First off, I’d like to appreciate the topic as its directly related to the lives of many of us. As you’ve already mentioned, getting a job with disability is a tricky affair, and Employers often resist employing a person with disabilities believing they will be unable to perform their roles and/or that it would be too expensive. Over the centuries, we disable people have accumulated enough scars as society marginalizes us, silences us, attacks us, and directs us. However, as Walt Whitman puts it in the Song of the Open Road, “gently, but with undeniable will, we managed to divest ourselves of the holds that would hold us.” Empirical evidence shows that persons with disabilities have high performance ratings and retention rates, as well as better attendance records than their colleagues without disabilities. Its certainly an important point to ponder whether this is really a result of our intrinsic capabilities, or merely an outcome of sheer traditional beliefs about us in the society amongst those without disability.
When it comes to performance rating, there are many external factors that comes into play, even with those who aren’t living with disability. Whether or not you like, its almost impossible to separate those external factors from the tasks like job appraisal and promotion, including the corporal aspects such as gender, personality, appearance, beauty as well as disability. Any individual, while rating another person, uses many external factors other than work performance, either deliberately or inadvertently, where disability is one of the key aspects. I strongly believe that the outlook of an individual regarding disability reflects upon his/her performance rating, but at the same time, I still say that its not unfair until it is upto the extent of positive discrimination. When globalization has become a buzz word today, in the midst of our mission, a look into our traditional culture will help us find answers as to how we can hold our hearts open for such issues. Generally speaking, our traditional culture exerts a positive influence on how people with disability view themselves and how they are viewed by the society. Our Traditional culture cultivates communal support for the vulnerable. People are brought up with the notion that it is a happiness to help others, and that there is no good deeds too small. As a result, the people are ready to give a helping hand to the disabled, and this is what reflects while rating a person with disability on the work place many a times, where persons with disability are given greater points than others. I don’t count disable people as oranges amongst the apples, but you also have to bare in mind that its almost impossible to find two apples with exactly same size, shape, colour and taste. If a persons with disability is good at his/her work, there should definetly be some extra points for this, keeping the fact in mind that the road to do that outstanding work has been harder than many colleagues working there. While analyzing the performance for a disable indivisual, the person giving the ratings many a times incorporates his/her understandings about hardships, pains and difficulty that disable person has faced for reaching to the place she/he is, and the inspiration and respect in his/her mind reflects on the rating table. Personally, I see no harm in such an approach, but its important that this should not hurt the benefits of any genuine individual. Meaning, that such good ratings should be given only to the deserving persons with disability, and the focus of high ratings should still be on performance, where disability can least be a tiny element. Needless mentioning that the thoughts above are exclusively what I personally believe, hence you are encouraged to disagree. My apologies in advance for such a big mail, I just could not refrain myself from expressing on the topic. Regards, Prateek agarwal. Managing director, Daedal technovations pvt. Ltd. www.daedaltechnovations.com website: www.prateekagarwal.webs.com blog: http://myfriendprateek.blogspot.com On 1/10/12, Mujtaba Merchant < mujta...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello Members, > > Here today I bring in another debateable topic of discussion to the group. > > I understand getting a job as a visually impaired person is a challenge in > it self. Those of us who make it through have some sense of acccomplishment. > Once in the job other factors come into play mainly for the sake of this > discussion I would like to address "Performance Rating". > > I would like the members who are already employed to shed some light on this > subject. How is your performance measured? Are you compared to the rest of > your team which comprises of sighted people? OR is there a mix of it? or do > they have some other way of rating your performance? Are they comparing > apples with apples when it comes to performance rating? Does your disability > come in the way of appraisals or promotions? > > I assume that there is no solid answer to any of these questions. But it > will help in getting some clarity on the subject from our community members > who are already employed and on the job. Do share your views on this please. > > Mujtaba Merchant > Bangalore, India > Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
