Volunteer Opportunities
- Introduce deaf and hard of hearing high school and college student internship positions to provide business experience while filling some of your organizational gaps.
- Many deaf and hard of hearing students and job seekers are willing to volunteer their services in return for work experience. By offering volunteer positions, your company will benefit from workers who are motivated, eager to learn and who will enrich your organizational culture.
- Your workplace may already be accessible by the time you welcome volunteers who are deaf or have hearing loss. If not, you can discuss their communication needs with them as you would any new employee. Most required accommodation costs little to provide.
Mentorship and Leadership Opportunities
Job Advancement
- Performance reviews should include discussion of the employee’s accommodation plan in terms of effectiveness of the accommodations provided and review possible updates to the accommodation. Imagine you have an employee who is doing extremely well. You want to promote them but you are concerned about how they will communicate with their colleagues. Consider video remote interpreting services such as Wavelink, remote speech to text transcription, Communication Access Real -Time Transcription (CART) Services and other tools for them to use with the staff they would manage.
- Communicate career opportunities to give ALL employees access to the information and equal opportunity to apply. Written notices and email announcements are ideal, as are one-to-one conversations and opportunity for interpreted explanation of the new job posting.
- Discuss procedures for applying for internal postings.
- Provide equal access to training required for job promotion.
- Inform all Human resources (HR) personnel how to use VRS and CART services
- Consider: How many Deaf or hard of hearing employees do you have currently in your workplace? How many do you have in different levels of your company or in management?