Employer Brief #2 Effective Business Practices for Increasing a Productive Workforce: Creating a Corporate Culture to Improve Your Organization’s Bottom Line New York Makes Work Pay is a Comprehensive Employment System Medicaid Infrastructure Grant (#1QACMS030318) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to the Office of Mental Health on behalf of New York State. It is a joint effort of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University and the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell University with the collaborative support of the Employment Committee of the New York State Most Integrated Setting Coordinating Council to develop pathways and remove obstacles to employment for New Yorkers with disabilities. Based on recent research, New York Makes Work Pay has identified 6 action steps companies can take to create a more inclusive, productive workforce of employees with and without disabilities. This Employer Brief outlines the action steps identified in the research as effective at improving inclusive corporate culture. For information on how your company can participate in this research and assess and compare your inclusive corporate “culture,” see New York Makes Work Pay Employer Brief #1. Future Employer Briefs will provide models, tools, and examples of effective elements of inclusive corporate culture. Why Improve Corporate “Culture”? Satisfied, Loyal Workforces Return Value! All organizations are looking to increase value from every division and improving the quality of one’s workforce is a critical aspect. As any employer knows, their workforce accounts for the vast majority of their expenses (in terms of recruitment, training, and retraining costs). By the same token, a streamlined, loyal, and satisfied workforce returns the most value and reduces costs. Corporate culture is a major factor in employee satisfaction, productivity, and loyalty. Given the costs associated with recruitment and training, minimizing employee turnover is a must for every employer today. Studies show that people with disabilities are a loyal, hardworking class of individuals. Therefore, hiring and retaining employees with disabilities keeps costs down. Also, consumers prefer to patronize organizations that hire people with disabilities– in a national survey 87% of people reported this. People with disabilities and their families are not just employees -they are consumers too. A study using data from the U.S. Census in 2000 reports that people with disabilities and their families have $1 trillion dollars to spend. Having an organization that includes people with disabilities will strengthen your ability to target and tap an important consumer base (see Earnworks.com for more information). What is Corporate Culture? How Does it Impact my Bottom Line? Your corporate culture reflects the values and principles of your organization. While many of your policies may explicitly articulate some of your values – for example, your mission statement – employees also infer what an organization stands for by looking at other things, such as: What are your hiring policies? Do you make accommodations? Do you have flexibility in how and when people do their work? Do your managers treat all employees in their units equitably? Lessons learned from big and small companies that have succeeded and failed demonstrate clearly that poor corporate culture impacts the bottom line of an organization. Ensuring an environment that is flexible and accommodating of employees’ differences engages employees to work harder and return value to an organization they feel values them. Conversely, rigid and unaccommodating environments lead employees to look elsewhere for the flexibility they desire. Improving Corporate Culture -Action Steps The Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) was funded by the Department of Labor to create a method of evaluating the success of organizations in creating an inclusive culture that impacts bottom lines. In the course of the project, we identified key action steps your organization can take to emulate practices that have been found effective in past research on inclusive and successful organizations. (1) Articulate Your Commitment to Inclusion Many companies have diversity statements and policies that include women and racially and ethnically diverse communities. However, diversity statements rarely include people with disabilities. The better practice is to articulate a message that the company is committed to the hiring and equitable treatment of people with disabilities. Ensure that diversity statements and policies explicitly include people with disabilities. When top management or human resource officers communicate with staff about your organization’s values, ensure that they reaffirm the commitment to including people with disabilities and other diverse backgrounds as part of your workforce and consumer base. (2) Demonstrate Your Commitment to Inclusion Many companies track, assess, and evaluate their diversity outcomes regarding women and other diverse communities. However, disability is often left out. The better practice is to include disability in the diversity evaluation methods of the organization. Participate in research to assess your organization’s climate for inclusion and address weaknesses (see New York Makes Work Pay Employer Brief #1). State the goal of inclusion of persons with disabilities in diversity programs, strategic plans, annual goals, and annual reports. Count disability when measuring workforce diversity (taking