Event Date: March 11, 2010
Presenters: Lori Golden and Beth Newsom
Facilitator: Shelley Kaplan, Kathy West-Evans, and Steffany Stevens
Shelley Kaplan: Good afternoon to everyone and good morning to some of you. My name is Shelly Kaplan and welcome to today's webinar with Beth Butler of the U.S. Business Leadership Network, Kathy West-Evans, Director of Business Relations at the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation (CSAVR) and their national employment team and myself representing the ADA national network also known as the DBTACs. Today’s webinar, corporate and organizational infrastructures diversity initiatives that promotes the inclusion of individuals with disabilities is the third in our series of five and was developed and is being delivered in partnership between the Council of State Administrators of Council Rehabilitation, the National Employment Team, the ADA network, again, also known as the DBTAC and also the U.S. Business Leadership Network. One more part of the commercial and I'll turn it over to Beth just so that you know we have 316 sites registered for today's Webinar which represents approximately 490 attendees and we're pleased to see that 199 of these sites are first timers. So, welcome and Beth, I will turn the program over to you.
Beth Butler: Thank you Shelly. That's fantastic news. Evidence is the importance of this topic and this information, so thank you all for being here and welcome to the newcomers. My name is Beth Butler. And I welcome you as Shelly said, and the purpose of today’s webinar is to learn from employers who have developed and implemented a wide range of diversity initiatives at their companies to promote the inclusion of individuals with disabilities into their work force, into their marketplace and into their supply chain. We have an incredible team of speakers today and I'd like to ask you to save all your questions if you would until the end of today’s presentation. After we have heard from our panel, then we'll have at least 30 minutes at the end of today's panel discussion for question and answer session. When we get to that point, all you'll do is simply type in your questions into the chat area on the right side of your screen and Cathy West-Evans, from the Council Estate Administrators of Vocational Rehab and the National Employment Team will moderate that part of the session.
So with that I would like to move into our program today and introduce our first speaker who is Lori Golden and Lori is an inclusiveness consultant and accessibilities leader at Ernst Young, a well known company in the area of financial services. And I also have to brag on both of the speakers today because yesterday, if those on the call are familiar, Diversity Inc. 2010 Top 50 Companies for Diversity, their top 50 list was released yesterday and you have the privilege of hearing both number five on that list and number four today. So kudos to you guys. Well done. That's due in great part to the work that you are going to learn today going on these companies related to disability and inclusion. With that, Lori Golden leads the accessibilities at Ernst & Young’s efforts around building and enabling an inclusive environment for people with disabilities. Accessibilities is a firm sponsor of the inclusiveness initiative -- a network made up of several hundred people from across the firm's geographic areas and the ranks and functional groups that they represent. There's also a leader's network of abilities champions who advocate for disability inclusiveness in their respective sub areas and functional groups and networks that also support the parents with children with disabilities and to support Ernst & Young’s people who act as caregivers for adults with disabilities. So, it’s a really broad reaching program and I look forward to hearing more from Lori. Lori also facilitates accessibilities networks and she drives a variety of initiatives including enhancing accessibility in Ernst & Young’s offices, making internal communication meetings, trainings and technology more accessible and user friendly, building a global accessibility strategy for web and online application to educate Ernst & Young’s people on disability etiquette and the language and work habits in raising awareness in disability work issues. Has been with Ernst & Young for 12 years and she is a graduate of Harvard University. And with that I wanted to turn it over to Lori Golden.
Thanks Beth. Nice to be with you all today. The title of my presentation is Diversity's New Frontier: Disabilities in the Workplace. Next slide please.
The reason why we titled it is more and more companies are realizing that disabilities are really a vital part of the diversity picture and that's really what I'm going to talk about. I have two goals for today. The first is to really help you understand some of the issues and the opportunities for employers around hiring and supporting employees with disabilities in the workplaces and then to show you how we approach it at Ernst & Young and share some of the tools and resources we use. Next slide please.
No new to those of you on the phone, the first few slides that we’re going to go through are really information that you are quite familiar with. But, when I talk to broad diversity audiences, they aren't so familiar with that people with disabilities are the largest fastest growing minority group. One in five people have a disability in the country. 20 million families have one or more members with a disability. If you don't have a disability now, you have a one in five chance if you are already working, of acquiring a disability before you retire and of course, the population is very quickly growing. Next slide please.
What isn't talked about as much is the fact that a number of demographic trends are coming together and increasing the number of people in the percentage of people already in our work forces who are affected by disabilities. The first is, we have all kinds of improved treatments for chronic health conditions and serious illnesses so that people with conditions like diabetes or illnesses like cancer are actually able to continue working. Of course, our work force is aging and that increases that the number of age-related disabilities and with our current economic condition, a lot of the people that might have retired earlier, are not able to do so. So we're going to see increases there. At the same time, there's been enormous growth in technology that enables tele-working and other kinds of flexible arrangements so that people who do have health conditions or illnesses and do need to use flexibility in order to go to doctors or in order to avoid long commutes, are actually able to work out situations that allow them to continue working. And the last point is one that we're taking a lot of notice of at Ernst & Young and people are beginning to talk about, is we're seeing among the first generations of young people that have been diagnosed with learning disabilities in their elementary school years and have grown up through our education system with accommodations. And some of them are quite successful people who companies, like Ernst & Young hire, but we don't necessarily know what accommodations might work in a work setting. There's not a lot of history on that because this is really so new in large numbers. So we're beginning to see young people getting into the work force who really don't know what kind of accommodations to ask for nor do employers necessarily have the experience to know what kind of accommodations to arrange for them. So that's another issue. Next slide please.
