Training Employees With Special Needs

To ensure optimal contributions, learning leaders should make sure employees with special needs have the same development opportunities as everyone else.

With businesses worldwide anticipating the mass retirement of baby boomers, the competition to recruit new talent is fierce. But learning executives open to change and different ways of thinking may find much of the talent they need right under their noses. The individuals who comprise this under-tapped workforce are employees with special needs. The key to accessing this diverse talent, however, requires eliminating internal barriers that may be keeping these individuals from reaching their full potential.

What constitutes a special need? Most envision someone physically disabled, perhaps in a wheelchair or with a guide dog. Rarely does one consider the many other special needs and “hidden disabilities” that are prevalent in the workplace. For the purposes of this article, special needs are defined as those that, when not accommodated for, can disrupt an employee’s ability to learn and/or perform expected job requirements.

Dr. Harry Rizer is the executive director of the National Cristina Foundation (NCF), a charitable organization that has been supplying computers and training to the disabled and disadvantaged since 1985. According to Rizer, “Adults with special needs are growing at a faster rate than the general population, with approximately 58 million Americans having some type of disability.”

So what do learning executives need to know about these diverse learners? And how can they maximize the training experience for all employees, as well as the training ROI? To start, they need to understand which accommodations can help maximize the training experience of learners with special needs.

The Special Needs Learner
Granting all people equal access to training opportunities means ensuring no one is prevented from participating because of a special need. As always, when designing learning and development solutions to performance needs, it is important to consider the intended learners; their learning styles, predilections and motivation; and conditions for optimal learning.