Telepresence Robots Assist with Workplace Inclusion

Peter Hirst, Associate Dean of Executive Education at MIT Sloan School of Management, recently wrote an article addressing the role of telepresence robots in workplace inclusion. He suggests that telepresence robots can be used to give access to jobs, as well as to meaningful and rewarding careers for people with disabilities, a historically overlooked and excluded population.

The MIT Sloan School of Management Office of Executive Education has used telepresence robots for two years as part of its flex work policy, and recently decided to start offering access to select programs, via telepresence-robot-enabled participants, for individuals who might not consider enrolling otherwise. Thomas Hershey, an entertainment-industry executive who lives in Los Angeles, was the first participant and offered improvement ideas for the future.

Reports on boardroom diversity confirm that a diverse executive pool is good for business, and organizations are making progress toward achieving gender and race equity in the workplace, but companies need to extend the same kind of thinking toward people with disabilities.

While nearly 20% of the United States population lives with a disability, only 19.9% of people with disabilities are participating in the labor force. Making the workplace environment accessible to more people through telepresence robots would allow individuals with mobility and other challenges to enter the workforce. Paul McDonagh-Smith, Digital Learning Consultant at MIT Sloan Executive Education, describes telepresence robots as “a human enabler, which doesn’t just help us replicate physical things but, in some cases, to exceed physical limits and to do things in new ways.”

Using telepresence robots as an assistive technology is in the spirit of universal design (UD), which intends to create buildings, products, and environments everyone can access, regardless of physical ability.

For more information on MIT Sloan, visit their Web site.

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