Advancing EEO Through Accessibility & Belonging: A Look at Disability Employment

Creating true equality in the workplace requires accessibility and belonging. Presented initially at DirectEmployers 2024 Annual Meeting & Conference (DEAMcon24), experts from Iowa State Vocational Rehabilitation, The Harkin Institute, and John Deere Financial shared insights on disability employment and its value. Tune in to learn practical strategies to integrate accessible hiring practices, address real-world barriers, and create psychological safety for employees with disabilities. Key takeaways include actionable steps for inclusive hiring of individuals with disabilities, three strategies to make job descriptions accessible, and methods for building team support around accessibility and belonging in the workplace.

Transcript

DirectEmployers (00:00):

Get ready. The DE Talk podcast starts now, insightful conversations and dialogue, helping you put the human factor back in HR.

(00:08):

Imagine attending the final day of DEAMcon24 thinking you've seen it all. Then you hear this powerful lineup take the stage. Ashley Lance from the Harken Institute, Molly Gill of John Deere Financial. Michelle Kraft, formerly of Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services. All here to discuss one essential topic that shapes the heart of belonging — accessibility. Not only do they walk you through the power of true belonging in the workforce, they also share why fostering environments where people with disabilities can thrive as not only good ethics but smart business. This episode goes beyond statistics and is filled with real stories, actionable insights, and the compelling case for why every organization needs to prioritize accessibility, dive in and discover how you can create a future-proof workforce that drives access, innovation and belonging.

Ashlea Lantz (00:58):

Alright, good morning, happy Friday. Again, my name's Ashlea Lantz. I'm a senior policy advisor at The Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement in Des Moines, Iowa, located at Drake University. So we are a public policy think tank. So to give you a little bit of background around The Harkin Institute, Senator Tom Harkin, who retired in 2015 established The Harkin Institute to focus on the four policy areas that are nearest and dearest to him. And this presentation, you might see a bit of a theme, but Senator Harkin's passion around disability and being the author of the Americans with Disabilities Act stemmed around his brother Frank. Frank was deaf and Frank's opportunities for employment initially were small, slim. He had three options simply based on the fact that he was deaf and Frank didn't like any of those options.

(01:59):

And the one that he disliked the least was working in a bakery. And Frank's story is he eventually started working for an airplane company making parts, and he was the most productive employee on that line. He was not distracted because the noise didn't bother him and his disability was seen as valued. And Frank worked at that company for decades. And so really just recognizing that that lived experience, Frank's lived experience, but also Senator Harkins really drove his passion around disability rights and our work at the institute today. So at the Harkin Institute, we focus on the four policy areas of Senator Harkin's career, labor and employment, retirement and securities, wellness and nutrition, and people with disabilities. One of the things I think we're probably most known for is hosting summits. We very much believe that you have to have policymakers, the public and private sector and the disability community, all three at the table to drive change.

(03:10):

And so these two photos that are posted are one of our international summit in Belfast and our local innovation summit that highlights business owners with disabilities and also bringing together the private sector and really looking at how can we drive and change our supply chains to also support disabled entrepreneurs. At the Harkin Institute, we are located within the Tom and Ruth Harkin Center. I put this picture up of our building because when Senator Harkin, when we inhabited a small space prior to having the center, and Senator Harkin said, well, if we're going to have a center, it must be state of the art and it has to be the most inclusive building in the country. And so together with the architect, they convened a focus group of people with disabilities from anyone who may have autism to an intellectual disability, to cerebral palsy, to a mental health diagnosis, to ADHD, any disability they could think of.

(04:14):

They brought everyone to the table and said, what is it that we're missing? What do we need? And collectively, the feedback was a seat at the table and that drove the entire process of the Tom and Ruth Harkin Center. And so you can find a book online that walks through. We hope that you copy us. We hope that creating inclusive and accessible spaces also drives inclusivity within your workforce. And Daniel, our Disability Policy Director, loves to say, I could break my leg tomorrow and I can still access my office. I can still get to the building. There's nothing that keeps me from coming to work because the building in the space is so accessible. So kind of getting down to our topic around the idea of belonging. So I want you just to take a moment and close your eyes, which shouldn't be hard to do on a Friday morning in New Orleans, and just pause. And I want you to think about a time where you felt like you belonged, where you could be yourself, you could share ideas without feeling like you might be judged, that curiosity would come from that, but you felt like you belonged, you were with your people. And I just want you to fit in that for a second and what that feels like. And then think about going to work and feeling that way and how engaged maybe you felt or productive or excited.

