SAME Strategies: Best, Promising, and Emerging Practices for Recruitment, Hiring, Retention, and Advancement
Learn about best, promising, and emerging practices that support State as a Model Employer (SAME) strategies.
One way that states can ensure employment of people with disabilities is by developing and implementing systems within the state government hiring process that allow for fast-track hiring of disabled people.
Fast-track hiring strategies
Recruitment tip: Internships and apprenticeships are best practice strategies that help state governments recruit and hire people with disabilities.
Each state has a vocational rehabilitation (VR) agency that supports people with disabilities to find and maintain employment, even if there is no formal fast-track hiring system in your state. VR agencies can help both public and private sector employers find job candidates with disabilities. State government HR staff and agencies should consider developing formalized partnerships with their state’s VR agency to maximize their pool of potential workers. One important step in this process is ensuring that both VR staff and recipients of VR services understand the application process for state government jobs.
Hiring and recruitment efforts are critical to increasing workplace inclusion. Equally important are retention and advancement strategies that ensure positive long-term employment outcomes.
Advancement and retention strategies
EARN Related Resources
- EARN Talent Development: Explore how work-based learning opportunities like internships and apprenticeships can help employers build a diverse pipeline of talent.
- Advancing & Retaining Federal Employees with Disabilities—the Case for Centralized Accommodation Programs & Funding: Learn how centralized funding for and expertise about workplace accommodations helps the Federal Government support the advancement and retention of employees with disabilities.
- Adopting an Integrated Telework Policy for Employees With and Without Disabilities: Learn about a framework for adopting an integrated telework policy applicable to all employees, including workers with disabilities.
- Leveraging the Shift to Remote Work to Increase Employment of People with Disabilities: Explore how remote work can support employment of people with disabilities.
- COVID-19 Workplace Resources and Tools: Find information to help employers support workers with disabilities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Stay-at-Work/Return-to-Work: Learn how employers can use stay-at-work/return-to-work programs as a retention strategy.
Other Related Resources
- Disability-Inclusive Telework for States: State Approaches to Increasing Access & Inclusion (PDF): Read guidance for state policymakers on developing and implementing more inclusive telework policies and programs for state agencies.
- CSG–State Policies to Advance Inclusive Apprenticeships: Access information on how to support and grow apprenticeship programs that are inclusive of people with disabilities.
- Job Accommodation Network (JAN) Information on Personal Assistance in the Workplace: Learn what personal assistant services are and how their roles support employment of people with disabilities.
- Work at Home/Telework as a Reasonable Accommodation: Learn how remote work can qualify as an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).