THOUGHTLEADERS
MORE THAN A DISABILITY
EXPANDING DISABILITY EMPLOYMENT By Carolynn Brooks, Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer, OfficeMax
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t OfficeMax we celebrate our commitment and focus on continuously striving to create a workforce that is diverse and inclusive. In 2009, we created an initiative to begin hiring associates with different abilities, the Veteran’s and People with Disabilities Initiative. We wanted to provide candidates with different abilities a pre-training program in a safe environment where they can learn, at their own pace, the necessary skills to work in a distribution/logistics or retail environment to help determine the best career path for them and to open employment opportunities beyond OfficeMax. Turning Point Autism Foundation, located in Naperville, Illinois, afforded us the first opportunity to develop the training curriculum and a pre-training program at their facility. There we learned firsthand how employment opportunities for people with disabilities aren’t just about us. This initiative gives hope to the candidates and their families, and demonstrates to a community how much can be accomplished if everyone is given a fair opportunity to succeed. I have found hiring people with disabilities has allowed us to tap into a talented pool of workers who bring unique experiences and understanding that provides OfficeMax with a distinct competitive advantage. As we sought to expand our employment initiative we
looked for other partners in our community who could support us and teach us what we needed to know. Organizations like Aspire, in the Chicagoland area, worked with us to improve our interviewing and hiring processes to help remove barriers for individuals with disabilities, and will house one of our pre-training centers, through the support from a Kessler Foundation grant that has provided funding to assist in the building of four of our pre-training centers. We have worked with Vocational Rehabilitation Services (VR), a national partner that provides a wide spectrum of support and resources at many of our locations across the U.S. With their support, OfficeMax has built an on-site pretraining environment at our McCalla, Alabama distribution center, and they have helped us hire more than thirty new associates in that location. By 2014, we plan to have additional pre-training environments in Columbus, Dallas, and Las Vegas. We have received national recognition for the impact this initiative is having with people with disabilities, and as OfficeMax continues to move forward with our initiative we are extending our outreach to veterans and seeking other partners to help this program become a true gateway to employment. PDJ
Helping Those with Disabilities Find Work By Candi Castleberry-Singleton, Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer, UPMC
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S THE LARGEST non-government em-
ployer in Pennsylvania, UPMC strives to develop the region’s workforce through various programs, including ones that focus specifically on eliminating barriers to working. Some of these efforts include mentoring students with disabilities before graduation and assisting them with the transition from high school through the Young Leaders Academy. Our staff visits local schools and work with students on job search activities, such as creating résumés and interviewing. In addition, UPMC’s offers Project SEARCH, an international one-year high school transition program for students with disabilities, which prepares
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PROFILES IN DIVERSITY JOURNAL
participants for competitive employment through education and work experience. By the end of both of these programs, participants are able to gain and maintain meaningful employment, lead productive lives, and become integrated into an adult work environment. Another route to recruiting successful employees has been through our military veterans. UPMC recently joined two national military employment coalitions that assist veterans find and retain meaningful employment, including Wounded Warriors. UPMC recognizes the unique skillsets of our veterans and the unique ways they can be leveraged in our organization. Once inside the organization, our
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WorkPartners program continues to support the needs of our workforce. They offer accommodations from assistive devices to ergonomic assessments, as well as job retraining and modification for employees disabled after employment. The UPMC Disability Resource Center reviews accessibility throughout our system and identifies ways to improve, provides interpersonal relations training and education for our professional and support staff, engages community partners, and ensures our policies regarding persons with disabilities reflect the unique challenges that face this patient population. PDJ