CARING for others can be a difficult task, especially when the care recipients have strong preferences or sensitivities. This was the case for Liew Dong En, 19, a general housekeeping assistant with autism in Lee Ah Mooi Old Age Home.

When one of the home's elderly residents did not react well to Liew touching his belongings so that he could clean the cabinets, Liew, though affected by the outburst, continued to perform his tasks to the best of his ability.

After witnessing Liew's diligent and meticulous attitude towards helping other fellow seniors, the resident eventually became more cooperative and removed his belongings so that Liew could clean the space, the home shared.

"Dong En never gave up trying to connect with our resident and continued treating him with kindness," the home said.

This "particular display of kindness", as the home called it, would not have been possible without its efforts in disability-inclusive hiring.

As of January 2023, it has recruited 14 persons with disabilities, with the help of SG Enable, the focal agency for disability and inclusion in Singapore. This included the Place-and-Train grant support by SGUnited Jobs & Skills Schemes for Persons with Disabilities. Some of the employees are SPED school graduates who are enrolled in the School-to-Work Transition Programme that helps them transit successfully to employment. This programme was initially piloted with the support of SBF Foundation.

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Then Kim Yuan, Administrator of Lee Ah Mooi Old Age Home, said: "We are driven to champion an inclusive workforce, as we strongly believe persons with disabilities can work like everyone else if we provide them the support that they need, as well as offer real choices to them and build their confidence and that of their parents."

In order to help persons with disabilities navigate their new responsibilities and adjust to working life, the home collaborates with disability social service agencies and retains in-house job coaches.

"We enable persons with disabilities to work at Lee Ah Mooi Old Age Home like everybody else," said Then. "But we also support them by redesigning our job processes and putting in visual cues to help them understand what is expected in the work environment."

While SG Enable reports a steady increase in the number and type of organisations that are hiring persons with disabilities, it is also working with the growth sectors of healthcare and information technology (IT) which have increasing labour needs. The Care Economy and Digital Economy are identified as growth areas for Singapore in SkillsFuture Singapore's inaugural Skills Demand for the Future Economy report.

In February 2022, the Ministry of Health made public calls for nurses and volunteers to support the healthcare workforce's pandemic operations. Similarly, the Covid-19 pandemic has hastened the pace of digital transformation, resulting in a need for technology-oriented jobs.

"Hiring persons with disabilities can help bridge the talent gap in these sectors, while catering to the interests and aspirations of persons with disabilities," said Tan Eng Tat, SG Enable's Director of Employment and Employability.

"These sectors are also able to provide a range of jobs, from rank and file to PMET (professionals, managers, executives and technicians), for persons of various disability profiles, along with opportunities for career progression."

Lee Ah Mooi Old Age Home's inclusive hiring journey began in 2020. The following year, it offered learning and work experience for students from Delta Senior School who have mild intellectual disabilities.

In 2022, the home collaborated with SG Enable on the School-to-Work Transition Programme. SG Enable's collaboration with the home supports a broader partnership that SG Enable has with the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC), affirming both agencies' commitment to identify sector challenges and areas of collaboration, such as supplementing the healthcare sector workforce by tapping persons with disabilities as a viable talent source. To date, more than 60 job opportunities have been created in 12 community care organisations as part of this partnership.

Tan Kwang Cheak, Chief Executive Officer of AIC, said: "We are heartened to see employers in the community care sector harnessing the potential and skills of persons with disabilities through the collaboration AIC has with SG Enable. We look forward to having more organisations involved in this meaningful initiative. Together, we can further support persons with disabilities and empower them to contribute significantly to be an invaluable part of their organisation."

Like Lee Ah Mooi Old Age Home, Ensign InfoSecurity also recognises the value that persons with disabilities bring to cybersecurity.

With SG Enable's success in employer education and capability-building, Ensign started exploring the hiring of individuals with autism in response to intense competition for a limited pool of talent in the cyber industry and to address the lack of diversity in cybersecurity approaches.

In 2021, Ensign collaborated with the Autism Resource Centre (ARC) to develop a structured employment programme to identify and train suitable individuals with autism. With Ensign providing on-the-job training on cybersecurity to complement soft skills training by ARC, SG Enable also supported the programme with employer consultancy, training and grants.

Hiring more inclusively enables cyber defenders such as Ensign to "avoid groupthink, think out of the box, and resolve evolving cyber risks differently," shared its Executive Vice-President and Chief Information Officer, Steven Ng.

"The programme is part of Ensign's greater commitment to building a vibrant and skilled cybersecurity talent pool in Singapore to ensure our nation's cyber defence capabilities can keep pace with our digital ambitions," said Ng.

"Accomplishing this goal will require the creation of more opportunities for those with the passion and aptitude for cybersecurity to join the sector, introduce greater diversity to the industry, and nurture the next generation of cybersecurity talents."

