Researchers at Cardiff and Plymouth Universities have looked at workplace discrimination against people with disabilities. To do this, they questioned 3,979 employees, 284 of whom had a physical or mental handicap or a long-term illness.
Main lesson: disabled or sick people face more verbal abuse, physical or verbal than other employees. 45% of ill-treatment would come from their superiors, 28% from clients with whom they are in contact, and 18% from other colleagues.
Among the annoyances and grievances reported: 10.5% of disabled or sick employees say they have suffered physical violence, twice as many as other employees.
12% of disabled employees have been humiliated or ridiculed at work compared to 7.4% of employees without disabilities. 24% were insulted at work against 14% of other employees. 57% complained that they had met the wrath of their supervisor. And 7% say they have been victims of assault (twice as many as other employees).
Obvious discrimination
According to researchers, this abuse can affect the employee productivity disabled. This brings water to the mill of people who accuse disabled employees of being less competent than others.
By wanting to escape this discrimination, disabled employees could also be tempted to marginalize themselves by falling back into “less productive positions, less well paid or even by withdrawing from the labor market”.
>> To read also: Thriving at work: the 5 questions to ask yourself
