Wednesday, March 04, 2015, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM (PST)


Reasonable Accommodations of Selection Tests for Candidates with Disabilities Staffing the EU Institutions: From Policy to Practice


Practice Area Division(s): Industrial/Organizational
Topic: Legislation, Policy, and Accessibility

The European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) delivers a staff selection service to the highest professional standards on behalf of the EU Institutions. Every year, thousands of candidates, from the 28 European Member States, take part in the EPSO selection process.

Considering the volume of candidates, the diversity of their backgrounds, cultures, nationalities, languages, … the legal obligations and EPSO’s central role as the selection office for the EU institutions; it is essential that EPSO guarantees equal opportunities, treatment and access to all candidates regardless of their age, gender, nationality, disability, belief … Therefore, EPSO has developed an equality and diversity policy for all, based on an inclusion principle and ensuring non-discrimination in the selection processes.

Most specifically, EPSO has developed a reasonable accommodation policy and procedure for candidates with disabilities and special needs. This policy aims at identifying and reducing the obstacles and the blocking factors in the candidate’s experience considering the candidate as the expert in his/her disability. The final goal is to allow them to fully demonstrate their abilities at each phase of the assessment procedure. (In order to define the reasonable accommodations, EPSO takes into consideration different elements: information on candidates’ disability, their real difficulties in a selection context and the ways used by each individual to compensate, the type of tests (written, PC, oral), the type of expected answers (multiple choice, case studies, oral presentation,…), experts’ consultation.

This presentation highlights this step by step reasonable accommodation procedure, its challenges and difficulties related to psychometric requirements but also to the high diversity of the national standards and practices in terms of disability and accommodation.

Finally, it gives some very practical solutions to selection and recruitment staff in order to better ensure equality between all candidates regardless of their disability.

PRESENTER:
David Bearfield, European Personnel Selection Office