Again, information, I think you are all quite familiar with. People with disabilities are very underleveraged in the work force. Rates of unemployment are almost -- sorry, the rate of employment is only 20% versus almost 70% for the general population. All of this despite the fact that higher retention reduces labor costs. People with disabilities and friends and families are a huge marketplace and are a very quickly growing consumer market for a lot of goods and services. It's well known that many of the skills that people with disabilities have had to adopt ability to use technology creatively, ability to work across differences, creative problem solving, are skills that are not only important for today's companies, but are increasingly important in a global economy. Next slide please.
Again, what you already know. Attitudes and misconceptions abound and that's the problem, although, the facts actually belie a lot of those misconceptions. Sometimes there's a feeling that accommodations are going to be difficult and costly even though the data shows otherwise. There's concern about employees being uncomfortable working with people with disabilities, although study after study show that enabling people with disabilities in your workplace is actually good for morale over all. People appreciate it. And of course, one of the biggest issues is that managers are inexperienced in dealing with disabilities, so may not fully understand what people with disabilities can do; may not fully understand the talent side of the equation. Next slide please.
This is the Ernst and Young Portion. Here is what we have learned. To really fully leverage the talent of people with disabilities, what we find that businesses need to do four things. First, commit to recruiting the best talents and not worry about the body suit in which that talent is packaged. So make a commitment to recruit the best. Secondly, enable each employee to do his or her best by making sure that we not only provide accommodations, but look to maximize accessibility. I'll talk a little bit about what we do there in a minute. The third thing is really be strategic about planning for career development in advancement. It's not a question of just bringing people with disabilities into your workplace and providing accommodations and even optimizing accessibility. It's really a question of looking at the career plan for each individual and making sure that you mitigate any potential obstacles that may occur from the disability or from the accommodations themselves because sometimes there are some unintended consequences there. And then the final thing and we put a lot of stress here, not to just educate discreet groups of employees who seem to be directly affected like the supervisors of people with disabilities or recruiters, but really broadly educating everyone in the organization to build a culture of what they call in the United Kingdom, disability confident where people are really confident that they know how to behave in inclusive ways. Next slide please.
At Ernst & Young, the way we do these four things is by focusing on what we think of two different areas. The first I think of is the practical or enabling piece of it and that means doing everything we can to ensure that our people with disabilities have equal access to tools, information, communications, and career building opportunities. So the right kinds of experiences and exposures to get the skills they need to grow in advance in our organization. The second piece of this, number two, is what I think of as the culture side and that's education. That's building a disability-sensitivity work environment through building awareness and educating people so that people have the baseline understanding that they need of things like etiquette and language and ways to work, ways to participate in a conference call, for instance, that are more inclusive of people with disabilities. It's not only a question of educating people for the benefit of those with disabilities, but what I stress all the time, is that it's also a question of giving of the people without disabilities enough information and knowledge so that they feel confident and competent dealing with whoever they might interact with. It's only until that happens that people with disabilities will really feel fully included. Next slide please.
AccessAbilities, which is the name of our initiative actually encompasses two things: a set of initiatives and also a number of networks and Beth described some of them to you. The first network is around 300 people and it's made up of people around North America, some from other global areas of Ernst & Young. But it is primarily a North American focused effort. And it’s a little bit different from other affinity groups in that it's not mainly a support group. It's a group of people with and without disabilities that come together for monthly conference calls to figure out how the firm can improve the way in which we support our people with disabilities. So enabling them to do our best work and the way in which we educate our general population. So it's a group focused on making change.
There are also actually a few different networks of champions. There's a network of what we call abilities champions who are on the ground leaders aligned with functional group or aligned with geographies who liaise with their local leadership teams to ensure that disabilities inclusiveness is part of everything we do. So they make sure that our tools and our resources and our messaging is included in training or meetings or events and the champions on the business group side say our champion for the real estate practice, makes sure that, for instance, accessibility concerns are built into our templates. The standards we use for new design in construction. So what they do is figure out how the processes or the policies or the programs that their group handles might differentially impact people with disabilities and they drive improvements in those areas. We also have a network that's really not listed on the slide because it's relatively new, of partner champions. So these are our leader champions that represent disabilities inclusiveness issues at inclusiveness steering committees. So local councils in each of their geographies and they are leadership and they liaise with their peers at a leadership level to advocate for our issues. There are also two other networks. There is the caregiver circle, which is for people who act as caregivers for adults with disabilities. Many times its people who have spouses with disabilities, often those are veterans. And people who are caring for adult children with disabilities and increasingly we are finding that those are veterans as well. And there is a final network for parents who have children with disabilities and those function more as classic support groups than the accessibilities or the abilities champion networks. Next slide please.
In terms of how we're structured, our disabilities focus is built in to our diversity and inclusiveness efforts. So, we report through our Americas chief inclusiveness officer who reports to a global inclusiveness officer. We have representation on the inclusiveness executive board, which is the group that informs our executive board, like our Board of Directors, if we were a corporation, it is comparable to a Board of Directors, and advises on inclusiveness issues. So the point here is that the focus on disabilities is built into our core diversity and inclusiveness and leadership structures within our organization. Next slide please.
Our initiatives focus on four things. The first actually is ensuring that we actually keep all our people including those with differing disabilities safe. So, about two years ago we formed an emergency evacuation type task force to a look at our emergency evacuation plans for people with disabilities and make sure that those were optimal. We educate people about a database that we keep where people can self-register if they need any special help in case of an emergency evacuation. And it’s a proprietary database seen only by floor wardens and location management personnel for emergency management purposes. But it's not open just to people with disabilities. It's open to anyone so people who are recovering from illnesses, people who have injured themselves. It's as much for people with temporary conditions, people with panic disorders who might require help, as well as people with differing abilities and we work on a variety of issues in that area. I won't go into specifics but I'd be happy to answer questions if people want to know more about that. One thing, that we do however, that is very important, we audit each emergency evacuation plan. We look at each and look specifically at how we're taking people with disabilities into consideration and review each plan at regular intervals to make sure it is what we want it to be.
