OREANDA-NEWS. December 12, 2014. Targeted vocational training and career support for young people with disabilities, equal opportunity for employees with disabilities and disability-friendly workplace solutions are core components of Deutsche Post DHL’s corporate culture.

On the occasion of this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the world's leading postal and logistics company can look back on many years of disability inclusion for employees, as an integral part of its human resource policy. Today the Group employs more than 14,000 persons with disabilities in Germany alone.

“We want to give people with disabilities, wherever possible, equal opportunity to take an active part in working life at all of our locations, and we make sure to share our knowledge and experience developing disability-friendly workplace solutions across the Group,” says Melanie Kreis, Board Member for Human Resources at Deutsche Post DHL. “With a share of 8.7% for employees with disabilities we are well above the national average in Germany’s private sector, but we don’t plan to stop here. We want to continue to make progress and improvements towards even greater inclusion in the workplace.”

As an example, Deutsche Post DHL’s recruiting activities in 2013 targeted young people with disabilities and encouraged them to apply for vocational training positions. Inclusion at Deutsche Post DHL is based on an integration agreement with the General Works Council in the year 2003. Today it is one of the key focal points of Diversity Management at Deutsche Post DHL.

Life satisfaction of people with disabilities in Germany

This year the Deutsche Post “Happiness Atlas” also focused on satisfaction levels among people with disabilities in Germany. Analysis of data generated by Germany’s Socio-Economic Panel survey revealed that people with disabilities, roughly nine percent of the German population, rate their life satisfaction level 0.9 points lower than the general population. This gap has hardly narrowed over the last twenty years, and yet the general population is overwhelmingly in favor of a more inclusive society. “The business community must also do its part to enable people with disabilities to take an active part in working life,” says Melanie Kreis.

Ninety-eight percent of the general population in Germany considers the pursuit of a more equitable, inclusive society to be “important”; 70 percent consider it “very important”. Roughly two-thirds of Germans (64 percent) also believe that children with disabilities should attend school together with children without disabilities.