Budapest, December 14, 2015 13:00

As a recognition of the efforts to employ disabled people Magyar Telekom has won the Disabled Friendly Workplace award for the second time. Among others the company makes exemplary efforts in the social sensitization of its employees.

The 2015 Disabled Friendly Workplace awards were distributed at the Gala Event organized on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities under the name of “The world is better with us”. Now 50 Hungarian organizations have received the award, among them Magyar Telekom.

Magyar Telekom has been treating the integration of disabled people with high priority. The series of targeted services and sensitization programs are the proof of these efforts and achievements. However, the award was not given to Telekom for the achievements in the past but based on its current practice and future plans. The jury awarded the company's sanitization programs involving more than 7000 employees: preparation for the conscious management of disabilities and the acceptance of disabled persons. As the proud winner of the award the company is entitled to use the Disabled Friendly Workplace logo for another two years.

The Salva Vita Fund introduced the Disabled Friendly Workplace award six years ago to support the connection of job seeking disabled people and employers open to their employment. Those employers can apply for the award that undertake to continuously develop their practice in relation to the recruitment, employment and retention of people with disabilities.

 “We are very proud of the award and the acknowledgment of our efforts. Besides the employment problems of people with disabilities we continuously work on the perfection of servicing disabled target groups, for example it is a very important task for us to educate our customer service staff with which we elevate the sensitization of employees to the level of the society” - said Éva Somorjai, Magyar Telekom’s Chief Human Resources Officer.

The “Have you tried otherwise” series of events is an umbrella program of the company's sensitization strategy within the frame of which employees can experience with the involvement of nonprofit organizations how the blind, deaf, sight and hearing impaired people live their lives. Employees did sports in wheelchairs, familiarized with the basics of Braille-writing and completed challenges without using their eyesight and hearing thus experienced the hardships that disabled people have to face day by day, while doing the simplest activities.  Besides experiencing disability, as a special life situation, the program helps to establish a prejudice-free attitude in peer and customer service relations and as a decisive experience helps people to change their vision and awareness in the field of social relations in the broader sense.

The company's future plans include, above others, making recruitment accessible for disabled people: optimization of certain company websites with text reading programs used by sight impaired people. Telekom issued an internal online informative named “Employment with disabilities” that includes the applicable laws and the relevant corporate culture elements. All Telekom shops are equipped with induction loops for the hearing impaired and signature frames for the sight impaired customers to help administration processes.

The company’s equal opportunities commitments are from time to time audited and with the evaluation of the findings of the assessment the company tries to find further solutions to integrate people with disabilities