Over the past couple of years, it has been my pleasure to work with the Oregon Business Leadership Network (OBLN). Under the tireless and determined leadership of Lucy Baker, the OBLN has made great strides in encouraging and supporting Oregon employers to effectively tap into both the employee pool and customer base that people with disabilities represent. My role has been to both develop the OBLN’s website and to produce its monthly e-magazine, Inclusion@Work.

Every issue of Inclusion@Work has featured articles based on fascinating interviews that I’ve conducted with leading politicians, employers, people with disabilities and service providers in Oregon. In the August issue of Inclusion@Work, we went outside of Oregon and it was my pleasure to interview Randy Lewis, Senior Vice President of Distribution and Logistics for Walgreens. As I expected, I encountered a very intelligent and articulate businessperson. Unexpectedly, I also encountered a very sincere, caring and visionary human being.

When I reported, last month, on the innovative recruiting website that Walgreens had launched for its new distribution center, I had no idea what lay behind that story. Randy and his team at Walgreens have embarked on a journey that may well significantly challenge the way people with disabilities, particularly cognitive disabilities, have been viewed by North American employers. With the OBLN’s permission, I am reprinting my interview with. I hope that you will be as enthralled and excited as I was to learn what is brewing at Walgreens!

~ Rob McInnes

(Originally published by the Oregon Business Leadership Network in the August 2006 edition of Inclusion@Work)

In the last issue of Inclusion@Work, we alerted our readers to the innovative website that Walgreens has developed to recruit employees with disabilities for its new distribution center in Anderson, South Carolina. Walgreens is a publicly traded company with annual sales in excess of $42 billion. Walgreens is investing $175 million in a new 700,000 square foot distribution center in Anderson, SC. In an unprecedented move, they are planning to have people with disabilities holding at least one third of the 600 jobs to be created there. Walgreens has also announced similar project to be established in Windsor, Connecticut.

Intrigued at the hiring plans for their new distribution centers, the OBLN contacted Walgreens for more information. We learned that the driving force behind these plans is Randy Lewis, Walgreens’ Senior Vice President of Distribution and Logistics. In the following interview with Mr. Lewis, we discovered how the unique combination of his personal and professional experiences led to this visionary employment initiative for people with disabilities.
 

RANDY LEWIS: It is all about awareness. I have a son, Austin who has autism. He is eighteen years old now. Throughout his school years, I’ve met kids with all kinds of disabilities and become exposed to the different challenges that they have to deal with. But, primarily, I’ve come to see them all as individual people. I’ve come to realize how many kids with disabilities there are in all our communities. I’ve wondered what is going to happen to them when they graduate from school and who can make a difference in their futures. If we, at Walgreens, can’t make a difference for them, who can?

Earlier in my career I worked for a consulting firm - Accenture. One day, I was set up to interview this fellow… he walked in, slapped the table, and said; “My name is Robert Bond and I want to know what it takes to work here because this is the place I want to work!” Well, we hired Robert and he was great. Six months after he started, however, he went on vacation in Florida, dove off a pier into two feet of water, snapped his neck, and was left paralyzed from the neck down. After a long period of convalescence, we brought Robert back to the office – doing client work. This was in the days before personal computers. It wasn’t easy, but we created an opportunity for him. I remember asking one of the partners; “This is a heck of an accommodation. How did we ever come to do this?” He said something that has stuck with me for twenty-five years. I remember it clear as a bell. He said: “If we can’t, who can?”

Remembering that incident, looking at the employment situation for people with disabilities and at the economic power of Walgreens, it’s the same question: “If we can’t, who can?” So that is where the idea for our initiative came from.
 

RANDY LEWIS: The center will likely open in March of 2007. We will eventually have about six hundred employees… maybe more. When we started, we spoke to a lot of experts and asked them what would be the maximum number of people with cognitive disabilities that we could effectively employ in an integrated work environment. They recommended about one for every two typically-abled employees. So, we targeted two hundred jobs for people with cognitive disabilities.

As for people with physical disabilities, we hope to employ and accommodate as many as possible and we have no preconceived limits on the number we will employ.
 

