Employers diversify by seeking disabled workers

Angela Mackey said she struggled to land a job, even with a master’s degree earned with top grades, as employers focused on her cerebral palsy instead of her qualifications.

So Mackey, 37, who once sent out 250 resumes without success, regards her current job as a personal triumph. She holds a managerial position at Walgreen Co.’s Anderson, S.C., distribution center, hiring and performing human resource work for the 500-employee workplace.

“Growing up having a disability, I was not an athlete. I never was a beauty queen; the playing field was not equal,” said Mackey, who landed her job in 2006. “Working at Walgreen’s lets me show what I can accomplish. I am not just a woman with cerebral palsy.”

Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreen is among employers, including Hershey Co. and AMC Entertainment Inc., actively recruiting workers with disabilities as a way to gain a loyal workforce, tap overlooked talent and add diversity.

Such efforts could be crucial as more people with physical and mental challenges who attended school after the 1990 passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act reach adulthood. Students who took advantage of expanded educational opportunities know they have skills and expect to work, said Randy Lewis, who retired in February from his job as Walgreen’s senior vice president of supply chain and logistics.

“The expectation is rising, which is great,” said Lewis, who has an adult son with autism and led the push for hiringdisabled people at Anderson. Opportunities aren’t keeping pace, though: Disabled people have been leaving the labor force in greater numbers after the 18-month recession that ended in June 2009 as competition increased for jobs.

“Is it going to get better fast enough?” Lewis said. “No, probably not.”

In May, 17.9 percent of people with disabilities had jobs compared with 64.3 percent for those with no impairments, based on unadjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ratio is down from its high of 21 percent in September 2008, during the first year data were kept, and has fallen 0.2 percentage point from a year ago, even as employment improved for the nondisabled population.

“There are a lot of companies getting on the bandwagon, but I also think we have a long way to go,” said National Governors Association Chairman Jack Markell, the Delaware governor who is leading a year-long initiative to spur hiring of disabled Americans. “There are a lot of people with disabilities who would love to work, but who are not given the opportunity.”

A colleague introduced Mackey to Lewis, who wanted to establish a distribution center that would have 30 percent of its workforce made up of disabled people. They would be supported by technology, including individualized computer monitors at each repacking station to track progress and give directions. They would be held to the same standards as other workers and receive comparable pay.

“He said he felt that people with disabilities were just as capable as those without,” Mackey said. “In my experience as a person with disabilities, I had never heard anyone say that.”

Mackey signed on beforethe plant opened and helped to shape its workforce, 42 percent of which is disabled. She performs the same role at a nearby Pendergrass, Ga., center, which opened later. Disabled workers comprise 25 percent of its workforce.

Efforts like Walgreen’s are catching on, said Jill Houghton, executive director of the U.S. Business Leadership Network, an Alexandria, Va.-based advocate for including disabled people in the workplace. The group talks to about four new companies weekly, Houghton said.

The business leadership network and U.S. Chamber of Commerce will present a disability employment summit July 25 in Washington, according to a release.

AMC also ranks among companies actively seeking people with disabilities for a variety of jobs. The movie theater chain began recruiting workers with disabilities in late 2009, starting with a pilot program in collaboration with the Bethesda, Md .-basedAutism Society. The program has expanded and gained additional partners since.

“You end up being a healthier company from a lot of different perspectives: innovation, engagement, morale, productivity,” said Keith Wiedenkeller, a senior vice president and “chief people officer” for the company.

Of U.S. workers reporting a disability, 32.2 percent are in management, professional and related occupations, compared with 38.1 percent for the population without a disability, according to Current Population Survey data from 2012.

Advocacy groups and political leaders are promoting inclusion as a business choice. The National Governors Association plans to release a report in August that will tell governors and states how to find more employment opportunities for people with disabilities, Markell said.

Employment statistics for those with disabilities have not improved, even with such efforts. Job competition hasgrown as 11.8 million Americans in the labor force remained jobless as of May, according to Labor Department data. Companies that once hired mentally and physically impaired workers as part of normal recruitment may now pass them up.

“When the labor market is very slack, as it has been for the past five years, employers start to say, ‘Why should I settle for someone with just a college degree when I can have a PhD?” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who studies disability benefits. “Why should I hire someone with a disability?”

Workforce participation dropped and unemployment climbed for disabled people during and after the economic downturn, so that today only about one-fifth of the disabled population is active in the labor market. Of those, 13.6 percent couldn’t find jobs in May, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Many companies shy away from disabled workers out of concern that they will require expensive accommodation, Lewis said. Others view impaired employees as charity cases and hold them to lower production standards, he said, so they’re first to be cut.

“That did not happen to us,” he said.

Walgreen analyzed performance differences between distribution centers with disabled and nondisabled workforces. Employee turnover over three years was 48 percent less for those reporting a disability and productivity was roughly equal, according to a report.

Business, Pages 69 on 07/14/2013

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