Thanks to this programme, Daryl Loh, who has autism, now works for Ensign as an Associate Security Operations Centre Analyst.

"At first, it was really difficult to adjust to my colleagues being chatty and noisy, but eventually I got used to it and it became part of my everyday work life," shared Loh, 25.

He added: "I am a perfectionist and do not like to make mistakes at work; I get anxious when something like that happens."

Working together with his colleagues to improve current workflows is, for Loh, one of the most rewarding aspects of his time with Ensign. Having purpose-driven employees such as Loh is a benefit of inclusive hiring, as highlighted in a Heidrick & Struggles study commissioned by SG Enable.

Tan Shao Kai, an engineer with Ensign who also helps to train neurodiverse hires, said: "I am really impressed and proud of our neurodiverse colleagues. Despite their varied personalities and working styles, they are able to put forth results that are as dependable as our neurotypical colleagues. They demonstrate commitment and drive with the effort they put in, regardless of their lack of experience or knowledge".

Ng said that before launching this programme, one of the Ensign team's key considerations was to ensure that "this is not a one-off programme, but a long-term initiative that can make a considerable impact".

Following the success of this inclusive hiring programme, SG Enable is in talks with Temasek to scale this initiative to other Temasek Partner Companies.

To create and sustain equitable opportunities for persons with disabilities in the workforce, said Tan, partnerships at all levels are key to creating more positive outcomes.

To aid partners and stakeholders in their journeys, SG Enable works with social service agencies to provide Job Placement and Job Support (JPJS) services for persons with disabilities.

Tan said: "Under this programme, beneficiaries are offered a variety of support based on their needs, such as identifying suitable training and job opportunities, recommendations for assistive technology solutions to aid in their work and workplace integration, as well as job support in the workplace."

Since 2014, SG Enable and its partners have placed more than 4,700 persons with disabilities with higher support needs in jobs through the JPJS programme, and trained more than 4,000 persons with disabilities.

SG Enable is also constantly strengthening the ecosystem of support for disability-inclusive employment that they have developed. In nurturing Ready Employers, organisations that have already hired persons with disabilities can apply for the Enabling Mark accreditation - one of SG Enable's key initiatives to recognise and accredit inclusive employers.

Apart from gaining recognition and signalling to people that their organisations are empowering, innovative and collaborative, the Enabling Mark allows companies to chart their progress in disability inclusion through a comprehensive and structured framework.

Tan said: "The efforts that get employers accredited with the Enabling Mark lay the groundwork for greater workplace disability inclusion for years to come, ensuring that persons with disabilities are treated equitably with career growth opportunities in the future."

While good progress has been made over the past decade, SG Enable stresses a need for a collective and sustained approach. For example, organisations can go beyond disability-inclusive hiring in-house, and actively encourage their industry peers and partners to do likewise. Examples of such organisations include the Enabling Mark (Platinum) recipients.

The impact SG Enable and its like-minded partners hope to create extends beyond improving the disability employment rate in the healthcare and IT sectors, said Tan.

"These sectors provide essential services, and disability inclusion in their workforce could extend to the provision of products and services," he added. Among the Enabling Mark assessment categories, one of them is Community Engagement and Promotion, which encompasses the provision of disability-friendly products and services.

"These efforts culminate in our push towards building an inclusive society where persons with disabilities can live, learn, work and play like any others."

Ensign's Ng agreed, noting that the creative, diversified perspective that employees with autism bring to teams can help reap business benefits - for example, by translating into better-designed products and services, and adopting customer-centric thinking.

These valuable differentiations in turn enable organisations - not just those in the field of cybersecurity - to further sharpen their competitive edge.

In July 2021, Forbes estimated that of the US$80 billion spent globally on services and technologies to support design, between US$10 billion and US$16 billion will be awarded based on commitments to accessibility.

Service firms that ramp up their knowledge and expertise in accessibility will find new work supporting such efforts, it reported, while those that do not commit to accessibility will risk losing out.

However, SG Enable's Tan pointed out that employers in healthcare and IT - both growth sectors - are relatively new to disability-inclusive hiring.

To help companies in these fields advance their goals in disability inclusion, SG Enable value-adds by providing customised consultancy services that are industry- and sector-specific, he said.

"When we work on encouraging employers to focus on abilities, adopt a strength-based mindset, and develop a more inclusive work culture that values diversity, we can achieve so much more. Embracing disability inclusion will help companies, big and small, to build enduring and resilient businesses, and ultimately an inclusive society for all," said Tan.

For organisations keen to hire persons with disabilities or apply for the Enabling Mark Awards (closing date: 31 Jan 2023), visit: www.sgenable.sg/employment