RANDY LEWIS: Well first of all when you come into town and say you’re going to do all this, you are rightly greeted with some skepticism, but we were very fortunate to find a community that was small enough and close-knit enough to make it work. The community and government agencies all came together and got behind it one hundred percent to make it work. We opened up a training center there. One agency provided the building. We provided the equipment. One agency provides the trainers.

Not only are the trainees trained on how to do the job, but also on social skills – how to interact properly with other people. Those skills are important when you are working in a building with six hundred other people. So far, we have about seventy people that we think are qualified – ready to start the day that the distribution center begins operations.

The wonderful thing about this is that there are so many people and organizations involved in all aspects of this initiative. It is a movement of attraction – not coercion. People want to do it. People want to say yes. “It’s the bestest” as little Opie (from the Andy Griffith show) would say!
 

RANDY LEWIS: For the hourly workforce, we are happy with the way things are going. We have had a difficult job finding people with disabilities for our management positions. We had to put some advertisements out there saying that we are looking specifically for people with disabilities – that we want management to reflect the workforce. I think that there is so much skepticism out there that people didn’t apply.

I have been disappointed, but we are still looking. We are always looking for talented people with disabilities.
 

RANDY LEWIS: Yes we do… although, our experience has been limited to maybe twenty people in each building and primarily in enclaves (group work stations). We are just now stepping out to make those folks full-time employees. And we’ve set up work-study programs with local high schools in each center. Although limited, our experience has been wonderful. Quite frankly, it makes us better.
 

RANDY LEWIS: Well, at the end of the day, what do you have? When you look back at your career, what did you do? It’s not going to be the money you made. I’ve attended many retirement speeches and they are always the same. When people reflect on their careers, their comments are never “Boy, we sure made a lot of money.” Rather, they are always about making a difference in the lives of people – something in the service of other people.

What I have observed in our distribution centers is that employing people with developmental disabilities changes us. It makes us more aware. It becomes more than a job. We realize that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. It makes the whole work experience better for everybody. Our employees without disabilities get more from their jobs. When they get to help their co-workers with disabilities, they realize that they are important in someone else’s life.

Not too long ago, I spoke with one of our distribution center managers. I asked him, “How is it working out… working with people with disabilities?” “Well,” he answered, “I don’t have an absentee problem. As a matter of fact one guy called me up to say that he couldn’t get transportation to work – so he was going to walk. Here is a group of people,” he said, “…who don’t talk about who said this or that or about who looked at me the wrong way… a group of people who arrive and leave every day with a great attitude.”

I was just at a national meeting with all of our distribution center managers. They all have work study programs with local-area schools. I listened to presentations from all of them about their work study programs – and it was great. It overwhelms you to hear about the kids they have working there. After they were done, I stood up front with two pieces of paper. I held one at waist level and said, “Okay, this is where we are at today working with people with disabilities in our distribution centers.” I put the other piece of paper over it and said, “I’m going to start raising this piece of paper and, when I reach the point where we CAN BE in working with people with disabilities, you tell me when to stop.” I started slowly raising the second piece of paper – fully expecting to lift it about two feet before they said “stop”. I kept moving the paper higher and higher. Before they said anything, I had already reached the point where I couldn’t go any higher.
 

RANDY LEWIS: That’s true and, at the end of the presentation, I had to remind them that the difference between where we are and where we can be… is them. They are the ones who have to make it happen.

This is the most rewarding work! Before we ever broke ground at the new Anderson distribution center, we had over a hundred people working on the design over a period of three years. A lot of our people had never been exposed to people with cognitive disabilities so we sent some of the project team members to TEACCH in North Carolina – a program recognized for educating kids with autism. I sent another group of people up to a program in Seattle. I’ll never forget when the first group came back and said; “You know, even if you fire us, we’re still going to work on this.”

Everybody is in it for the satisfaction of meaningful work, well-done. I tell people in the project what I know to be true: “When you look back on your life, this will be on the list of the three best things you will ever have done.”
 

RANDY LEWIS: And we constantly remind everybody that we are not a charity. We are a business. As we sort through the issues, it has been exciting.

