Disability News

Employee searches for high-turnover positions can cost companies thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per year. But, when faced with jobs that have a typical turnover rate of as much as 47%, how can employers break the cycle? At Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the solution has been to employ those equally capable but most in need of employment opportunities: people with disabilities. And the idea is catching on. In addition to keeping internal human resources costs down and retaining quality employees, Project Search at Cincinnati Children's has become a model program for employers around the world.

Project Search development

Long known for its medical innovations, through Project Search Cincinnati Children's has also carved out a national reputation as a leader in employing people with disabilities. With a spark of imagination, a willing human resources department and the cooperation of many groups in the Cincinnati area, Project Search was born. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the program has expanded from a single institution's initiative to a replicable system that the hospital helps others emulate. More than 120 businesses in 39 US states and several countries have already adopted the Project Search approach.

Erin Riehle, Cincinnati Children's Director of Disability Services, says, "About thirteen years ago as a part of the hospital's diversity initiative, we studied our budget, particularly looking for ways to fill jobs that had high turnover." The recruitment, hiring and training associated with employee turnover all cost a company valuable resources.

Although at the time the hospital's focus for diversity was on race, ethnicity and gender, what Riehle found shifted that focus to include people with disabilities. "The figures on the top twenty revenue generators showed that a lot of the hospital's revenue came from the care of those with chronic illnesses and disability." If the hospital's revenue was coming mostly from this population, why not consider their potential employability as well?

In keeping with Cincinnati Children's tradition of service to this core group, Riehle relates, "it seemed natural that we should make it a priority to hire people with disabilities."

Riehle made calls to local educational, vocational, and disability groups. Together they created a business model for hiring people with developmental and other significant disabilities. She adds, "Our model views hiring people with disabilities as smart business. We know that people with disabilities are an incredibly capable potential pool of employees who need hiring. We created broad funding to underpin the program's training and development, using resources from within the community."

What sets Project Search apart from other disability employment programs? Recognizing that many people with disabilities can rise to the challenge of demanding employment, Riehle relates that "the jobs we targeted for filling were ... complex but systematic, rather than only ... simple tasks." Far from a sheltered workshop mentality, the Project Search approach values retention and career advancement as assets both to the individual and the workplace. Prospective employees can be trained for jobs in material management, patient transport, clinical sterilization, etc., through Project Search.

Program Components

Project Search's emphasis is twofold: ensuring that adults with disabilities are appropriately hired and trained, and assisting students with disabilities as they transition into the workforce. The Transition Clinic focuses on creating an educational and employment path for patients age 14 and up with chronic illnesses and disabilities.

The Adult Employment Program matches qualified employees with open positions and provides on-the-job support with coaching, adaptations, accommodations--even task and travel training. Candidates for this program must be at least 18 years old and eligible for Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission services, in addition to meeting general employment requirements.

In keeping with Cincinnati Children's mission of improving "quality of life outcomes" for patients, the Transition Clinic helps students age 14 and up to complete educational requirements so they can qualify for jobs under Project Search. Riehle says, " The Transition Clinic is just that, a Clinic -- we don't do training in the Clinic." Transition Clinic addresses individual vocational, educational, training and employment goals. This personalized (training) may include helping the student coordinate GED programs or research appropriate career choices.

Bridging these two worlds, the one-year High School Transition Program offers graduating seniors real-world experience in healthcare or business settings. Using total workplace immersion, the program offers a series of structured internships that focus on both general and task-specific job skills. Students receive daily instruction in workplace and life skills, participation in rotations on a particular job, and feedback from an instructor.

The High School Program in action

Recruits in the internship program are first asked what jobs they would like to have: They are asked to express their dreams. Their training then focuses on general skills for their chosen profession, specific skills for a targeted job, and life skills in how to become a valued employee. Says Riehle, "We show them how to relate to others in the workplace, how to get to work, and more." Through a series of ten-week internship modules, students accomplish their training goals one at a time. The program offers flexibility for students who change their minds about their chosen field mid-course.

At present, the Project Search has five such internship programs in place in Hamilton County, Ohio.

"We also teach a high school job transition program for adults that puts a single class of 12 adults with disabilities ages 18-21 in a business for an entire school year, to show them how the business world works," Riehle relates. "We require a 95 percent attendance rate in order to take part in the program."

