Employment Isn’t Broken for People with IDD.

We often talk about employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) as though the primary challenge is preparing individuals to enter the workforce. Entire conversations are built around readiness, work skills, social skills, or whether someone is “employable.”

But I think we are asking the wrong question.

After years of working alongside people with IDD in real employment settings, I’ve come to believe that employment itself is not broken for people with disabilities. What’s broken is the way many workplaces and hiring systems are designed. Too often, people with IDD are entering systems that were never built with them in mind and are then judged for struggling to fit into structures that exclude them from the start.

That is not an individual failure. It is a design problem.

Traditional hiring systems tend to reward a very narrow set of traits. We place enormous value on interview performance, eye contact, communication style, confidence, speed of response, and the ability to navigate unspoken social expectations. But many of those things have very little to do with whether someone can actually perform a job well.

What they often measure instead is familiarity.

Employers naturally gravitate toward candidates who communicate in expected ways, present themselves comfortably in interviews, and make supervisors feel confident during the hiring process. That comfort is frequently mistaken for competence. Meanwhile, many individuals with IDD are filtered out long before their actual abilities, consistency, reliability, or work ethic are ever seen.

I’ve seen people with IDD succeed in workplaces once the environment becomes clearer, more structured, and more intentional. When expectations are direct, routines are consistent, and support is available, many individuals thrive. They show up consistently. They learn tasks thoroughly. They often bring stability, loyalty, and long-term commitment to positions where turnover is otherwise high.

Those are qualities employers constantly say they want.

And yet, workplaces are often designed in ways that make success unnecessarily difficult. Many environments rely heavily on implied expectations. Employees are expected to “pick things up,” interpret vague instructions, navigate unwritten social rules, and adapt quickly without much clarification. For individuals with IDD, that lack of clarity can become an immediate barrier—not because they are incapable, but because the system assumes everyone learns and processes information the same way.

What’s interesting is that the strategies that help employees with IDD succeed often improve workplaces overall. Clear communication, structured training, demonstration-based learning, consistency, and supportive supervision are not lower standards. They are simply better practices. Most employees perform better when expectations are understandable and support systems are consistent.

Support itself is also widely misunderstood.

There is often an assumption that providing support means someone is less independent or less capable. But every workplace relies on support systems. Managers provide direction. Teams collaborate. New employees receive onboarding and feedback. No one succeeds entirely on their own.

For employees with IDD, support is simply more intentional and more visible.

When done well, it does not create dependence. It creates stability, confidence, and the opportunity for people to succeed within environments that may otherwise exclude them.

I also think we need to move away from framing disability employment purely as charity, inspiration, or corporate goodwill. Employment for people with IDD should not depend on whether an employer is willing to “give someone a chance.” That framing lowers expectations before someone has even started.

The issue is not whether people with IDD are capable of working. The issue is whether workplaces are willing to examine the structures that unintentionally screen capable people out.

Because if hiring systems consistently exclude individuals who can successfully perform the work, then the problem is not the workforce. The problem is the design of the system itself.

Real inclusion requires more than diversity statements or symbolic hiring efforts. It requires employers to rethink how jobs are structured, how training is delivered, how expectations are communicated, and how success is measured. It also requires understanding that retention matters more than hiring numbers alone. A workplace is not inclusive simply because someone was hired. Inclusion is reflected in whether people are supported well enough to remain, grow, and succeed over time.

I think the conversation around employment and disability needs to become more honest. For too long, we have focused on trying to prepare people with IDD to fit into systems exactly as they already exist.

Maybe the better question is why those systems continue to require people to adapt to structures that were never designed with them in mind in the first place.