Inclusivity in the Workplace for Persons with Disabilities: Analyzing Communication Effectiveness within Malaysian Companies

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit globally and changed the way how organizations work, communication is one of the key factor that plays a major role in organization sustainability. As of 2018, 488,948 people were registered as Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) with the Department of Social Welfare which reflects to 1.53% of Malaysia’s population. Malaysian government has allocated a 1% policy for hiring PWDs in the public sector giving employment opportunities to 3,782 PWDs in 2015- 2017. The percentage is of PWDs employed is lower at 0.7% compare to others country like India that managed to obtain 1.43% employment rate of government jobs. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of communication in the companies and to evaluate factors that can improve better disability employment communication support. This ethnographic qualitative research approach uses inductive data reasoning with quota sampling from 535 respondents from both public and private sector in Pahang, Malaysia. In descending order, the themes found from this study were appropriate communication device, communication flow, communication barriers and communication behaviour. The findings from this research is then implicated to managers of companies to be used when it comes to planning and practicing inclusivity in the workplace.