (e.g. remuneration, leave, infrastructure facilities). Thus, there is no extra burden, financially or otherwise, to the company for hiring them. However, as a safety initiative all DEs are assigned to work together with a parallel worker with no hearing impairments. Two companies where DEs deal directly with customers confirmed that customer feedback on DEs are very positive. All managers indicated a negative comment that the DEs become emotionally disturbed when their communication is not heard well. The existed negative connation of all managers on DEs had disappeared after orientation. It can be concluded that employing DEs appear to be me more productive to the company, as highlighted in the past research studies of the developed world.