Next slide please. I'm on slide 12. This is a huge area, is working to promote productivity to make sure that our people with disabilities can work as efficiently and effectively as they need to, so accommodations consultations come in there. Our field HR people are the people who actually develop and implement accommodations and we at AccessAbilities act as in-house consultants when they have questions and concerns, so we get involved in the more complex accommodations issues. We also get involved in creating work-arounds when there are accessibility issues that can't be easily comprehensively addressed. So for example, we have -- we keep a list of individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing who instead of getting -- listening to their voice mails, they get a notification in their email box that there's a transcript of a voice mail waiting for them. So there's a work around for the fact that these individuals can't listen to voice mails and conventional ways. We also work with our different infrastructure groups to maximize accessibility both in our offices. So accessibility in a physical sense and accessibility online, because virtually all of our information is somehow conveyed online so we work on efforts to do things like captioning our webcasts or providing transcripts or providing materials in a number of forms so people can get access to it. One of the things that we do that is a little bit different is we actually audit our offices for accessibility. We put together a team of people, usually about 6 people representing different perspectives. People from the real estate, people from location management, people from our building because we lease most of our buildings. We spend a couple hours -- we developed a proprietary tool that we use, in order to actually figure out if we have the kind of accessibility we want in our space and then we log areas for improvement and we work with our buildings to make improvement in that building and then anything we think can be generalized, we figure out how we might want to add that into our across the board standards for all the buildings that we lease or any of the redesign of our spaces. Next slide please.
The third focus is on career development and that really means meeting with individuals with disabilities, with their counselor advisors, with their supervisors and being very strategic, not just around their accommodations but around how we give career development opportunities and exposures so people can really grow. It also means providing whatever kind of support individuals might need, be that arranging for coaches or mentors, both internal mentors and sometimes external mentoring. And it means sometimes facilitating broad networking. We had a request about a year ago this time from an individual in our network who is very high performing and wants to make it to the next level, which in his case is partner and that’s a big transition for us and really felt the need for sharing kind of tips and best practices information with other high performers in other organizations because he was having some challenges and didn't quite know how to address them. So we got him a coach who also uses a wheelchair who really could identify with the problems he was having and we also hooked him up with some high performing individuals in other organizations so he could network that and that's something that we do increasingly for our people. Next slide please.
The final area of focus is to educate all our people. We do educate special audiences, recruiters, people consultants are the term we use for our field HR people, managers, people who do training. But we also work on educating across the firm as much as possible. And we do that by creating a lot of different tools and different resources and then finding ways that we can deploy them in as many venues and contexts as possible and over the long haul rather than the short term. So, we do do discreet training but more than that, we try to take content and to integrate it into other programs and other context so that people get messages over time in a variety of ways. Next slide please.
We create brochures that we distribute. We use a couple of different kinds of video approaches. Every year we produce our own posters that are designed to challenge people to think a little bit differently about disabilities issues and we get those posted in all our offices every October. We create quick guides which are sort of like quick study sheets on topics that are of broad general interest. We’ve created a couple quizzes that we run in newsletters and we use in meetings and we build into presentations. We talk to different target areas, like recruiters very directly by educating them in their meetings and on their regular conference calls. And then we build our own content into the general inclusiveness training that all our people receive. Next slide please.
These are just some examples of some of the pieces we've created. You see at the top left, our brochure. So we have a basic brochure. But more than that, we have a series of flip sheets that are presented front and back that is quick hit information on a broad topic. Like, for example, how to participate in a conference call in a way that's more inclusive of people who may be using an interpreter on the call or who may be hard of hearing, or things to say or not to say if you learn that a colleague has a serious diagnosis. Next slide.
The quick guides, those quick hits, cover everything from language to, as I mentioned, things not to say and to say. That's helpful. Next slide please.
We also use video. We have a video that features people in our network and leaders talking about what the experience of working at our firm with disabilities is like and some of the issues. And also, people who work with people with disabilities, telling stories that give you some window into the experience and into how to be more inclusive. We also created another kind of quick hit series and we call these minutes because each of these little vignettes are around 30 seconds. And what these are, are very, very quick stories of something that actually happened in our offices to someone in our network that teach you something about how to be more inclusive day-to-day. So their experiences that either were negative or positive that enable our people to really understand what being disabilities-friendly means in the context of our day-to-day work. We use these as people are going in and out of meeting rooms and trainings at events we'll play a few of these. We use these to start conversations in group meetings to start talks around inclusiveness and we build them in training in a variety of ways. Next slide please.
I'm on slide 19 and that’s just showing you a few of our posters. Our first year poster, we’ve done this for three years now, focused on non-visibility disabilities and focused on the fact that we probably have disabilities all around us, we just might not know exactly who or where. Last year our poster focused on accessibility and the fact that accessibility usually benefits almost everyone. This year, our poster which is not pictured here, was around the fact that being smart around disabilities issues. Knowing what to say and what to do really helps everyone and should be part of every professional’s tools kit. Next slide please.
We also focus on making change in society generally and having an impact in the wider marketplace. So we’ve hosted events looking at learning disabilities in the workplace, that’s a continuing interest for us. We participate in research on best practices in developing an inclusive corporate culture. We were featured in research that ODEP did last year, we’re sponsored for career opportunities for students with disabilities, trying to make sure that career placement offices and companies that recruit people with disabilities are in contact with disabilities services on college campuses. We're a founding sponsor for the USBLN Disabled Business Certification. And we're also a founding sponsor for new program that I have here but it hasn't actually been publicly announced yet and that's an entrepreneurship boot camp program for the family members of veterans with disabilities. It's a crash course in entrepreneurship for the caregiver, spouses and other family members for disabled vets. We're also working with the USBLN to found a New York City business leadership network. Next slide please.
