Want an employee who is a natural problem solver? Hire someone with a Disability

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
5 min readJul 3, 2019

Employers should be seeking out employees with disabilities, not avoiding them.

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Why are problem solving skills desirable in business?

The ability to troubleshoot or solve problems is really a collection of a number of other skills including:

  • Decision Making: To solve a problem, one needs to be able to make (or recommend) a decision.
  • Creativity. Problems are usually solved either intuitively or systematically. Both require creativity to think of a solution set from which the winning idea is chosen.
  • Research: Solving problems almost always requires some type of research ranging in scale from a google search or “water cooler” conversation all the way up to a formal research project.
  • Collaboration: Some problems can be solved by a single individual, but most require collaborations with other individuals either on your team or on cross-functional teams.
  • EQ: When assessing solutions, assessing the impact the problem and/or solution has on the problem’s stakeholders is important. This requires some level of emotional intelligence.
  • Risk Management: Solving problems inherently includes the need to perform…

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Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC

LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact 2022. UX Collective Author of the Year 2020. Disability Inclusion SME. Sr Staff Accessibility Architect @ VMware.