Making Dreams Come True

But what if a disability is at odds with a career dream? Through technology and training, such dreams can come true. Riehle relates the example of a young woman who, though affected by speech difficulties, desired a job greeting the public at a front desk. In her first internship, in addition to learning how to transfer calls, use call waiting, and take messages, she was trained to use a telephone with voice enhancement software. In the second module, her training focused on appointment and datebook software and procedures. Finally, "we introduced her to Dragon Speaking software," Riehle relates, "and in the third rotation we showed her how to make security badges, sign people in and out of an office, and greet people. By the end of the process, she was able to function as a front desk receptionist."

Advancement and retention

Most of the positions targeted for Project Search were in-house and entry-level at first. Some, which involved repetitive tasks, typically have a turnover of more than 47% in one year, according to the Society for Human Resource Management . In general, people who work these types of repetitive, entry-level jobs do not stay around for promotion.

Riehle found that after five or six years, employees hired through Project Search wanted more responsibility. "We began to see that simple tasks often underutilized the abilities of the target work force," she says. And so the hospital began to institute ways to promote individuals or change responsibilities to keep them engaged on the job. Some of the employees have been with the program for ten years or more. "Keeping them engaged on that job and interested in the work and helping them to go on to other employment in the hospital is a key part of our work as well."

Riehle notes, "In one department alone, a position that never held anyone for longer than 2.4 years now has employees who have stayed in that job for more than three times as long."

"Key to the success of the employee on the job is the right training," says Riehle. "Over the life of the program we have hired more than 100 people with significant disabilities to various jobs. Seventy are still on staff."

Although of course some Project Search employees leave for all the usual reasons, Riehle maintains that "the turnover is low: far better than the forty-seven percent national reported in similar hospital positions."

Individual success

One of Project Search's success stories is Eric Johnson. A Cart Stocker at Cincinnati Children's since 1997, Johnson resupplies examination rooms in the emergency department with medical necessities and linens, among other duties. Johnson, who has a cognitive disability, takes the bus to work when his parents cannot drive him. A graduate of Hughes High School, Johnson is also involved in numerous activities such as the local volunteer organization Give Back Cincinnati and the disability-friendly social group Star Fire Peer Groups.

Replication

Although Riehle relates that "we do not aggressively market ourselves," news of the program's success has reached all corners of the world. Part of Project Search's mission statement is to educate employers about the potential of people with disabilities to meet their human resource needs.

As a result, many companies in healthcare and other fields approach the hospital, eager to create programs like Project Search in their own communities and workplaces. For a nominal fee, groups can schedule a conference to receive instruction on garnering support from community public and nonprofit organizations to establish similar employment programs in their own areas.

Awards

Several groups, including the National Alliance for Youth with Disabilities, have named Project Search a model organization. Honors include the Secretary of Labor's New Freedom Initiative Award (2004), many local and state awards, the Ohio Governor's Council on People with Disabilities Large Employer of the Year, and the Ohio Public Images Award.

The program will continue to work toward meeting the needs of individuals with disabilities in the Cincinnati community, in its own workforce, and anywhere else that a similar employment approach can lead to communal success.

Special Article

Competitive Employment for People with Intellectual Disabilities — Real World Experience in Changing the Paradigm of the Way We Think

By Joyce Bender [view bio]
President and CEO of Bender Consulting Services.

It is an honor for me to speak to this prestigious group of people today. It is an honor to work with a group of people devoted to the competitive employment of people with intellectual disabilities. It is an honor to work with a group of people who will be making recommendations to the President of the Untied States. You have a voice that can make a difference in America for those often left out — that is so powerful.

I love the title of this speech, because it is what is so needed in the world of competitive employment for people with intellectual disabilities — a Paradigm Shift in the way we think. We know that people with intellectual disabilities have a very high unemployment rate and are more likely to live in poverty. We know that many employers think about people with intellectual disabilities as people who should be taken care of — not employed, and if employed, frequently underemployed. We must change the way we think if we want to see a change in the competitive employment of people with intellectual disabilities and if we want to see people with intellectual disabilities acquire a higher level of self-efficacy.