So what do we think is important for employers to get out of our experience? First is to really recognize that not only are people with disabilities an underleveraged talent pool, but employers may have many more people with disabilities already in their work force and poised to enter their work force in way of young people with learning disabilities than they realize. So it's probably already affecting them. Two, is that it’s not just a matter of providing accommodations but it's a question of looking broadly at accessibility and trying to maximize accessibility for everyone. Thirdly, it's that career success should be the goal enabling each person to succeed to the level that his or her talents and abilities allow is really the point, not just a question of retaining people with disabilities, which is where many people seem to focus. The next thing we think is really important is that it's not a question of just training to straight audiences. It's really a question to educating broadly to build a culture that's disability sensitive and disabilities confident. And that one of the best ways to do that is to integrate information into other things that you are doing rather than just create it and let it stand as a standalone. So, thank you very much for your time and I look forward to answering your questions.
Beth Butler: Thank you very much Lori. Lots of information. Fantastic.
I do want to introduce to you our next speaker and that is Beth Newsom. Beth is an RFIRFP Project Coordinator and works in the Population of Prevention Services Area at Kaiser Permanente in Colorado, Co-Chair of KPCO Peoples with Disabilities Association, member of the Rocky Mountain ADA Leadership Network. And to discuss her work around people with disabilities association and efforts that they take to promote inclusion, proper disability etiquette, attitudinal barriers and much more. And in being part of the Rocky Mountain ADA Leadership Network, she has added such value to Kaiser and she's going to share that with us in just a few moments. Again, as I said earlier, both presenters today come from companies that are listed on the new 2010 Top 50 List of Diversity Companies and Kaiser Permanente is number four on the list. So congratulations to them and the work that they're doing. Beth has worked for Kaiser Permanente Colorado for almost 12 years. As an RFP Project Coordinator, she is the liaison between large employers groups who request information from Kaiser and departments of Kaiser responsible for quality prevention and/or disease management. She serves as the co-chair for the Organizational Regional People with Disabilities Association, is a certified facilitator for Kaiser's Diversity and Health Video Series and is a member of the Rocky Mountain ADA Leadership Network. Outside of work, Beth spends time with her husband and her 6-year old daughter. She likes to ski and hand-cycle and advocates for people with disabilities. Beth is also pursuing her Master’s in public education through the University of Colorado at Denver. Please join me in welcoming Beth Newsom.
Beth Newson: Thanks so much. Just in case anybody didn't know via the introduction, Kaiser Permanente is a non-profit health care delivery system and its national and I'll go into this a little bit later, but we also have regions that operate independently. So I'm going be talking about our local Colorado Peoples with Disabilities Association as well as, I'll integrate this into my talk, my participation as a member of the Rocky Mountain ADA Leadership Network. I want to point out before I start this, that our Peoples with Disabilities Association is not a support group so much as a resource group for the company and the community as well as we serve members. Before I begin, the main point I'd like you to leave with through my talk is that as employers, when you are being inclusive of people with disabilities, does this mean that the people with disabilities are at the table when decisions are made as to how to include them? We found that a lot of times have conversations and were not included and things can happen that maybe aren't desirable or the best solution. So only when people with disabilities and I'm included in that are at the table do we really feel that our voices are heard. Next slide please.
Okay. So being as I used to be a programmer and I'm kind of a data geek, I had to go to the dictionary and look up the word inclusive and what it said was “covering or intending to cover all items.” So I was thinking about this and again, to me it says we're at the table. And as I was working on this slide show, I just thought, you know, there are no pictures, it's kind of boring, so I included a picture of my daughter on this slide. And what I was really thinking then is she's a part of inclusiveness as well, because as we look at people with disabilities in the work force and including them, consider just not their disability but also that they have families, I'm an athlete so it's not just me with a person with disabilities, but considering us as whole people. And on the left, this was really big a month and it probably is still big, but it was really marketed a month ago. I just put a bullet point, thinkbeyondthelabel.com and I'd encourage you to look at that website. They have launched a series of commercials where they use terms typically associated, which isn't good, with people with disabilities, such as: deficient, incapable, syndrome and it flips it and associates them with people who may not have disabilities. So it may say somebody is deficient with the copier or coffee making impaired. As I was preparing this presentation, I thought I'm kind of feeling a little power point challenged here, I haven't made one of these in a little while. So I'd encourage you to look at that. Next slide please.
So this talks a little bit about how Kaiser Permanente is structured. As I said, we are a national organization but we have eight regions. So we have a program office, which is a national office, but our regions operate somewhat independently as well. So we have a national diversity department, but it also liaisons with local diversity departments which are housed in each region. And then down the line from that, our local diversity departments sponsor our multicultural associations, and of those people with disabilities is, of course one. And what I'd like to point out here is that although the local diversity departments sponsor their people with disabilities associations, the people who lead those associations generally do not work for the diversity department. In fact, our association, none of us work for our diversity department or for our human resource department. But we are employees out there and we generally represent the population, so we are all people with disabilities. We don't have to be but we generally represent the population but are not within the diversity department. Next slide please.
This digs in a little more deeply into people with disabilities association at Kaiser. They vary by region; I'd say within Kaiser Colorado, I think that we have the most active of the regions in terms of disability associations at this time. We love to use acronyms so you can see acronyms all over the place here. KPPWD is Kaiser Permanente People with Disabilities. And our association has three co-chairs. This is really necessary because none of us work within the Diversity Department but we're out there and we have other jobs so this is an extra for us. We have a distribution list, which is about 50 people. I'd say we have 50 members; well we also interface with other associations. So you know that number is probably larger than that in terms of the activities we do and ten active members who really help drive some of the things we do. So we do many things such as provide internal education, we plan and run different events internally and in conjunction with the community and we play active advocacy roles. Basically it’s for us being at the table when ever possible, when ever we find an opportunity to be at the table. Whatever we might hear that we're not at the table, we try to find a way to be at the table. So next slide please.