(05:50):

And now I want you to flip to the opposite. And I want you to think about a time, and it doesn't have to be at work, but where you felt like you didn't belong and what's the shift going on in your body? Do you pull your shoulders together? Do you start feeling uncomfortable? Think about that scenario. And as a woman with non apparent disabilities, I can tell you about times where I didn't feel comfortable, I didn't feel like myself. And I want you to open your eyes now and think about when we create that sense of belonging in the workplace, disability or not, it's a benefit. People bring their best selves to work, people are more productive, turnover is down. And so how do we create that sense of belonging, not only diversity and equity and inclusion, but creating that sense of acceptance. And I think so often right now, and this is kind of the rehabilitation counselor that comes out in me, but so much of creating this space within our workplace is dealing with our own discomfort. Because initially when we create teams that are different than our own affinity bias, we like to hire people that remind us of ourselves. But when we bring other people to the table, when we're not looking for a culture fit, we're looking for a culture add. Because when different life experiences are brought to the table, sometimes that can feel uncomfortable like, oh, that's not where I was coming at it. But when we can create a space where people feel valued and heard, that strengthens that future proofs your business when we bring together different perspectives.

(07:49):

So again, what's the KPIs around this? What are the metrics, right? So 50% lower turnover rate, 75% fewer sick days are used, 56% increase in job performance when we create acceptance and belonging in our workplaces. So now let's talk a little bit more specific around disability. So one in four are impacted by disability, and I understand that if you're a data analyst that that means the entire disability community. And not everybody is working from ages zero to 14 or maybe when they're retired. But understanding that a quarter of this room is impacted by disability, the disability community has a combined spending power of 13 trillion. If you are not tapping in to your workforce of people who have disabilities, you are missing a market. And also thinking about your customers, inclusive companies are twice as likely to have higher total shareholder return, 28% higher value, 30% higher profit margins than their peers. So this does make a difference in future proofing your company. I want you to think about, just to keep everybody engaged this morning, just raise your hand if you are comfortable. Everybody just put your hand up and if you use audio book this morning, put your hand down. If you used your electric toothbrush, put your hand down. I'll assume most of you brushed your teeth this morning.

(09:36):

If you sent an email on your phone, put your hand down. Ooh, only a few of you have not sent emails this morning. Well done. So, oh, cruise control. Well, no, nobody probably drove here anymore or here this morning you can put your hands down. So the idea is all of those were rooted in disability innovation. If you've ever blurred the background of your zoom screen, that was a disability innovation driven by someone who was deaf, who needed the distractions out of the background. But we all benefit from flipping on that blurred background. So what do we mean by the value proposition of disability Employment? Very clearly our work at the Institute disability employment is not about charity. We are promoting your bottom line. This is good for business. It's not pity, it's not philanthropy, not altruism, but what it is is it's future proofing your organizations for new markets.

(10:43):

It's innovating products that meet human need. And Molly's going to talk to you about the innovation at John Deere Financial, bringing different lived experiences to your long-term strategy and winning the race to attract the very best talent. This is a slide that we often use just to kind of give you context around disability. That disability is not always seen between mental health, diagnosis, mobility, cognition. This is just a graph showing the various percentages of people who identify with various disabilities. I often hear the statistics referenced about the percentage of people with disabilities that are employed and unemployed. I was actually just on a call with another company yesterday and they were sharing these numbers. And it's important to note because when we think about, oh, well only 4.2 of the disability percentage of the disability communities unemployed, however, the number we have to look at is those not in the labor force because there are a number hundreds, thousands of people with disabilities that want to be working, that want to be contributing, they want to be in the workforce, but they're not captured in that percentage of unemployed.

(12:04):

That's individuals who are furloughed, laid off in that tracking mechanism. So know that there is an entire untapped labor pool and Michelle will talk to you later about how to get into those labor pools. But recognizing not in the labor force is an important statistic. When we talk about competitive integrated employment at the Harken Institute, that means that people with disabilities can access all employment opportunities, earn the same pay as their colleagues, have the same prospects for advancement, mentorship, and personal growth. This is something we often see that people with disabilities, employees with disabilities are often missing out or not being seen for advancement because maybe they compete in the job, the labor market in a different way. When we use traditional metrics, oftentimes we unintentionally are using metrics that don't capture someone at their best, particularly if someone is neurodiverse. And that disability is represented at every single level of the organization.