As a woman with epilepsy and a hearing loss, I know that not that long ago, people with epilepsy were considered to be the untouchables. For many years and with some still today, people believed that epilepsy was a psychiatric disability and contagious. The stigma attached to epilepsy still exists, but people with epilepsy have made great strides. Due to the stigma, the unemployment rate is still high for Americans with epilepsy.

My career has been in the area of employment for over 30 years, working with the private sector and Federal agencies. I have studied and written so much on the area of competitive employment and it is so exciting to speak about the competitive employment of Americans with intellectual disabilities.

My career in executive search was interrupted by an almost fatal accident in 1985. For many years prior, I had experienced on-going fainting spells and immediately visited a doctor. My disability was misdiagnosed; I did not know I had epilepsy until I had a tonic seizure in 1985 at a movie theater concession stand in Pittsburgh, PA that resulted in an intracranial brain hemorrhage and fractured bones in my inner ear. I was rushed to the hospital in a coma and had life-saving brain surgery; it was in the intensive care unit that I first heard the news that I was a woman with epilepsy. After two months of rehabilitation, I went back to my executive search firm, as a person with disabilities. I soon sought to include people with disabilities in all the work I did in the area of employment and did volunteer work for the next nine years.

Finally, in 1995, after becoming frustrated with the inability to get companies to hire people with disabilities, I founded Bender Consulting Services, a company that focuses on competitive employment for Americans with disabilities. It was a paradigm shift for many when I told them we would be a for-profit company and focus on no pity and accountability. Many people still tend to invoke the pity model when they think of employing people with disabilities and that will not work. Today Bender Consulting operates in 18 states; we have hired over 380 people with significant disabilities.

In 1999, I received the President's Award at the White House and in 2003, I received the New Freedom Initiative Award. In 2001, I founded Bender Consulting Services of Canada to provide employment to Canadians with disabilities; Bender Consulting of Canada operates today in Ontario and Quebec.

Bender Consulting has included hiring people with intellectual disabilities, through the Elizabeth Project, in white collar areas at corporations, such as data center or mail room positions. This initiative provides a competitive career opportunity with health care benefits for people often left out.

When Bender Consulting first proposed including Americans with intellectual disabilities in competitive employment, many people thought the idea was ludicrous. How would people with intellectual disabilities work under the Bender model of competitive employment in corporate America. We moved forward and it works — better yet, it works for our employees.

One of the core problems in the ability of people with intellectual disabilities to gain competitive employment relates to what Albert Bandura discussed in his social cognitive theory — self-efficacy. Without a reasonable level of self-efficacy, it is impossible to succeed in the workforce for anyone.

Frequently, people with disabilities have a low-level of self-efficacy, for many reasons. If we want to see this change we must have a paradigm shift in this area.

Self-Efficacy — There is a difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief that one is capable of performing a certain goal. For example, although I have good self-esteem, I know I cannot be an Olympic Medalist. I do however have a high-level of self-efficacy that helps me believe in my ability to be a civil rights leader by impacting the employment of Americans with disabilities.

If you have no self-efficacy, you do not have the belief you can achieve anything. Low self-efficacy causes a person with an intellectual disability to assume he or she will fail at a job before they even start work. Low self-efficacy will cause a person to quit a job or give up when it seems difficult because they do not believe they have the ability to succeed in the position.
Social structures help to create low or high self-efficacy. If a person with an intellectual disability is surrounded by family, friends or service providers who see the person as weak or inferior, this will help create low self-efficacy in the person with an intellectual disability.

You cannot expect a person with an intellectual disability to raise the bar or raise their level of self-efficacy if they are in a social structure that does the opposite. People with intellectual disabilities who succeed the most are people who have been encouraged to have a higher level of self-efficacy.
Pity creates low self-efficacy. There is a tendency by many to pity people with intellectual disabilities; they do not want pity — they want paychecks. When you pity a person, you are really saying they are inferior to others and not as good. A person with an intellectual disability senses how you really feel about them by your treatment of them.
Proper training on business skills is critical to a person having a high level of self-efficacy. You cannot put anyone in the work force that has no idea of the world of work and no idea of basic skills such as attendance and how to dress for work. These are basics that are critical to creating that environment, where the person is not humiliated because they did not know what to do at work.
We must create on-going internships at companies for people with intellectual disabilities to help them have a higher sense of self-efficacy. If you have a chance to do an internship or job shadow, it takes away the fear of that first job.
High self-efficacy means that not everyone with an intellectual disability will need a job coach at work. At Bender Consulting Services, the two recent hires with intellectual disabilities are working at Highmark in the mail-room, with excellent pay and benefits. The first individual, already hired by Highmark, is the trainer for the new person recently hired.
Getting people with intellectual disabilities to serve on not-for-profit boards will help them have a voice and create a higher level of self-efficacy.