Okay. So this slide was just an effort to make the presentation a little less, well boring, it's a picture at least. It's a picture of the three co-chairs and we all have disabilities. But it was to liven up the presentation a bit. So next slide.
So again, I just keep trying to dive a little more deeply, but our association in Colorado has an actual mission statement that is very broad and that is “that we exist to give voice to the strengths, needs and concerns of people with disabilities.” And because the majority of our members have disabilities and I do need to say that this isn't a requirement. We have people who are parents of children with disabilities or parents with adult children with disabilities. We have people who are just had a passion for inclusion of people with disabilities. So a wide range of people. But most of our members do have disabilities. And because of that it drives a sense of comradery within our association. And I list humor and compassion here and I just had an example in terms of humor. We have in our building three different doors. One has one of the blue buttons that you would push to get into the building. Then we have one of those round-about doors that keeps going. There are two wheelchair users in our building and we joke about how we like to really throw people by going through the revolving door rather than going to push the button. Someone might go and push the button for us as we head for the revolving door. So we can just share things like that and as well, we can have a sense of compassion. So here in Colorado, it snows of course frequently, it doesn't tend to stick, but it is really saying how was your journey to work today? Did you get out of your car okay? And having people really understand that it can be more difficult. For me I know it's more difficult because I walk a little bit so I actually get out of my car to get my wheelchair. So having that sense of compassion. And the next bullet talks about internal networking. We do a lot of internal networking within our association and external to our association and then between regions. So it's really all over the place. So we can extend the network and we answer a lot of questions. Here is my involvement where part of the ADA leadership has come in. I can answer questions, people have gotten to know my name associated with the ADA Leadership Network and so I can answer questions that come in about the ADA or refer them to the ADA Center, whereas I think before, people didn’t know where to go with different questions. And then I might interact with somebody in California who has also found out that I'm a member of the ADA Leadership Network and he’ll send me questions as well. So there's a lot of networking going on with people asking of questions in terms of people who have disabilities and people who do not. Next slide please.
This tells a little bit about some of the things that we do. And as I said, generally people with disabilities are leading our association. I know in other regions, this is true as well. We have monthly meetings for our association. And we also meet quarterly with other multicultural associations and why this is important is because say with our veteran's association, we do a lot of work with them, we have a lot vets who have disabilities and so really working in partnership with them is important. So seeing what they do on a quarterly basis helps us to decide some of the things that might benefit both associations. And we also work with our national diversity department in terms of what we can do on a national level. The third bullet talks about our diversity scholarship program. We have diversity scholarships for different multicultural groups and of course, people with disabilities is one of these groups. And here again, we're at the table, so it's not somebody else deciding to give scholarships to the various groups that we have people sitting on that selection group and reading the applications and helping make decisions. Finally, I talk about our diversity leadership program and I think Lori talked about this as well, but a misconception that often is out there and it's out there in the world, I hear about it a lot, is that just getting into the door is enough for us. I know I was somewhere and somebody said you work? And I said, yes, I work and their response was, well I guess you need something to do during the day. I guess within Kaiser, if you got to new a few of us who are pretty feisty in regard to our disability association, it's quickly realized that we're not at Kaiser to fill a space, but we are, one person is pursuing a doctorate, I’m pursuing my Master’s in Public Administration; and we have a lot of people with a lot of talent. And really what we're trying to work on is getting people from that in the door stage to that next level because that's where it seems like the biggest gap is right now for people with disabilities. At least within Kaiser. Next slide please.
Okay. This is a brief history. I’m going to try and quickly go through this. Our association started in 2001 and the focus was really on just getting out in the community and being visible in the community. So a lot of stuff was done in the community. In 2005, a video entitled the spirited able, which is currently, really the main educational tool we use at Kaiser and it's on culturally competent care for people with disabilities and it was launched then. I think it features six employees/members who have disabilities talking about their life with a disability as well as interactions within the health care setting. It gives tips both through those who work within the health care setting as well as just general tips for how to help people or if they need help and how to approach people. So that started in 2005 and that kind of seemed like the beginning of internal education efforts. In 2005, I also became a co-chair. So our co-chairs changed. Next slide please.
This moves forward into the history of the next three years. We stepped back and we said, we think it's great that we're working in the community but we think that there needs to be more internal education and once we have some of that, then we're more willing to do things in collaboration with community and not even have them be separate things but really collaborate. So I listed a couple of the things we did. One thing we did was we partnered with our facilities department. They were going through an evaluation of all our facilities as to whether they met ADA standards. And where we came into the picture is they had a big notebook saying what the standards were and what they needed to fix. And that department, they might not understand why. It might be something as easy as, well I don't understand why the toilet paper really needs to be located below the bar. And it seems like, what's the big deal? But it really actually is a big deal. So having us there to explain that to them really helped for a number of different things that were identified as needing improvement. And the next thing I did was list was the timeline project. This was a poster panel display. It talked about the history of the ADA and then it put us as individuals into that display and our experiences through history in terms of our lives. So for me it was having a daughter was what was really important to me. What we did was we made that travel between different facilities so it was something that was just there for people to see as an educational tool. Then we also had an internal Americans with Disabilities Act Day. We had the Rocky Mountain ADA Center come in and provide education on the ADA and why it's not scary because I think a lot of people out there think ADA equals scary for some reason. So we provided some education surrounding that. Once we'd done a lot of these internal education pieces, which in the spirited able is one too showing that around Kaiser. We then moved to doing collaborative activities with the community. So we sponsored an accessible ropes course in the mountains, where we had half of the people from Kaiser there and half people from the community doing an accessible ropes course. So, one of Kaiser's big things is driving. So one of the things we try to showcase is that people with disabilities are active. So doing this activity is one of the things that we have done. Next slide please.