(13:12):

And this is key if you are in a C-suite position, if you have been impacted by disability, if you are comfortable identifying your own disability, that creates psychological safety and belonging in your organization. But so often we only see that at entry level positions. So disability inclusion is about building the future, building to the future. A couple of quotes from companies that we've had the opportunity to work with at the institute and the one I just want to point out that the Voya is doing good for society, but they're also future proofing their business because we're going to where the market will be in a few years. So talking about also employee benefits that are offered and making sure that inclusivity is part of every level of the organization. And going back to creating the Tom and Ruth Harkin Center that people with disabilities are at the table, right?

(14:11):

So often we make decisions at the highest levels of our company around maybe disability and inclusion, but who's driving those? Are you talking to your employees with disabilities or engaging with your affinity or ERGs? A couple of things before I pass it on to Molly, that with competitive integrated employment requiring that, you're also connecting it to measurement and your business strategy. So at the institute we consult with a couple of companies a year. We keep it small because we really want to work with the companies who are already engaged that say, I want to do this, but I'm not quite sure how. And so we get into the weeds with companies, we look at your policies and we help you develop those KPIs, bring together my words, a disability inclusion advisory board that acts as a compass for the company as well. So this little presentation up here is kind of the Venn diagram of how John Deere Financial, the Harken Institute and Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation came together to really provide support to John Deere Financial and really bringing together this connection to build that diversity, equity and inclusion and support our partners.

(15:30):

This is just a nice little visual right between there's the business and the job candidate. And I think so often businesses say, well yeah, we want to hire people with disabilities, why wouldn't we? But are we still using the same ways to recruit employees when we're also looking at recruiting people with disabilities and recognizing that equity is not just providing the same process for everyone, but it's providing a variety of ways to get your foot in the door. It's not using the same measurement of gauging whether or not you're going to be a great employee based on the impact of your handshake or the amount of eye contact that you're making. And so between the business and the job candidate, we've really provided consultation and influence and within the vocational rehabilitation space. And now it's my pleasure to turn it over to Molly.

Molly Gill (16:25):

Thanks, Ashley. Hi everyone. I am Molly Gill. I am a product manager for John Deere Financial, so I'll break that down a little bit. A product manager, my job is to create software for internal use purposes, and John Deere Financial is the wholly owned financing subsidiary of Deere and Company. We provide financing for our dealers as well as our end use customers. So if you want to go out and buy a nice big tractor, we can help you pay for it. Okay, so I'm not really here as an employee of John Deere Financial. I'm here as a mom. These are my daughters, Cora and Olive. Olive is the younger one and the shorter one and kind of the impetus of all this January 7th is my least favorite day of the year because it is the day we found out she had lost her hearing and our world just turned upside down in an instant.

(17:22):

It felt like a life sentence that all of a sudden, as a person who had been in a hiring role for most of my career, I was like, how is this kid ever going to find a job? How is she going to make it through a phone screening? I'm a very type practical person. I started my career as an accountant. So immediately I went to those type things like how is she going to survive in this world? And it turns out that I've discovered through the Harkin Student book rehab, we do have a lot of options, but it really opened my eyes to how things needed to change and how we could be a better family because of it. So then my older daughter is the taller one there, and she's a picture of what disability has done to make us a better family. That kid is 10 years old and she can navigate the 10-year-old girl drama of the fourth grade effortlessly that her friends will get upset about the most minor things.

(18:24):

And she's like, what? I've been dealing with my deaf sister since I was four years old, that soccer game is just such a minor part of life. And I watched these two and how they work together and they're such a great team and they've made our family such a great team that when the famous reorg John Deere at least of 2020 happened because 2020 wasn't enough on its own. We had a massive reorg and I was taken from a job that I really enjoyed and put into this very creative. Like I said, I'm a type A accountant, very creative product manager role. I was like, oh my gosh, could this year get worse? And all of a sudden I had this problem in front of me where I had to automate a bunch of work within John Deere Financial. We had an area where we were having a really hard time hiring people.