Originally, when Bender wanted to hire a young man with an intellectual disability, his service provider told the Bender recruiter that he was only good enough to mow the lawn. This is terrible. This individual now works in the mailroom, at Bender's partner company Highmark, and is the trainer for the new Bender employee with an intellectual disability, who was recently hired. The service provider who worked with him had a low view of him and his ability to succeed; fortunately, he met people who did not feel that way.

We cannot make a change in the area of competitive employment for Americans with intellectual disabilities until we change the way we view people with intellectual disabilities. There are those who are so profound in their disability that they do need a job coach or support at work, but they can still work.

It was not many years ago, that with epilepsy, I would have been considered unable to run a company; today, I run three companies and have a radio show heard throughout the world. I have a high level of self-efficacy.

We cannot work on improving the competitive employment of Americans with disabilities and exclude this group; it is to be justice for all — not for some.

People with intellectual disabilities are tired of waiting to be treated equally, tired of being pitied, tired of being pushed aside, and tired of being unemployed. People with intellectual disabilities are tired of waiting for jobs that do not appear.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while in Birmingham jail said, “For years now, I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”

People with intellectual disabilities say “NO MORE WAITING”!

Joyce Bender is President and CEO of Bender Consulting Services. Please direct questions for Joyce to info@disability-marketing.com.

Ernst & Young Receives U.S. Department of Labor's New Freedom Initiative Award for Enhancing the Participation of Americans with Disabilities in the 21st Century Workforce

Published Oct 19th, 2008 Ernst & Young LLP PR Newswire via Comtex

Ernst & Young LLP received the U.S. Department of Labor's prestigious New Freedom Initiative award this week, which honors corporations, non-profits, individuals and small businesses for their efforts to further the employment and workplace environment for people with disabilities.

The Office of Disabilities Employment Policy (ODEP) coordinates the annual New Freedom Initiative Awards program which was introduced by President George W. Bush in 2001. The New Freedom Initiative is a government-wide effort to accelerate the full inclusion of people with disabilities into mainstream American life.

"The examples and best practices that we highlight today will hopefully provide insight and ideas for different strategies to help Americans with disabilities become fulfilled, contributing members of our workforce," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao.

Ernst & Young has a long legacy of integrating people with disabilities into its workplace. One of the firm's founders, Arthur Young, was deaf. Today, the organization understands that a diverse, inclusive workforce is critical to attracting and retaining top talent, particularly in the highly competitive professional services industry.

To promote inclusiveness of people with disabilities, Ernst & Young established the AccessAbilities(TM) network, which aims to foster a disability-aware corporate culture and an empowering environment in which every individual can reach his or her full potential.

"We are honored to receive Secretary Chao's New Freedom Initiative award and to be considered a leading organization around disability inclusiveness," noted Billie Williamson, Ernst & Young's Americas Inclusiveness Officer. "It seems especially fitting, during National Disability Employment Awareness Month, that we were able to come together with other leading companies, non-profits, and individuals to not only celebrate the work being done to support people with disabilities, but to continue to advance these important efforts."

Through Ernst & Young's AccessAbilities network, the firm has nearly 300 people dedicated to promoting disability inclusiveness. It has also gone above and beyond Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance by improving existing office accessibility and incorporating accessibility into standards for new construction. The AccessAbilities network provides coaching and mentoring and members distribute quick-guides for all Ernst & Young people on topics such as disabilities etiquette and how to be inclusive. The firm also provides leading-edge technology and communications solutions to help employees with disabilities to perform their jobs more efficiently.

Cincinnati Children's Hospital: From High Turnover to High Retention with Project Search