Recruitment of persons with disabilities (PWDs) is a sound business decision. Strange as it might sound, this was the consensus at a seminar at a top management school in the city.
Corporates gathered to deliberate on the importance of including PWDs in their workforce at the seminar in MDI. According to a report by Sarthak, an NGO that trains and provides job portals to differently-abled individuals, around 8 million people in India fall in the PWD category, and out of every 1,000 PWD, only 80 find some kind of employment.
Santhosh Unnikrishnan, CEO of Costa Coffee, said, “15% of our employees are PWDs, and since we have started recruiting and training them since 2007, we have found that not even one has quit the company so far. At a time when a high rate of attrition is one of the biggest problems facing the corporates, I think here we have actually figured out a potentially brilliant way to curb it.” He said that Costa Coffee plans to have at least 2-3 PWDs per outlet, in the next two years.