Section #31: Career Development and Advancement

1. An employer that provides career development and advancement to its employees shall take into account the accessibility needs of its employees with disabilities as well as any individual accommodation plans, when providing career development and advancement to its employees with disabilities.
2. In this section, “career development and advancement” includes providing additional responsibilities within an employee’s current position and the movement of an employee from one job to another in an organization that may be higher in pay, provide greater responsibility or be at a higher level in the organization or any combination of them and, for both additional responsibilities and employee movement, is usually based on merit or seniority, or a combination of them.

Some employee professional development centres—for example, teaching advancement offices and staff development centres—provide services for career development. These centres, which uphold the Customer Service Standard, will already be focused on providing service that takes into account people’s disabilities. In other cases, employees who provide career development services should regularly review the Customer Service Standard training materials to ensure that accommodation for accessibility needs are taken into account. The suggested best practices below include training materials that provide a short overview of accessible customer service.

Institutions will also need to take accessibility needs of employees into account when providing advancement opportunities. If an employee is changing jobs within the institution, the employee’s accommodation plans will need to be reviewed to ensure that the accommodations are applicable in the new role.

• COU: Customer Service Online Training Tool

• For large designated public sector organizations, January 1, 2014.
• For large organizations, January 1, 2016.

• “Large designated public sector organization” means a designated public sector organization with 50 or more employees.
• “Large organization” means an obligated organization with 50 or more employees in Ontario, other than the Government of Ontario, the Legislative Assembly or a designated public sector organization.

In Section 1 (2), the IASR states that, “the requirements in the standards set out in this Regulation are not a replacement or a substitution for the requirements established under the Human Rights Code nor do the standards limit any obligations owed to persons with disabilities under any other legislation.”