Using telework to accommodate the needs of employees with disabilities

Few concerns are more important to managers than providing for the needs of employees who have been encumbered with short‐term or long‐term disabilities. The information society, with its advances in telecommunications technologies, is making it increasingly more possible, and more plausible, for human resources managers to implement the organizational strategy of telework to help accommodate their employees who have disabilities. Telework—or the use of telecommunications and/or computer technology to support working away from a primary worksite—is suitable for employees who are in some way disabled for at least three reasons: (1) it provides a buffer against the stress of work‐life disruptions, by offering control over the worksite; (2) it facilitates the inclusion in the work force of employees with severely limiting disabilities and (3) it helps “level the playing field”; for persons with speech or mobility impairments. In this context, the U.S. Department of Defense instituted a pilot program. The res...