This is our most recent history and to me is the most exciting part of what has happened sense I've become a co-chair. The last two years, we have worked in collaboration with the community more. In 2008 and 2009, we sponsored a disability awareness dinner. And this started because in 2008, we were sitting there realizing we had this list of people in the community who we say partnered with or who we could outreach to, but we never really got together with them or maybe we got together with one person here or one person there. And we thought it would be nice to bring everybody together to network not only with us but with each other. So I listed some of the, in the first bullet, some of the people who attended. Definitely people with disabilities, be they employees of Kaiser or people in the community who had disabilities; veterans; we had a lot of members from our Rocky Mountain ADA Center there and they were able to provide materials on the ADA, especially at this year's dinner; Cerebral Palsy of Colorado; The Multiple Sclerosis Society; voc rehab representatives; universities have disabilities offices and they had representatives there and there were many more. So in 2008, we wondered if we could pull this thing off and we started outreaching one by one and somehow got to 100 people. And then in 2009, within two weeks we decided we had to cap this dinner and ended up with 130. So what was neat about it was just everybody getting together and getting to talk with each other and us getting to really meet more people. And I said entertainment family is a professional theatrical group comprised of people with disabilities and they provided the entertainment, which just added to the networking. Finally on here, I listed an accessible wilderness hike because we’re again doing collaboration with the community. Kaiser’s emphasis is really on thriving on physical activity and we want to showcase what we can do. So whereas the ropes course was very small and I think there were 10 people, the wilderness hike grew to, still to sound small, but it grew to 20 people and there's a place in the mountains that's accessible to wheelchairs that’s a hike called Wilderness on Wheels. And we went there and we had a day where we went on this gorgeous hike. Next slide please.
So I've already touched on much of this, that we really have focused on internal education, we focused on collaboration with the community and that we're really trying to educate amongst a broad, broad base. This slide talks more about our internal educational efforts. Over all, we'll take a small piece of, you know, we'll do general diversity education segments and we'll have a small piece in those, so that's the overall Culturally Competent Care in the Clinical Setting, that is a daylong training, so we’ll have a hour there. Let's Talk Diversity might be a four hour training and we have a certain portion of that. But in terms of disability, we do have our own trainings, which can be really tailored and they can be different lengths of time. So, I talked about the spirit as able. I know my contact information is in here so you can contact me if you are interested in knowing more about that. But, it's the most popular tool that we have to educate people on people with disabilities in terms of culturally competent care in health care. It's a half hour video. Usually with a half hour facilitation afterward but again you can tailor things to make the training much longer, if you'd like. Then we do disability etiquette presentations all over the place. When ever we might hear that a group needs something, if we just want to outreach to particular groups; usually people are very welcoming of that. As well, again with Kaiser and the thriving, that's the word they like to use, we gave a hand cycling presentation again showcasing that we are active and that was immensely popular. And then again, I say issues as they arise, something always seems to be coming up. Because we have our association, we are able to -- people tell us about things that happen. We find out about them and then we will contact somebody and just discuss, you know, is there a need for training? What would you like to do? How can we help? And then I say of course, any opportunity. Say that we have a wellness program and we say is there somebody with a disability at the table for the wellness program? No, well we’ll try and find a way to get at that table because having a wellness program can be a lot different for people with disabilities than people without. Next slide please.
So really briefly, and I tried to incorporate this mostly in my talk. I am a member of the Rocky Mountain ADA Leadership Network and I put this as part of my signature line on my email. And what that has really allowed to have happen is I think before that people weren't really sure where to go to get information. I remember having a talk with somebody when I needed an accommodation and I talked to somebody and I said do you realize that when somebody comes to you and asks for an accommodation that that is quite possibly one of the most difficult things that they're having to do in their life? Both for them because they might be realizing I need an accommodation but then having to ask and it's very difficult and they didn't realize that. So what I'm able to do by being a member of the ADA Leadership Network is be the resource that helps identify, ok well what accommodations might they need? Often our HR Department might not know what they need. And I can go to the ADA Leadership, to the center, and get in touch with people who can help me. So this just adds to efforts to inclusion. It’s a resource that gained attention with time. One person noticed that I had that on my signature line and somebody else noticed and then somebody this California noticed. Then I get a lot of questions and I can either answer them or refer them to the ADA Center, etc. It increases the odds of having resources to help address concerns by having somebody who fills this role. So, last slide please.
So I say where is the end? If you are looking for an end, there's kind of bad news. There is no end. The last bullet point said: efforts never end. What I will say is that inclusion efforts, they're going to suffer. They're not continually pursued. It's not like you reach an end point and everything is set and good and you don't have to do anything anymore. I've noticed the effects of the economy, well from a Kaiser perspective, say our co-chairs might not have as much time to devote to our association or active members in our association may not have enough time. And then that can impact the culture within Kaiser in terms of people with disabilities in the long term. So, it's something that continually needs to be pursued. It also, again, inclusion efforts, my main point here is the inclusion efforts really require the voices of those with disabilities to be heard, not a group without disabilities deciding what exactly people with disabilities might need. Although, they might, of course be in the room, but the people with disabilities need to be in the room as well. And again, efforts never end. And just to close, I'll tell a little story about me and that I entered the work force having already been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis but it was only about 15 years ago and I remember it was much different then. You couldn't tell that I had MS. I remember walking around thinking don't let people notice that you have a limp and keep up with so and so and don't tell anybody. Then over time, now I use a wheelchair so I've had to let people know what I have, etc. But I've also noticed a shift in employment over the time, which is very encouraging. Because when I was trying to hide this, I think it wasn't something that was really welcome if I had said I had MS, I don't know that it would have been really welcomed to know that. But over time, you see these inclusion efforts by different companies, you see Diversity Inc. out there really advocating for different groups and it's been really great. So, we have come a long way and I think efforts will never end. But I wanted to end on a positive note and say that I think we've come a long, long way. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. What great information. I'm just blown away at both presentations. I think that it is evident that both your companies are committed and are very, very fortunate to have both of you as partners in this journey and you’re absolutely right. That's what this is. It's a journey. We all continue that journey every day in this area. So thank you so much. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Kathy West Evans who will now facilitate the question session of our Webinar today and do the wrap up.
