Disability, Job Satisfaction, and Workplace Accommodations: Evidence from the Healthcare Industry

This paper examines the extent to which job satisfaction, requests for accommodations, and the likelihood of a request being granted vary by disability status. We further analyze whether being granted workplace accommodations moderates the relationship between work satisfaction and disability.

We use a novel survey of healthcare workers centered on disability status, perceptions of work experiences, and the provision of accommodations. The data are used in a descriptive analysis and multiple regressions to examine the moderating effect of accommodations on the relationship between disability and indicators related to job satisfaction.

Results show that people with disabilities have more negative perceptions of their work experiences than people without disabilities. Although people with disabilities are more likely to request accommodations than people without disabilities, they are equally likely to have their requests wholly or partly granted. Regression results indicate that the negative relationships between disability status and most measures of work experience are largely eliminated when accounting for the disposition of accommodation requests. The main exception is turnover intentions, in which the adverse relationship with having a disability does not change even when an accommodation is granted. Partly granting accommodations is helpful only for some metrics of job experience.

Our paper shows that fully granting accommodations can go a long way to closing the disability gap in job satisfaction between people with and without disabilities.