In the Eye of The Perfect Storm: Organizations Creating Accessibility – BOOST, IBM, and GM

1. In the Eye of The Perfect Storm: Organizations Creating Accessibility – BOOST, IBM, and GM Power Point to accompany Opportunities and Challenges of Workplace Diversity by Kathryn A. Cañas and Harris Sondak Prepared by Melissa Greensides, Kathryn A. Cañas, and Harris Sondak

2. Case Overview • Critical Disadvantage • The Perfect Storm • Inadequate Social Structure • Cultural Assumptions • Disincentives • Creating Accessibility • BOOST • IBM • GM

3. Critical Disadvantage • Americans with disabilities are estimated to be over 20% of the population or 49 million people. • There is an 80% chance that an average person will have some form of disability during his or her lifetime.

4. Critical Disadvantage • Americans with disabilities face a “critical disadvantage” when compared to Americans without disabilities (2004 National Organization on Disability/Harris Survey). • 35% of people with disabilities report being employed full or part time compared to 78% of those who do not have disabilities. • People with disabilities are 3 times as likely to live in poverty with annual household incomes below $15,000.

5. Critical Disadvantage • Critical disadvantage is characterized by challenges on a number of fundamental dimensions: • employment • transportation • health insurance • concerns about future • general life satisfaction • emergency planning

6. The Perfect Storm • The Perfect Storm is created by 3 systems of discrimination: • Inadequate social structure for people with disabilities. • Pervasive cultural assumptions about hiring people with disabilities. • Two-sided disincentives for both employee and employer to create an employment relationship.

7. The Perfect Storm: Inadequate Social Structure • Activism on behalf of people with disabilities is comparatively new, thus resulting in a weak institutional social structure. • People with disabilities are just beginning to experience some equality with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments (IDEA) passed in 1997. • Because there is extensive diversity represented among members of the disabled community, it is difficult to create one unified voice.

8. The Perfect Storm: Cultural Assumptions • Some commonly held cultural assumptions about hiring people with disabilities: • People with disabilities are unreliable because they often call in sick, come to work late, etc. • It is expensive to employ people with disabilities because of accommodation costs. • People with disabilities are likely to sue the company for failure to accommodate them or for wrongful employment.

9. Assumption 1 • Assumption 1: People with disabilities are unreliable. • Surveys indicate that people with disabilities, like people without disabilities, want to live productive lives. • Surveys indicate that employers find employees with disabilities just as reliable as employees without disabilities. • Executive Director of the Disability Law Center of Salt Lake City, Fraser Nelson, said: “Being disabled is not an illness, it is a condition; understanding this distinction is important to discrediting the assumption that being disabled translates to taking more sick days.”

10. Assumption 2 • Assumption 2: Accommodating people with disabilities in the workplace is costly. • Costs of accommodating employees with disabilities are small: 34% of businesses spent on average $100 or less and 71% spent $500 or less (National Organization on Disability). • Substantial costs that businesses spend can often be absorbed through offered tax incentives.

11. Assumption 3 • Assumption 3: People with disabilities are likely to sue their employer. • Employers are often fearful of being sued for failure to accommodate and/or wrongful termination and therefore may avoid hiring people with disabilities. • This fear, in addition to the disabilities-rights cases that are currently in litigation, could be the result of the complexity of the ADA. • This complexity may create uncertainty among employers about how to comply with the law. • While the ADA was created to help the employment of people with disabilities, it also protects the employer.

12. The Perfect Storm: Disincentives • Disincentives • The American health care and insurance systems, specifically as they relate to people with disabilities, are complicated. • With the rising health care costs, it is difficult for employers to offer insurance for people with disabilities and not have it affect all employees’ benefits. • The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are two options of public insurance for people with disabilities and the receipt of these benefits might be jeopardized by employment.

13. Creating Accessibility • Creating Accessibility • There are two approaches to creating accessibility in the workplace: • First, for organizations to work with outside programs to help bring qualified employees with disabilities into the workforce. • Second, for organizational leaders to create models of recruitment and retention of employees with disabilities within their own companies.

14. Creating Accessibility: BOOST • BOOST, Inc. • Debbie Inkley, the founder and president of BOOST, helps to bridge the gap between the employer and people with disabilities. • The BOOST program is “a business, community, and volunteer-based program that provides opportunity for employment through customer service and other skills training to people with physical, emotional, financial, and domestic challenges.”

15. Creating Accessibility: IBM • International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) • In 1914, IBM hired their first employee with a disability, 76 years before the ADA was enacted. • Today at IBM about 2-3% of the corporation’s 355,000 staff represents people with disabilities. • IBM’s model of accessibility “means going beyond product compliance with regulations to include a better user experience and the vision to ultimately improve a person’s total quality of life.”

16. Creating Accessibility: IBM • IBM • IBM’s internship program, called Entry Point, gives students with disabilities a chance to get on-the-job experience. • Recruiting programs like Project View and Project Able help to reach candidates with disabilities. • IBM takes accommodating their employees seriously; they offer travel assistance, power doors, ramps, parking facilities, recorded company publications on cassettes, etc.

17. Creating Accessibility: GM • General Motors (GM) • GM understands the importance of hiring people with disabilities. The GM philosophy: • “GM has long been committed throughout its global operations to hiring people with varied backgrounds.” • GM’s strength has been its open communication between the employer and employee; management responds quickly to requests and concerns.

18. Creating Accessibility: GM • GM • The GM Affinity Group for People with Disabilities consists of GM employees and retirees with disabilities that meet once a month to discuss accessibility issues in the workplace. • GM affinity groups are links between employees and employer/management. The group is formed around “employee initiatives” and is “employee-driven.”

19. Discussion Questions • Why are people with disabilities at a disadvantage when compared to people without disabilities? Why do you think this is still the case when the ADA was passed in 1990? • 2. What are the various provisions of the two most significant pieces of legislation for people with disabilities: The ADA and the IDEA?

20. Discussion Questions 3. What can society in general and people with disabilities in particular do to change the cultural assumptions that cast people with disabilities as unreliable, expensive, and likely to sue their employer? 4. Why haven’t other companies followed the lead of those organizations, like IBM, that have effectively embraced disabilities as a significant component of diversity—viewing the recruitment and the retention of people with disabilities as a competitive advantage?