Kathy West-Evans: Thank you so much Beth and I want to echo Beth's comments. Lori, you and Beth you did an excellent job. You know, my hats off to you, having you inside of companies really make the difference. People like you and you've got a big support team around the country, but it's very impressive with the efforts that you have built inside your companies. So thank you so much. We've got a couple of questions that have been asked by multiple people. Either Beth or Lori, people are wondering how they can obtain more information about the USLBM disability owned certification process?
Beth Newsom: Fantastic. Lori. I don't know if you want me to take that or I can take that.
If you would like to take that, that's fine.
You can go straight to the US Business Leadership Network site which is www.USLBN.org. There should be information out there and we -- you can certainly email us there with any questions or additional information. But that would be your first step in getting that information.
Kathy West-Evans: Beth this is Kathy. Can we go ahead and post information up on the website following this teleconference?
Beth: Absolutely.
Question: Great. I think Steffany’s got that link. That’s great. Thank you so much. The second question is directed at you Lori. You've got a real fan club building out here in case you want to build a site where you want to sell materials but we have multiple people asking about how they could get copies of the quizzes or the quick sheets that you used inside of Ernst & Young.
Lori Golden: Sure. It's my pleasure. I didn't say this but I thank everyone for the question because it's a good opportunity. We feel very passionately that although we, our first goal is to become as inclusive as an organization as we can be and continually get better. Our second goal is to try to be a force for good by sharing everything we do as much as possible. So, many of our materials are posted up on EY.com, our public website. Not all are, however, I'd be happy to make available and if after this call, if we could post somewhere copies of all our materials and I'm very, very happy to do that. Those of you who will take a look at them at the bottom, you'll see, instead of the kind of general copyright statement, we actually went to our lawyers and said please write something saying that anyone can use this in any context as long as it's attributed to Ernst & Young. So in the past we’ve actually have had some companies stripped out our content and put in their own format and used it internally. As long as there's some line saying thanks Ernst & Young for whatever, we’re very pleased for you to do that. So it’s sharable, skew-able, anything you want we'll make it all available. We also have a new piece coming out that we’re really excited about, that we'll share as well. Can we post those to the website as well so people can access them there or do you recommend they access them via your website?
Lori Golden: Really both. I'm not sure that all our pieces are currently posted up on our website. I'll have to check. But I'd be happy to supply them to you so you can post them and make them available, as well as to provide a link to the right section in our website so you don't have to hunt around for it because there's a lot more than just the pieces there, you'll see more context.
That's great. Well obviously you’ve done a great job and have impressed everyone on the call. So thanks again for your great work and someone did also mention the posters as well.
Lori Golden: Yeah. Thank you very much. One reason, by the way, to go to the site and to follow the link, which I’ll get to you, is to see the minutes presentations of the quick video clips. There are 22 of those and it's not a static piece. So it's best to see it through our site.
Ok great, so I think Steffany will be posting those up -- both of those pieces. Thank you so much.
Question: The next question is for either Lori or Beth. It's an individual who's working in a smaller company and they're wondering how and where to start with developing a disability inclusion program.
Beth Newsom: Wow, that’s what you want to start? I do, if you have an idea. I just want to do it, but I bet you have more ideas Lori.
Lori Golden: Well, the first thing that I would do is actually, do some kind of an inventory to see what the issues are. The first thing we did, I’ll give our history and you can learn something from that perhaps, is we started out as a project to try to figure out whether people with disabilities were a leveraged talent pool for some of our own jobs. And once we began looking at it, we realized there were a lot of gaps in how we supported the peoples with disabilities we already had working at the firm. When we inventoried our recruitment processes and our application processes and the whole thing, what we found is that we didn't have a lot of issues there. Our application was available online. You could access it with assistive technologies. We used the correct kinds of interview formats but what we found is that there were lots of areas where we could improve in terms of accessibility. One very clear example is that we discovered that we had people working in the firm who couldn't access voice mail. We knew we had deaf people working in the firm. We knew we had people who were hard of hearing but nobody ever stopped and to put it together and said voice mail is a daily business tool and we have a group of people who can't use it. It wasn't until we methodically went through our tools, our information, our resources, looked at our infrastructure functions and what they did that we found out that there were some real gaps. In classic consulting terms, it's a gap analysis. Another first thing you want to do is an open call to see who's interested in the issue and what we found to our surprise is that a lot of people without disabilities were keenly interested in the issue because they had a personal connection, not just friends or families, but turned out that we had people who had taught in special ed., we had people who had worked in vocational rehabilitation, we had Sign Language interpreters that we didn't know about. People who had all kinds of educational and professional backgrounds and this really resonated with them. So those are two things I’d do. Do audit your processes and your programs and your functions and open casting call and make sure it's open and everyone is welcome.
And I guess I’d add to that, since you’re a small business, I know how somebody got me involved in our disability association is they came to a meeting I was at and wanted to talk to me afterward, and I thought they wanted to talk about the meeting. But they wanted to tell me they were starting this disability association and would I be interested. So I think it's also, I think you can reach out one by one especially if you are in a small business setting, it might be a little easier. Just a thought.
Question: Thanks Beth and Lori. There was a second part to that question. Are there any particular consulting companies or government organizations or other community organizations that you might recommend? It sounds like you each sought local resources but is there any in particular?
Lori Golden: You want to take that Beth and then I'll jump in? Resources for Developing your diversity and inclusion program.
