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HirePotential: A Sound Plan for Inclusion

By: Nan Hawthorne

Summary:

HirePotential, a staffing service, has developed this four-step plan for including people with disabilities in your workforce -- and for making that inclusion your way of doing business.

How a Sound Plan Can Help You Overcome Obstacles to Inclusion

Step 1: Obtain Corporate Commitment

Step 2: Set Goals and Objectives

Step 3: Create a Pilot Program

Step 4: Implement Universally

How a Sound Plan Can Help You Overcome Obstacles to Inclusion

Many employers are open to hiring more employees with disabilities. But just how to make inclusion work stands in their way. It's often just as much a barrier as unproductive attitudes based on a lack of awareness about disabilities.

As the champion of your company's inclusion program, you can guide your company through the turbulence and confusion that can be expected in making the transition to a more inclusive workforce. You can help your firm gain acceptance and enthusiasm for inclusion. Here's how.

HirePotential is a groundbreaking staffing service that also teaches and helps companies to implement a sound plan for inclusion. Its staff includes several under-utilized populations, such as welfare-to-work participants, veterans and stay-at-home parents. But Sheridan Walker, vice president and recruiter for this five-city (soon to be six) company, tells eSight Careers Network that HirePotential was formed to serve a specific niche: employees with disabilities.

She and Seattle representative, Diana Smith, recently outlined facts about the untapped market that job seekers with disabilities represent at a daylong workshop sponsored by the Washington State Business Leaders Network, a group of employers committed to including people with disabilities at work. In addition to describing the many bonuses a company receives when it actively recruits job candidates with disabilities, Smith outlined a sound and strategic four-step plan HirePotential both recommends and helps corporations use to implement inclusion successfully and permanently.

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Step 1: Obtain Corporate Commitment

Without complete buy-in from managers at every level of a corporation (from the CEO to the hiring managers), no program to include qualified disabled people in your workforce will succeed. If top management is lukewarm about inclusion, other managers will hesitate to tether their rising stars to something that they don't think will last. They will not want to identify with something doomed to be a mistake.

If hiring managers are forced, as they often are, to achieve inclusion without buy-in or support, no amount of cheerleading will induce them to spend time on an initiative in which they fail to see a business benefit or on a process they don't know how to implement.

Fortunately it should not be difficult to obtain the commitment of corporate leaders whose appropriate motivation is to enhance the bottom line. Here's why: Including workers with disabilities is simply good business. Says Smith, "Nobody wants to turn down a valuable employee."

Smith advises advocates for corporate inclusion programs to downplay sentimentality. "It may be 'the right thing to do'," she says, "but it also has concrete and easy-to-demonstrate financial benefits to any company. Take this approach, Smith continues, back your facts up, and your CEO will hop to the head of the bandwagon with alacrity.

To accomplish this, you must build your own knowledge about employees with disabilities and their impact on the bottom line. Become informed about these important concerns of your company.

Market share. Far from being a population of poverty, disabled people and their loved ones constitute a substantial and active consumer base. These individuals need and want the same comforts of life as anyone else and then some.

Smith's partner, Sheridan Walker, estimated that, with the likelihood of an increase to at least a 50 percent employment of disabled people of working age, the spending within this sector could reach $350 billion a year. "When you realize how much goes in to attracting teen consumers who spend only $76 billion," Walker states, "it becomes obvious why companies need to know more about disabled people as consumers. And how better than to get to know them as corporate partners?"

Many corporations know that employees with disabilities enlighten efforts to design and manufacture products that are accessible. Says the Microsoft Corporation's Mylene Padolina, "We need to know whether disabled people are going to be able to use our products. Disabled employees are an excellent resource."

Staff Productivity. Employees with disabilities have long shown, in studies such as that done by the Dupont Corporation, to equal or exceed non-disabled employees in attendance and longevity. Retention is rarely a problem with this group; they tend to be loyal and committed workers. In a period in our history where the job candidate pools are often quite shallow, hiring people with disabilities gives a company an edge in locating staff which still demonstrates some of the traditional work ethic that seems to be slipping away in the U.S. When replacing a worker can cost several times the salary he earned, having an employee who will stick around is a benefit in itself.

In a less tangible way, having individuals with disabilities on staff tends to boost the general morale of the entire workforce. The employee with a disability is less inclined to be an idle complainer and thus discourages employee rancor. Further, other employees feel good about an employer which cares and demonstrates that, should he need similar support for himself, it will be there.

Cold Hard Cash. To start with, in the U.S., there are numerous tax incentives for companies who hire workers with disabilities. Smith reports that this can be as much as $8,500 per employee. Any accommodations which must be made -- and the average cost for that is less than $500 -- is more than offset by this windfall.

Helping an injured worker get back to work fast by providing accommodation saves money, too. Besides the productive work of the person, back-on-the-job workers cut compensation and disability costs. It's estimated that 90 percent of injured workers want to return to work, but most of them don't believe their employers will make that possible, says Smith. Do it and do it fast. Time lost is money lost.

