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TLDR; Our founders are committed leaders in the disability space, who built one of the largest and most-used disability recruiting platforms, Chronically Capable. We learned about the need for a product like Disclo, and we’re delivering on that necessity.
When one of our founders, Hannah, was diagnosed with Lyme disease in college, she feared there was no place for people like her in the workplace. It wasn't designed for people living with illness and disability. She landed her first marketing job in Washington, DC while in the midst of an intensive treatment protocol that required her to be on an IV for up to eight hours per day. Hannah saw first-hand how hard it was to communicate her needs to her employer.
In response to this pain point, we launched Chronically Capable as a talent marketplace that connects chronically ill and disabled professionals to job opportunities in line with their health needs. Very quickly, we built the largest community of disabled professionals worldwide, and signed enterprise contracts with companies such as Levi Strauss, Lululemon, Dentsu International and more. And we learned a lot.
Through speaking with employers and job seekers, we landed on a major pain point that exists in today’s workforce: health disclosures are complicated and messy for both parties.
We asked hundreds of people “would you trust your employer knowing about your illness (anxiety, depression, etc)?” The response was unanimous: people are hesitant to disclose directly to their employer due to fear, stigma, and a lack of trust. This results in a loss of productivity, employees not showing up to work as their true selves, and often, retaliation.
Employers, on the other hand, want their employees to disclose. They know about disability hiring mandates (such as Section 503), they want to understand employee needs, and they don’t want to spend money on benefits their employees aren’t utilizing. HR managers also know the risk of EEOC lawsuits (disability makes up 1/3 of cases). But they can’t store this information in their HRIS system due to ADA and HIPAA restrictions.
That’s how we landed on our new product: Disclo, a patent-pending HIPAA & SOC2 compliant platform managing health disclosures and accommodations in the workplace. Our vision is to make disclosing your disability accessible, safe, and hopefully even fun.