Beth Newsom: Well, ours was developed because we had other multicultural associations and somebody came in who had a disability and said we don't have a people with disabilities association. So it really was done at the very local Kaiser level. That's just how ours worked.
Lori Golden: This is Lori. One thing I would do to start is see if there's business leadership network in your area and go to a meeting or contact people who are listed in leadership roles in that organization and get an idea of what's going on externally in the community that you can learn from. So then trainings, opportunities to network and then begin talking individually with people who are doing it in other organizations and see what you can learn from them. I went to, one of the first things I did back when we were a project, kind of looking into this, is go to a business leadership network meeting and very quickly, I learned a best practice and that was, it sounds obvious now, it sounds obvious, I was mentioning it before, have an open casting call and let anyone who has an interest participate. Everybody has a little different perspective to bring to it and it was quite surprising to us initially, that so many people who do not identify as themselves having disabilities wanted to be very involved in our efforts. So opening it up was one of the first things I learned and I learned that that was a leading practice from some of the companies that were there. So that's one of the first things I do. I know we used to have a business leadership network here. I don't think we do anymore. Another place to look is if you have an ADA center near by.
Question: Great, thanks so much. Our next question is about the statistics that we hear often that one in five people in the United States are individuals with disabilities. The person asking the question is asking do you know if that includes school children or is that just working age people, 16 or older? Does anyone know?
Lori Golden: This is Lori. It is Americans have a disability. It's of any age, I believe. It's not working age adults specifically.
Question: Okay. Thanks for the clarification Lori. Alright, Beth. There's a question also from someone about how can they get a copy of the Spirit is Able? Another one of those resource questions.
Beth Newsom: Yeah. I'd ask them my email is listed on that last slide, which I think you have up, right? My email is listed. If they could contact me, then I can talk with them more about that.
Great. And I'm assuming that the power points are posted and will be available and we’ll hear more information from Shelly about that at the end. So Beth's contact information will remain accessible.
Beth, the next question is for you as well. Can you tell people more about the Diversity Leadership Program and you know how you have used that within your company particularly focusing on career development and other things within Kaiser Permanente?
Beth Newson: Sure, I was actually in the Diversity Leadership Program. What they did was, it was either 18 months or two years, we had to apply for it and then get accepted. And then we were paired with a mentor who was very upper level at Kaiser so I was paired with a senior director. Someone was paired with our CEO. People were paired with VPs. So we were paired with very high level mentors for us and that was really helpful. We would meet with them once a month and discuss things surrounding leadership, where we as individuals wanted to go and how best to get there and get their perspectives around that. In addition we had monthly trainings we were required to go to and we were provided education as well, so we had monthly education that we gave where the mentors, the high level mentors would come, as well as our managers. So we did that. And then we had an individual development plan that we had to track out where we wanted to be: one year, three year, five year and it mapped our different strengths and how to capitalize on those strengths and that kind of thing. So it was a very involved process - 18 to 24 months. If you have more questions on that, feel free to contact me as well. When I was in it, they took people at, they called it the individual contributor level, and then they changed it and you had to be a supervisor to become a part of the program, and so of course, we let our voices be heard about that. Because as I said it's getting to that supervisory position, getting from the individual contributor level up to that next level, it seems like that's where there's a big gap, at least in our company.
Thanks Beth. Sounds like a great program. We have a question asking if you have any suggestions about interfacing with other agencies that provide supportive employment for individuals with disabilities.
Lori Golden: This is Lori. I can say we have for a number of years very much wanted to work with a few different organizations that place people with disabilities and, in particular, these organizations place people with intellectual disabilities. It's been very challenging for us because of the nature of our jobs. We have very few roles that would be suitable and we have almost no turn over in those roles. We did for a number of years in one of our offices work with the local ARC who placed people and very successfully had people working, I think for 10 or 11 years and it was a very, very successful effort. But those opportunities for us are few and far between. I can't say that that's something we've done much of at all, although we'd like to. Beth, have you had experience?
Beth Newson: I would say we haven't done a lot of that. What we have done is we have summer internships and so we will work with universities and try to recruit people with disabilities into internship roles and again the scholarship program getting people into the door in health care, but we haven't actively worked with organizations like the ARC. I know that we've done some baby step type of things but that would be an area that we could really grow in.
Well our time is nearing the end and I know we could continue discussing a lot of things. You have both provided just wonderful information and you know kudos to you and the work you’re doing and the support of your companies. It’s really a leadership model for other companies around the country and thank you for sharing that. On behalf of the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation and the National Employment Team, our partners at the DBTAC National ADA Centers and the U.S. Business Leadership Networks, we want to say thank you to all of you for participating today. And Stefanie, do you want to take us through the last minute housekeeping?
Sheeley Kaplan: This is Shelley I’m just going to step in for a moment and echo your sentiments. Kathy, as well, this has really been an outstanding session and how fortunate we are to hear from two individuals who really are leaders in creating equal opportunities inclusion for people with disabilities in the workplace. One other resource that the ADA National Network is starting to do is collect employee profiles. This is a new feature on the website and if you want to take a look and see different people with disabilities in jobs, please log on to our website and I’ll put that up there. The link to that area is up in the chat room for you right now, so by all means take a look and if you know of other people who might like to be featured, let us know. So please remember to complete your evaluations of today's session. Your feedback is extremely important to us so we that we can continue planning and address your specific needs and concerns. You have the contact information for the next Webinar series. A reminder that registration is now open for our next Webinar that will take place on April 8th. This one will be titled Corporate Strategy: Providing Accessibility for Employees and Customers. If you have not registered and would like to, space is filling up very, very quickly so I just urge you to do that as soon as possible. With that, Stephanie, if you will put up the information, what appears to be on the screen is information for you about how you can obtain your education credits for both CEU and CRCC. With that, our session is completed and I thank everybody and have a great day. Bye bye.
[Event Concluded, March 11, 2010]