A curious coincidence for us is that Anderson, South Carolina, where our new distribution center is located, is also home to James Robert “Radio” Kennedy – upon whose life the movie “Radio” was based. In the movie, the school principal comes to the Coach (played by Ed Harris) who has brought Radio, a mentally handicapped young man, into the high school and asks him; “Where is this going to go?” The coach replies; “I don’t know”. When we, at Walgreens, started down this road, we didn’t know where it was going to go. We had to sort through pay and benefits, how we were going to recruit, how we were going to train, would we use job coaches or not, etc. What has guided us, through developing this model, is the question “How do we want the world to be?”

For instance, if we don’t pay for performance, then this is going to become a charity and other businesses will not adopt it. We are very interested in being a success. We want to make this a model where other businesses can say; “We can do that too.” We want to share what we learn with other businesses. If we can help others do the same thing, we are there for them.
 

RANDY LEWIS: That is also why it is important for us to go back to our traditional distribution centers and do it there too. We don’t want people to be able to dismiss the model at the Anderson center by saying “Sure you can do it there – you built it especially for them and you put in all this money, etc.” With the Anderson distribution center we want to demonstrate how you can have a fully integrated large-scale operation and do all these wonderful things. We also want to go back to our regular centers that are more traditional and more representative of what most other companies have out there – and show that you can do it there too.

And then, if we can do something similar in our retail stores – that will ring a very big bell. Then we can really make a very big difference. Retail sales and customer service can be a tough world for people with cognitive disabilities, but we have people willing to start working on that.
 

One thing that my son has taught me is to look past the disability and see the person. That sounds like a trite statement but there is a huge transformation when you can really do that. The same thing is true in regards to race and other personal differences, but to truly see people with disabilities as people first – that’s what breaks the old paradigms.

By the way, after all these years, I recently contacted Robert Bond and found out that he has retired after a full career with the company. I told him how his story had stuck with me all my life and how it influenced these developments – and I’ve invited him to the grand opening of the new distribution center! We all stand on the shoulders of others.

Your article in the newsletter on business customer satisfaction was right on the mark! We need to hear a lot more about your thoughts on this topic. I have been talking about similar things for a long time. I think a big problem is the fact that the funding sources of disability employment programs do not require any performance standards for measuring results with businesses. I could run a disability employment program with rehab, Workforce Investment Act, school-to-work transition money and all other funding sources and meet all of my performance standards without satisfying one business customer! People in our field actually unwittingly do this all the time. The performance standards only measure job seeker outcomes and have nothing to do with the business customer.

I'm writing an eleven part series for the newsletter of the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals (www.nawdp.org) on how to measure and improve business customer satisfaction with workforce development services including those from programs that serve people with disabilities. It may be of interest to your readers. The first article dealt with why retention as measured by funding sources can't be used as a business satisfaction measure. Here are examples of three simple business customer satisfaction measures that I've never found tracked in disability employment programs.

1. What percentage of businesses that hire from you once give you repeat business over time? Is the percentage improving?

2. What percentage of businesses that have used your services are willing to give you a quote about how good your services are and written permission to use the quote and their name as a reference in your marketing material?

3. What percentage of your business customers are referred to you by other satisfied business customers?

I'll explore these and others in the articles. Keep up the good work! Some people won't want to hear this but one truth behind the lack of more employment opportunities for people with disabilities is programs not using any methods to measure and improve business customer satisfaction with their services. They assume business customer satisfaction without any methods for proving it. Customer service research shows that very few disappointed customers actually complain - they just don't use that product or service again and tell other people about their poor experience. You have to create meaningful measures that will really tell you how you are doing with businesses.

- Larry Robbin, Larry Robbin & Associates, California
 

I liked your article, but wonder if it goes far enough. (1) I notice that you distinguish between social service organizations in the disability sector and placement agencies serving, for example, college graduates or people in career transition. But many people with disabilities are also such individuals. (2) I think your article points up the need for private, for-profit groups serving as employment agencies for people with disabilities. Why must our employment remain in a social service model? Anything wrong with providing employment services to people with disabilities and being paid for our effort once those people are employed?