Edging Out the Competition. In addition to the impact on market share and productivity mentioned above, including workers with disabilities also helps you gain an advantage over your competitors and draws even more market share to your company. By tapping into a workforce that is largely overlooked -- in fact the group with the highest unemployment rate -- your company will have access to the higher qualified and more reliable workers. HirePotential has also heard from companies it serves that, on average, staff workers with disabilities who serve customers receive a higher rate of approval from customers than non-disabled ones.

How your firm benefits in terms of financial health and corporate growth by hiring people with disabilities is only part of the knowledge you will need when you visit with your CEO and other executives and managers about why inclusion makes good business sense. You will also need to learn the following:

What are the absolutely essential functions of jobs in your company? Don't let your success slip away by thinking optional responsibilities are essential. Does your volunteer program manager, for instance, really have to drive a car?
What is the real impact of every disability on an individual's ability to work? Don't let your subjective impressions or popular culture lead you to overestimate the impact of disability.
What adaptive tools and technology can intervene to sidestep or compensate for a disability? If you proactively acquaint yourself with the many and remarkable options available today to do just that, you will be better able to inform corporate decision makers about how something is done -- not just if it can, assures Smith. That's much more convincing.
What are your current managers and employees concerned and misinformed about? What support do they need from you? Smith says too many companies throw the onus of inclusion on ill-prepared hiring or department managers. A central support program, based in the corporate office, can prevent a lot of foot dragging from staff.

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Step 2: Set Goals and Objectives

Once you have done your homework and gotten the boss on board, the hard part is over. Now you simply have to organize the steps you need to implement an inclusion program. As with any other project, understanding what goals and objectives are and which you want to pursue is an irrevocable part of any business plan. Decide exactly what it is you are trying to accomplish.

These goals must by definition be concrete. Based on the statistics you unearthed in Step 1, how many employees with disabilities will you need as a start to help you reach corporate growth and financial goals? In what roles can they have to fastest impact? What community partnerships are possible to assist you in your effort? What resources and training will you need to make inclusion something everyone on staff can contribute to? When do you want inclusion to be the norm throughout your organization?

Put your action team together and fully inform them. Address what you will need to get the job done. And assure your team that no one expects perfect performance and unlimited knowledge right away. You're all learning, with those in thousands of other companies, just how inclusion of individuals with disabilities can best be accomplished.

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Step 3: Create a Pilot Program

Smith states that a company needs a period of "discovery" in order to test, adjust and authenticate the success of an inclusion program. This period of discovery can also provide you with the greatest tool you need to make inclusion a universal and permanent part of your organization's culture and make your responsibility in it far less full of conflict: the first success story. If you can find a way to maneuver your company into recruiting and keeping employees with disabilities in a way that will have easily recognizable successes and benefits (the first success story), you will become a champion rather than a slave driver.

HirePotential recommends that developing a pilot program is one of the best ways to gain a first success story. A pilot program allows you to start implementing your goals in a limited way that is not burdensome. You will be able to test ideas and strategies in a microcosm before trying to set up an inclusion program on a corporate scale. You will further supply your program with more data on the positive impact on the bottom line, create your own "best practices" and develop a model and mentors that will make extended efforts much easier.

Conduct your pilot program in a department where having increased numbers of skilled and reliable staff will have the most obvious impact -- such as a help center and a customer care area. That can go a long way in creating success for the company in general.

It will be important to work with the hiring managers in this department to reassure them that you will not lay every aspect of the pilot program on their shoulders. You will have to sell the project to them with the same information as you did for higher ups. Then you need to show them it can work, that you will provide what it takes to make it work and that you are open to learning from them and changing any aspect of the project to insure its success.

Your inclusion team will need to monitor and support the pilot program and evaluate its progress at every step. Involve managers in discussions. Get disabled employees' feedback, too. Be sure to document every step taken and every impact noted so you can shout them from the rooftops and go on to implement inclusion throughout your company and ultimately act as a leader with inclusion expertise for other companies and groups.

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Step 4: Implement Universally

During the pilot program, you'll be watching every minute detail to see what you could do better. Develop your observations into inclusion manuals and be sure you have the information and resources you discovered you needed on hand for the next phase of your initiative.

By acting proactively instead of simply scrambling to make each individual situation work, you will reap the harvest of better protection against discrimination suits, since you have documented what you have done to be inclusive. You will have more buy-in from other department staff and managers who see the results of the pilot project. You will not have to repeat mistakes made the first time around. And you will have a nice set of figures to show the boss, advancing the cause and your own career.

Universal implementation touches all corners of your company, including:

New employee orientation
Employee training
Employee relations
Recruitment methods, media and venues
Physical layout of your workplace
Accessibility of your current technology
Corporate communications
Public relations and marketing

Remember, in today's global economy, your company must attract and retain the best available talent that reflects your organization's customer base, if it is to remain competitive. The most overlooked area where your company can, ironically, gain the quickest and greatest advantage is in inclusion -- hiring staff people who are disabled for your important positions.

By using HirePotential's thoughtful and proven four-step plan, you can accomplish your inclusion goals easier and quicker and with more permanence and universality.

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