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This article discusses the utility of a demand-side approach in rehabilitation practice and how this approach is illustrated by customized employment. Customized employment refers to the identification and negotiation of carved, re-structured or created tasks in a workplace that can be performed by an individual with a significant disability, and that simultaneously meet a specific operational need of the employer. This article presents an operational framework for a demand-side job development approach and relates it to strategies that result in customized job placements. A preliminary evaluation of one local project's implementation of this approach, as applied to employers hiring people considered to have significant disabilities, shows that employers are willing and able to customize their work assignments, especially if direct benefit to their operation can be demonstrated. The implications for rehabilitation practice and fob development are discussed.
Historically, attempts to convince employers to hire people with disabilities have been characterized by a combination of "sticks" and "carrots." The Americans with Disabilities Act, for example, is a stick, forbidding employment discrimination under the threat of legal action. Tax credits and on-the-job training subsidies are examples of carrots, essentially enticements to hire people with disabilities by offering reductions in tax liability and initial wage output. In addition, marketing and outreach to employers about disability employment have traditionally relied on "selling" the notion of hiring people with disabilities as a socially responsible thing to do (Luecking, Fabian & Tilson, 2004). The intended result of these approaches has been to create employer demand for this potential supply of workers.
However, according to many policy makers and researchers, the primary emphasis in vocational rehabilitation practice remains on the supply side of the workforce development equation (Szymanski & Parker, 2003; Unger, 2002a; Gilbride and Stensrud, 1999). Indeed, since its inception, the two main functions of vocational rehabilitation, training and placement, operate on the supply side of the labor market. That is, the goal has primarily been to inform and prepare job seekers and facilitate their connection to jobs. This approach relies on offering employers a supply of workers who present, in various ways, skills that will meet the needs of the labor market. As important as these functions are, they neglect the importance of influencing workplace operations in...