Job supervisors with disabilities can boost productivity, new research shows [Video]

Some large companies, such as Walgreens, Wells Fargo and Proctor & Gamble, are successfully integrating people with disabilities into their labor forces.

But other employers are not doing as good a job. That means they’re losing out on what the roughly 6.5% of the U.S. workforce with some form of disability might have to offer amid a tight labor market.

One potential solution is to employ more managers with disabilities.

I’m a supply chain scholar who joined forces with two colleagues, Sriram Narayanan and Shawnee Vickery, for a research project on this issue. We found that when teams include people with disabilities alongside co-workers without disabilities, productivity can be higher – particularly when their supervisors have a disability.

More understanding and less task-switching

Our research team reviewed daily production data from a manufacturing-focused nonprofit that employs people with and without disabilities …