- Karen Rose, California
 

I enjoyed your article regarding overlooked barriers to employment. However, I have a couple of concerns I'd like to present you with. First I must add that I've just finished my graduate work at West Virginia University's Vocational Rehabilitation program. Secondly, I began my work here at the Butte Blind and Low Vision Services with a clear idea of where such agencies were lacking, and what improvements were most likely to improve services. After only three weeks I've learned two major themes that speak directly to your argument--there are too few bodies to effectively serve the needs of both clients and employers, despite the fact the two are or should be considered as one at some point (especially given the substantial geographical area agencies such at mine cover). Also, I continue to hear "underfunded" but its usually followed by a "but." I know I have little to no practical experience, "but" it does not require a rocket scientist to see how holistically underfunding strips counselors, rehab teachers, and mobility specialists of their ability to function as they'd wish. Honestly, I'd love to meet with employers and clients in a post-employment situation to evaluate the experience each of us had in the process--I call that bridge maintenance. I'm now faced with the reality that I may only come back to that bridge if its burned. That is a terrible way to handle business, but given the funding and limited manpower it is a reality I'd better get used to.

That said, I do agree with most everything you mention but have issues with understanding how your recommendations can be acted upon without dramatic changes in state government. I do, however, feel compelled to say (in defense of the experienced counselors and staff people I'm surrounded by) that each of us is committed to caring and serving our populations the best we can. And I'd also have to say the state of Montana spends more than I thought they would.

In closing, I guess I would've liked to have heard a little more about the complexities in the position you took in the article. Save for alternative funding streams and creative planning and placement strategies, most of my time is dictated for me. I travel at least three days a week, and meet with clients in my office the other two. When, as your article suggests, can I take time to engage an employer outside of a specific context, especially given new limits placed on travel because of high fuel costs? Please understand I am not being sarcastic. Rather, I'm new to my field and bummed that there is so little time for things I'd thought were important in graduate school--many of which you spoke of in your article. Any tips are very welcomed.

- Jim Franklin, Rehabilitation Counselor, Butte, MT
 

I was particularly impressed with Rob’s editorial in his July issue. I’ve spend many years either working for or contracting with non-profits. It’s been apparent to me for the past fifteen years that non-profits need to move away from their dependence on government contracts and start looking at sustainable programming. Not just for financial security but as a way to begin a transition into a “business model”. In order to make this kind of transition, non-profit boards have to develop an understanding of their service from a business point of view and not as a social service agency.

I believe that one of the main contributors to that disconnect that Rob mentioned is this lack of business understanding. This tweak in thinking can go a long way in establishing more of a business relationship with community. Although a social conscience is important, employers are more impressed with what the employee can do and not what they can’t. I’ve dealt with to many non-profit employment programs that approach businesses based on the disability of their client and not the ability.

This is often reflected in how they pay and recruit their employment placement staff. I’ve yet to find a non-profit that pays their employment program staff what the private sector is paying. Many do not even conduct a review of what the private sector is paying. It is my belief that this is a reflection of the old “charity model” rather than a true business model. I know of to many non-profits that approach funding bodies with the “hat in hand” approach rather than a business that has a viable service to offer. This makes it very difficult for the business community to take the service seriously.

Further dilution happens when the non-profit uses the employment service as a job creation program for persons that would like to be an “employment counsellor” with only an understanding of disability and not of employment. I can not emphasize this enough, "my experience has taught me that employers want to know what the person can do, not what they can’t".

- Terry Wiens, British Columbia
 

The newest product in our online store is a snappy little book called “The Disability Factor: Five Simple Tools to Better Serve and Counsel People with Disabilities”. This book was written by our friend Shayn Anderson – a sometimes contributor to Disability Network.

In writing this book, Shayn has responded to a great need out there – the need for a basic and practical booklet for professionals who may encounter clients or customers with disabilities but who may have had little personal interaction with folks with disabilities and/or little information on basic disability issues and etiquette. It isn’t intended to be a comprehensive treatise. Rather, it is a handy quick-read for the busy professional – a helpful guidebook to keep within reaching distance on their office shelves.

Written in a conversational manner and spiced with his personal experiences “on both sides of the desk”, Shayn has produced a very readable book to help professionals (particularly counselors) overcome any hesitancy they might have in delivering their services to people with disabilities.

The Disability Factor will be a welcome resource for anyone in a counseling career. From lawyers to real estate salespeople, it will also be helpful to any professional who may have the opportunity to serve clients with disabilities.