precautions to maintain confidentiality). Include effectiveness in diversity and inclusion in supervisor job descriptions. Ensure that performance evaluations of managers and executives include disability and diversity factors (e.g., the increase in the recruitment, hiring, retention, and promotion of persons with disabilities). (3) Implement Effective Hiring Practices to Attract Qualified Employees with Disabilities Many companies conduct only general hiring efforts, which may not reach prospective employees with disabilities. Companies often offer application and interview procedures that are not accessible, and only make accessibility changes at the last minute on request. Doing so indicates a lack of openness to hiring people with disabilities. A better practice is to include disability-specific hiring mechanisms and ensure, up-front, that hiring mechanisms are open to people with disabilities. Target hiring efforts to reach potential employees with disabilities by advertising with disability organizations, vocational rehabilitation programs, and disability-related job fairs Make hiring mechanisms (application and interview processes) accessible to people with disabilities (4) Implement Effective and Inclusive Employee Development Practices Corporate employee development and inclusion efforts often focus on women and other diverse groups, without including people with disabilities, who may need additional peer support. A better practice is to provide development and inclusion efforts specific to disability and to let all employees know about company disability policies. Develop affinity groups of employees with disabilities to provide peer support and advice to the company on disability issues Develop mentoring programs for new employees with disabilities Conduct trainings for managers and employees regarding disability (i.e. awareness about potential discrimination and cultural issues; accommodation policies; disability leave absence policies; return to work policies; etc.). (5) Centralize, track, evaluate, and talk about accommodation and workplace flexibility policies Decentralized accommodation policies and lack of accountability for providing accommodations disincentivize provision of accommodations. Human resource policies regarding disability accommodations are often only shared with employees with disabilities. Better practices centralize accommodation decisions and funding, track and evaluate success at implementing accommodations, and let all employees know about the company’s policies. Create a centralized fund for accommodations and an efficient process for managers to use it when making accommodations. Keep data that tracks accommodation requests, accommodations granted, costs and benefits (taking precautions to maintain confidentiality). Work with researchers to evaluate the cost-benefit outcomes of accommodations. The vast majority of research demonstrates accommodations to be low-cost and high-benefit. Researchers (e.g., BBI) have standardized assessment tools that can help assess the long-term benefits of accommodations. Inform all new employees during onboarding of your inclusive and flexible policies. For example, consider standardized packets of information that let them know how they can request accommodations and to whom they should target their requests. Provide examples of accommodations you have previously made. Inform employees about targeted recruiting and advancement opportunities within the organization, as well as other key disability initiatives (e.g., the presence of affinity groups) during onboarding. (6) Support Efforts of Managers / Supervisors Managers’ behavior powerfully influences the experience of discrimination for people with disabilities and also influences the behavior of others toward co-workers with disabilities. Train and empower managers and supervisors to implement inclusive policies (e.g., accommodations). Train managers and supervisors on your organization’s processes for accommodations. How they respond to an employee’s initial request often predicts that employee’s future engagement at work, regardless of the outcome of the request. Train managers to trust their judgments. Managers and supervisors sense when the environment in their unit is not “open” or “inclusive.” Research finds that in work units where managers report lower levels of openness (e.g., an atmosphere where people feel comfortable engaging their “whole” selves at work and not being concerned that there is some ideal profile to which they must conform), employees in the same work unit tend to report greater experiences of discrimination. Thus, managers perceptions are useful in predicting negative experiences of their employees with disabilities. Managers need to trust their perceptions and judgments and act quickly on any concerns they have to prevent experiences of discrimination by their employees. To learn more about implementing these and other effective practices and / or how you can assess your organization’s practices, contact Meera Adya, Director of Research, BBI at madya@syr.edu or (315) 443-7346. For more information, see New York Makes Work Pay Employer Brief #1: Assessing and Comparing Business Practices for Increasing a Productive Workforce, http://www.newyorkmakesworkpay.org Contact Information Meera Adya, Director of Research, Burton Blatt Institute madya@syr.edu; 315 443 7346 Partnering Organizations New York State Office of Mental Health Employment and Disability Institute (Cornell University) Burton Blatt Institute (Syracuse University)