I was made redundant from my most recent job earlier this year due to funding issues. I’ve been applying for jobs full time since then.
I don’t lack experience, skills, degrees, references or anything else. Without going into detail, I’m pretty sure I’m taking every humanly possible action. However, I have multiple disabling health conditions and can only work entirely remotely. This should be fine, on paper. I do desk job work. I just need to do it at my desk instead of someone else’s desk. It costs nothing to accommodate me.
But it appears my needs are unacceptable, and I am facing a lot of discrimination when applying for jobs. I can’t change that I am housebound. I don’t get any form of disability supports, financial or otherwise. I don’t have family; I must work, otherwise I will end up homeless.
Any advice you have for facing discrimination in employment is welcome.
I asked Dr Hongbo Guo, a lecturer and assistant professor in management at the University of Canberra, for his thoughts on your question. His first question mirrored my own thoughts: “How much more ‘employable’ can we reasonably ask someone to become?”
I know from our correspondence that you possess all the capabilities, qualifications and professional assets that most employers explicitly desire according to their own job advertisements and public statements on “values”.
And you’ve gone above and beyond in approaching this career impasse from different angles. You’re not picky; you don’t limit yourself to a small, select category of “perfect” roles; you talk openly about your health conditions and the requirements they necessitate. You’re someone who prizes honesty and integrity.
Where does that leave people like you who genuinely cannot work anywhere but from home? Well, in a career wasteland, as you’ve found out.
When you say you’re “taking every humanly possible action”, I don’t doubt it for a moment. So why is this so hard?
Well, I don’t know if it has anything to do with you or the way you demonstrate your suitability for roles.
“A field experiment conducted in the UK found that disclosing the use of a wheelchair* in job applications would reduce interview opportunities overall, and having stronger qualifications, technical skills and more positive references did not close the gap. So, very unfortunately, applicants cannot always overcome exclusion by demonstrating more merit,” Guo told me.
“Of course, based on the reader’s description alone, we cannot establish why particular employers rejected them; however, my point is that we should not assume that the missing ingredient is something they have failed to do.”
This is, instead, the failure of a system. My sense is that it’s a system that doesn’t really understand – a cynical person might suggest it simply doesn’t care about – the complexities and vagaries of chronic illness and disabling conditions. If it did, employers would see a candidate like you and think “Fantastic! We’ll do what we can to make sure this person can work with us.” Instead, they seem to be baulking the moment your work-from-home requirement becomes clear.
And there seems to be little incentive to change employers’ thinking in this regard. An expert on workplace law told me that, yes, “the discrimination provisions in the Fair Work Act that make ‘adverse action’ on the basis of disability discrimination actionable, do apply to prospective employees”. But if you were to formally claim that you were denied a job due to your disabling conditions, even if an employer conceded you were a strong candidate, they would almost certainly make use of a defence in the Act known as “inherent requirements”. They would argue you weren’t offered the job because at least some part of it required you to be in the office at least sometimes.
Where does that leave people like you who genuinely cannot work anywhere but from home? Well, in a career wasteland, as you’ve found out. I think that’s deeply unjust, especially because, as Guo said, “there is already heaps of evidence supporting the benefits of working from home, to both the organisation and its employees”.
“Of course, we must acknowledge that not every role can be fully remote. However, assumptions about attendance and performance deserve testing, at least. What’s more important, and probably more uncomfortable to employers, is the question of why an organisation’s adaptability – their inclination to allow employees to work from home – is so urgent and essential when its continuity depends on it, (during COVID, for example) yet remains negotiable when a person’s access to employment depends on it?”
An uncomfortable question, maybe, but essential if we want to remedy this glaring unfairness. And if employers find it too inconvenient or easy to ignore, governments need to step in.
Jonathan Rivett is a writer based in Melbourne. He’s written about workplace culture and careers for more than a decade.From our partners
About the Author
