The mission of the Canadian Down Syndrome Society (CDSS) is to empower the Down syndrome community to push through boundaries—boundaries that limit the potential of people with Down syndrome and boundaries that limit how we think about advertising itself.

This campaign specifically honed in on the gap of employment within the Down syndrome community, partnering with Linkedin to connect them with prospective employers offering a meaningful path to employment.

You should outline why this piece of work was created for this particular brand, in this market, at this particular moment in time, with all of the cultural and market conditions.

While the Down syndrome community continues to make progress within the global community toward inclusivity, over 50% people with Down syndrome still struggle to find meaningful, paid work (https://bit.ly/44fAUCU). If North America is facing a historic labor shortage—with over 9 million open jobs—why couldn’t people with Down syndrome be part of that solution? (https://bit.ly/4dcnUSP)

The ambition of CDSS is to empower the Down syndrome community by closing the gaps in support, information, and resources that make life more challenging for people with Down syndrome.

Despite the community having a long-standing history of being valuable contributors in a variety of different sectors, their abilities in the workplace continued to be underestimated, if not completely dismissed. Individuals with Down syndrome have been known for bringing a unique set of skills to the workplace including loyalty, dedication, attention to detail, positive attitude, and a contribution to culture, among many others.

However, many individuals with Down syndrome are still largely excluded from the workforce. Employers across North America are unaware of this untapped resource, let alone where to find them. This presented CDSS with an opportunity to help solve the employment gap and connect them with prospective employers. This ladders up to the Canadian Down Syndrome Society’s’ commitment to Sustainable Development Goal #3: Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages.

As people with Down syndrome become adults, employment is an important part of reaching full or partial independence. Being employed means not only earning an income; it also means learning new skills, an opportunity to build lasting connections with others, improved self-confidence, and a sense of self-worth.

Despite how valuable employment can be, individuals with Down syndrome are still largely excluded from the workforce. Despite being valuable contributors across many sectors, their abilities are still underestimated. As a result, employers don’t consider them as potential candidates.

Our objective was to help solve the employment gap by creating a space for prospective employers to recruit the community and for people with Down syndrome to seek employment based on their skills. CDSS exists to empower the Down syndrome community to advocate for themselves. Throughout the campaign, people with Down syndrome were the face of the work, familiarizing employers with the untapped workforce.

In Canada, despite a growing movement towards diversity and inclusion, bias continues to be pervasive against people living with disabilities. Stigma and stereotypes impact people with Down syndrome and their parents at every stage of their lives – from the moment of diagnosis through adulthood. While Canada has made great strides in building an inclusive society that values people of different races, genders, and sexual orientations, there is still a very long way to go to truly include people with disabilities.

For the most part, employers are open to hiring individuals of different abilities. The issue has become an inability to find them, and a lack of information around the recruitment, hiring, and training processes involved.

Given the need for information, resources, and a space to connect and recruit, we set out to create a first-of-its-kind employment hub for candidates with Down syndrome. Introducing inployable: the first-ever employment network for people with Down syndrome on LinkedIn.

We worked closely with Linkedin to bring inployable to life in a format that was both discoverable to potential employers and an inclusive user experience for ready-to-work individuals with Down syndrome.

Prior to the official campaign launch, the Canadian Down Syndrome Society released hyper-targeted Meta and Linkedin posts for the Down syndrome community, calling on them to join. Those looking for work were able to fill out a brief form on inployable.com, including their LinkedIn profile. If they didn't have a profile, a LinkedIn coach helped them build one. Next, job seekers are added to inployable's network—basically a company page on LinkedIn—where potential employers could find them.

People with Down syndrome have been the victim of outdated stereotypes and misconceptions about their capabilities, which has led to them being ignored by potential employers. In addition, employers that are open to hiring people with intellectual disabilities remain uninformed about how to connect with these candidates.

Knowing employers were unaware of this untapped resource, let alone where to find them, our breakthrough insight was simple. To foster true inclusivity for individuals with Down syndrome seeking work, we needed to make space for them on the same platform as all other job seekers and prospective employers: Linkedin.

Our work was cut out for us, we needed to create a hub on Linkedin that ensured employers were able to discover individuals with Down syndrome—particularly if they didn’t have any work experience—and provided an inclusive UX for individuals with Down syndrome wanting to get involved.

The campaign launched during Down Syndrome Week (October 23-29, 2022), with a video showcasing individuals with Down syndrome provocatively destroying their resumes to make way for a new and better way of hiring: inployable.

Due to a limited media budget, we pushed the work out through social media, primarily on LinkedIn, as well as through PR and community advocacy groups associated with CDSS.

We worked closely with LinkedIn to add over 30 skills to the platform (e.g., repetition oriented, routine oriented, repetitive data entry, inventory skills, etc.) to accurately represent the strengths of the community. We offered employers resources on things like training processes, inclusive hiring, and interview adaptations to ensure they were set up for success when hiring an individual from the Down syndrome community.

Since its launch in October 2022, inployable has seen incredible success. As a small local charity, budgets and resources were slim, but inployable achieved the following:

Raised awareness about the community’s ability to contribute to the workforce:

We achieved 149,000,000+ impressions for the campaign and based on our $7,500 in PR and media support, this equates to 19,867 impressions per $ spent. Not too bad.

Created a space for connection:

-700+ companies, in 24 countries, across 164 different industries, follow our page

-91% of our followers work in HR so they are directly responsible for recruiting

-Over 100 jobs have been posted on inployable

-According to Sean McConnell, LinkedIn Business Development Lead,

“inployable is one of the fastest growing company pages on LinkedIn”

Helped candidates with Down syndrome land a job:

-17% of inployable candidates have already been hired.

Inployable has resulted in life-changing and long-term impacts for the Down syndrome community. Not only did Inployable connect ready-to-work individuals with their employers—giving many members of the community their first-ever paid employment position—but it also created a long-term resource for all future individuals with Down syndrome who will be looking for work.

Employment has a lasting impact within the community and a long list of benefits that all amount to a more independent and fulfilled life for people with Down syndrome.

In addition, the provocative nature of the work was able to draw attention to the real and authentic side of living with Down syndrome and challenge misconceptions about their abilities. This is important to employers who can now see them as the valuable contributors they are.

All individuals featured in our communications have Down syndrome, creating visibility and awareness of individuals with Down syndrome and what they can accomplish in the workforce.