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Wisconsin Workers With Disabilities

June 8th, 2007 Posted by Amelia

The U.S. Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) has all of the resources of the Labor Department behind it.

The Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM) has the network and contacts of 200,000 human resource professionals.

Together they can offer a powerful tool for disabled workers. The U.S. Labor Department has announced the partnership as a first, a move that should help utilize the underused talents of this labor pool.

Wisconsin workers with disabilities should benefit. They will continue to receive the services of the Wisconsin Department of Labor. But thanks to the new alliance, they may see more hiring, recruitment, education, outreach, and technical help in the future.

Together, the private and the public agency should see more access to resources, greater interagency communication, additional research, a sharing of information and guidance, and, in general more resources for the state agencies involved.

Roy Grizzard, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy, says the alliance actually formalizes a working relationship that has existed on an informal basis in the past. He said the teamwork would benefit SHRM “as it serves its membership with the resources ODEP brings to the table,” and at the same time “offering ODEP the opportunity for broader contact with human resource professionals.”

ODEP came into existence in 2001. Before that, it was part of the U.S. Department of Labor. Assistant Secretary Grizzard headed up the new agency that U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao created in order to make services to disabled workers more effective. One of the goals was to try to guarantee workers with disabilities full access to jobs in the decades that lie ahead.

SHRM has been around since 1948, and has watched its membership grow to 200,000. It has 550 chapters in more than 100 countries. Its goal: “To serve the needs of human resource professionals by providing the most essential and comprehensive resources available.”