This past month, as part of my work with the Oregon
Business Leadership Network, I had the pleasure of speaking
with Erin Riehle, head of Project SEARCH in Cincinnati.
Working with eight different Cincinnati-area companies,
Project SEARCH operates internship programs for ninety-six
students with significant disabilities. (Look for more
information on Project Search later in this issue.) One
particular comment that Erin made has really stuck with me
in a “think about it some more” way. Speaking about her own
employer, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, she said:
“If our business tried to work with every agency in town
to hire a person here or there, we might have two or three
employees with significant disabilities… they would really
be almost like token employees. Those numbers are not enough
to change culture or practice. However, when you take twelve
student interns and, in the course of a year, move them
through three to four departments where they are learning
real skills, you immediately begin to change culture in an
organization. You make it more acceptable to consider a
person with a significant disability as becoming a permanent
part of that environment.”
In reflecting on Erin’s comment, it suggests to me that
the more people with significant or obvious disabilities
that are present in a workplace (in a positive context), the
more receptive that workplace will be to adding more of such
individuals to their workforce. Experientially, it makes
sense to me. I think of so many companies that I have
visited who have nothing but able-bodied folks in their
workplaces and are so anxiety-ridden at the prospect of even
considering someone with an obvious disability for a open
position. Then I think of the Hewlett-Packard facility that
I visited in Roseville, California where, within the three
minutes it took to walk from the front door to the meeting
room, we encountered half a dozen employees with very
significant and visible disabilities (folks with white canes
and guide dogs, folks chatting in ASL, folks using power
wheelchairs, etc.). I have no doubt that this HP workplace
would be much more receptive to hiring another person with a
disability than most others I’ve visited.
I think Erin’s observation is right on. The Project
SEARCH internship programs are doing more than just
providing valuable work experiences for their students. They
are simultaneously, and by design, massaging and changing
corporate culture and the receptivity of those workplaces to
employing people with disabilities. I have written here
before about my strong conviction that the most effective
way to overcome attitudinal barriers in the workplace is to
maximize the opportunities for positive contact between
employers and people with disabilities. (See: April 2003 and
September 2003 issues.) I believe that Project SEARCH is a
dramatic example of what, for purposes of this article, I am
going to refer to as the “Power of Presence”.
If there is some truth to this idea that the more
exposure/contact that companies/employers have with people
with disabilities (particularly in work-related
environments), the more receptive they are going to be to
employing them, why is it that so little conscious and
focused energy goes into maximizing those types of contacts?
We need to let our creative juices start to flow
purposefully in this direction. We can’t continue to focus
so much of our resources on just knocking on the door of
unsuspecting, uninformed, inexperienced employers and
encouraging/admonishing them into hiring “someone with a
disability”. We need to consciously begin to infiltrate our
workplaces with the Power of Presence. Here are a few
examples from my own experience…
Years ago, I was inspired by a program of the Employer’s
Forum in Great Britain. Many of the top companies in GB
outsource their management training needs to one specific
company. They send all of their key staff to management
training courses at that company. The Employer’s Forum
(representing many of the biggest customers for that
training) approached the training company and asked that
they set aside a certain number of seats for people with
disabilities who were running non-profit companies. That
program was established and from then on, all of the
corporate folks who took management training had classmates
with disabilities.
Based on that model, I designed up a program in Canada
called the Training Partners Program. In several cities, we
invited a dozen or so companies to allow (pre-screened) job
seekers and professionals with disabilities to attend the
internal training programs that these companies already ran
for their employees – ranging from basic computer
applications through to advanced software development. The
people with disabilities acquired marketable skills and made
valuable professional connections. The companies benefited
by using it to dismantle the attitudinal barriers in its
workforce and to educate their trainers on how to make their
training methods disability-friendly. Subsequently, I worked
for Project HIRED in Santa Clara, California who had
developed a similar program. As well as bringing the Power
of Presence to the training classes of their partner
companies, their Corporate Training Partners program has
allowed their job seekers to take advantage of training
opportunities valued up to $250,000 annually.
In years past, I ran a sheltered workshop for people with
developmental disabilities. We wanted to get people jobs in
the community, but we were up against that typical
resistance. We wanted to begin to expose our business
community to our workers in a new, non-threatening way. I
want to mention two of the opportunities that we took
advantage of. First, we entered a team in the city’s
baseball business league. We were just another company -
just another team; but half of our team was made up half of
our workers with developmental disabilities and half of
non-disabled employees. Similarly, every year there was a
“Corporate Challenge” in our city – a fund-raising obstacle
race in which teams from dozens of companies competed for
prizes – we entered our (roughly half and half) team every
year. Both of these activities gave us a “place at the
table” where businesses/employers met. Both of them created
opportunities for companies to meet and get to know people
with disabilities on familiar ground and in a positive
context.
I think that one of the most powerful and widespread
initiatives that promotes the Power of Presence is
Disability Mentoring Day in the United States. Disability
Mentoring Day (held every October) enables students and
job-seekers to spend part of a day visiting a business or
government agency that matches their interests and have
one-on-one time with volunteer mentors. From humble
beginnings roughly eight years ago, it now annually involves
over 12,000 participants in all 50 states. A similar program
called “Face-to-Face” thrived in Canada for a decade or more
– until its funding was shamefully gutted by the federal
government. (Remnants of that program, now operating solely
as local initiatives, still thrive in pockets throughout the
country.) Testimonial upon testimonial from both these
initiatives underscore the way that attitudes are changed,
misconceptions are corrected, relationships are built, and
internships and job opportunities open up – all because of a
once-a-year opportunity for people with disabilities to be
welcomed into workplaces in their communities.
I once worked closely with people from a large IBM
facility. I knew that IBM took (well-deserved) pride in
their proactive employment practices with respect to people
with disabilities. I did, however, gently challenge them on
the lack of people with developmental disabilities in their
employ. They told me that they just didn’t have any jobs
that people with developmental disabilities could do. The
Employee Relations Manager, however, couldn’t sleep well on
that note. Within a few months, he arranged to contract out
their central printing function to a community-based
organization that began to run that operation with a
workforce that included folks with developmental
disabilities. (Thank you Rich!) Throughout the course of the
workday, the folks working in the print shop interacted
regularly with all of the departments in the building.
Relationships were formed, talents were recognized, and soon
people from the print shop were being hired into regular IBM
positions throughout the building - the Power of Presence in
action.
I hope that these examples have inspired some of our
readers to come up with their own design for Power of
Presence initiatives. I am not aware of anywhere where this
type of initiative has ever been brainstormed, let alone
strategically addressed. I am hoping that some of you have
your own examples of how you have brought this Power of
Presence to employers and workplaces. I invite you to share
your strategies, experiences and insights with our other
readers in our next issue. Please send in your comments and
we will publish as many as we can.
~ Rob McInnes
© Rob McInnes, Diversity World, November, 2006
(If not used for commercial purposes, this article may be
reproduced, all or in part, providing it is credited to "Rob
McInnes, Diversity World - www.diversityworld.com". If
included in a newsletter or other publication, we would
appreciate receiving a copy.)
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