The NCWD (National Center on workforce Development and disability/Adult) has two upcoming web conferences on self employment for people with disabilities. Both Seminars are free. September 8, 2006 - Overview of Self-Employment: A Customized Job and September 14, 2006 - Self-Employment in CE Sites.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has added a new document to their collection of online “Questions and Answers” series on disability & employment. “Questions and Answers about Deafness and Hearing Impairments in the Workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act” is a comprehensive reference for employers on topics like Accommodations, Safety, Harassment, etc.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) in the US. It is a great opportunity for employers and organizations to take stock of their ongoing practices and/or launch new initiatives. A new poster for NDEAM 2006 is now available.

Consultants at the Job Accommodation Network have developed an employment guide for job seekers as well as job candidates entering the workforce. The new on-line tool, "Finding a Job that is Right for You: A Practical Approach to Looking for a Job as a Person with Disability", provides four-steps with easy-to-use information, tools, and resources on subjects encountered when job seeking. These include disclosing a disability, requesting an accommodation, and career exploration designed to help people with disabilities find the job which is a good fit for them.

Google has launched an “early-stage experiment” intended to make web browsing easier for people who use text-to-speech software. Essentially, the search portal will return results with pages that offer less visual distractions and/or pages that can be effectively read with images turned off.

Are you interested in learning more about disability and employment issues? Are you an employer? An educator? A service provider? A job seeker with a disability? In our store, DiversityShop, we carry over 20 of the best books and videos that we have found on issues of disability and employment. Check them out now!

Would you like information or advice on a particular issue related to disability & employment? Tie into our network of over 5000 readers! Send us an email and we will post your question in our next newsletter.

Our organization the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW) is embarking upon a new project. Our affiliating website www.workink.com is creating a portal for Ethnocultural Youth with Disabilities. Within this portal will be valuable resources and information to help youth with disabilities of visible minorities in overcoming any barriers to schooling and gaining employment. We are looking for youth with disabilities who have overcome such barriers and who are currently successful – for a brief interview. We are aiming to put together a couple success stories for our website displaying such acts of resilience. If you know of someone we could contact to speak with and learn about with regards to this, we would love your assistance in connecting us to them. Our goal is to show ethno cultural youth with disabilities that the opportunity for success can be within reach and provide them with examples to help motivate and inform them further.

- Mona Bhalla, Research Assistant, CCRW

Is your organization holding an event that might be of interest to our 5000+ readers? Would you like to add your event to our listings?

Boston, MA: September 13-15, 2006

“Aspire, Achieve, Empower”

Partners for Youth with Disabilities is pleased to announce that Aspire, Achieve, Empower: First National Conference for Mentoring Youth with Disabilities will be hosted in Boston on September 13-15, 2006. The conference will bring together experts in the field, researchers, program providers, and others who have an interest in the inclusion of youth with disabilities in the mentoring movement. Topics covered will include best practices, funding, and much more.

Boston, MA: September 18 & 19, 2006

“Empowering Employers to Build an Inclusive Workforce”

For over 22 years, the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) has provided focused, trusted, and informed answers to these and other questions. This annual conference unites JAN consultants with featured speakers who have expertise in employment law, innovative employment practices, and disability issues.

Mountain View, CA: September 27 & 28, 2006

“Increasing Workplace Opportunities Through Innovation”

employmentAccess 2006 (eA'06) is a national conference that unites persons with disabilities, employers, educators, rehabilitation specialists, technical developers and manufacturers in more than 20 sessions on topics such as access technology for the workplace, ergonomics, and integrating persons with disabilities into the workforce.

Minneapolis, MN: October 4 – 6, 2006

“Inclusion: The time is Now”

Over 300 attendees are expected from Business Leadership Networks across the country, as well as other corporations and individuals who are seeking best practices and solutions for recruiting, hiring, employing and marketing to people with disabilities. Companies throughout the U.S. are striving to bring awareness, inclusion and innovation into their workplaces for people with disabilities.

Arlington, VA: October 5 & 6, 2006

“What We Know and Need to Know”

This two-day conference will (a) cover current statistic on the characteristics and status of working-age people with disabilities derived from current survey and administrative data and (b) explore options for improving future data collection and data distribution efforts.

Archives of past issues are available on our website - www.diversityworld.com 

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