(19:20):

It's very much an entry level job. It's called the Note Auditor job. And we couldn't get people to come work. And I also had to create software in order to automate the process. So all these problems in front of me and I couldn't figure out what to do. And I was talking to one of our super users and he said, I would do a lot better at this job if I didn't listen to podcasts. And it struck me, I was like, we should have deaf people do this job. They would kill it because it's a visual based job. You have to look at the contract and you have to look at the system where the contract was entered into and make sure it all matches up. It at a high level. It's that simple. And I thought we should be hiring deaf people all day long, but how do I do this?

(20:05):

So fast forward to August of 21 and I discovered the Harkin Summit on disability employment and I still had this system I had to design in front of me and I didn't know what I was going to do. And I don't know even who said it. It kind of got off in Molly World for a bit there. And I was like, if we design this thing for accessibility, we could hire a lot more people and we could talk to Vote Rehab, and I bet they could get us more people and we wouldn't have such challenges recruiting for this job. So I went back to work. I was finally excited about this job. It had almost been a year. I was like, oh my gosh, I hate this job, but I found a to bring it home and I liked it again or I started to like it.

(20:50):

So I engaged with our ux, our user experience team, and interestingly, she had a sister who had mannie's disease and she was losing her hearing and she was all excited. She's like, we're going to figure out this accessibility stuff, you and me. So we had a team, me and Youi her sister's in her twenties and having a very hard time finding employment. So we got to work and then we discovered my visions of hiring only deaf people we're going to be very hard. So we started talking with Ashley at the Harkin Institute. They were kind enough to give us some consulting on how we can start moving about it and getting, because we didn't have a budget to work with here, we just had to get this app up and running. And so she was helping us on ideas about how we could do some disability specific hiring.

(21:45):

And meanwhile, in the group we were trying to hire for, I shared my idea and coincidentally, one of the managers in that group had a daughter with autism and she loved the idea of opening up of half of the positions. We had 12 to fill. She's like, we will save six for only neurodivergent candidates. I'm like, that is amazing. You're the best. What about deaf people? She's like, we'll talk. So we had an opening. We had six jobs for only people with disabilities. This is great. So we didn't have a ton of resources around designing for accessibility. So that's when voc rehab entered. And coincidentally, it was my daughter's preschool teacher, her name was Kinzie, who is now a voc rehab counselor. And she came in and did a review for us of our app as a deaf individual. And she shared with us what was good about it, what was bad about it.

(22:43):

We learned so much in that one hour of hearing her direct perspective, this makes sense to me, this doesn't make sense to me. And we took all that feedback back, made a bunch of changes, and within a month we were able to get our super users. So that's our test group into the application. And things went really well. And so then we started onboarding our neurodivergent users in March of 2022. And everybody was on the system by May of 2022. And I'm going to show you some metrics here in a little bit to show it's been super successful. Super successful. So the keys that we found in doing this whole hiring journey together was we really needed our internal resources of the product organization and the user experience group to come together and come up with a great design. We needed those operational partnerships. So when I say that I'm talking about the actual people hiring in the IT space, I'm not hiring my users.

(23:43):

And then also we needed these external partners to help us find the candidates and get all the resources we could to keep things moving along. So when it comes to Iowa voc rehab, the value adds we've really seen are first around the job description. So I worked with the supervisors and we thought, as two moms of children with disabilities, we've got this, we know how to reword this. And we didn't met for, was it like an hour and a half going over what I thought was a super simple job description and there were so many questions. So that was a really eyeopening session with them. But super valuable for us because we have a habit of John Deere speak, which I think every company does. You kind of speak your own language. And we discovered that the way we were wording things could be really confusing for external folks.

(24:37):

And so we rewarded a lot of that. A lot of it was around the clarifications of your must have versus what makes you stand out. We got rid of any acronyms, which if you had slipped in there. And then the big thing that I think we helped educate voc rehab on was what was the definition of customer experience? Customer service experience. That's the main marker to get you into this role. And it was great. The questions they were asking was, does working at target count? Yeah, sure, why not? Does working at a concession stand count? Well, yeah, you're interacting with people, sure, fine. So those questions were really great and really helped us out. They also helped us on the work content a little bit. We did change up the job slightly. We removed the phone work. So we really got to that motivational fit, really focused on the repetitive nature of it and how to bring some of those things forward within the application as we designed it. And then we talked accommodations. But interestingly, the folks we've hired, there hasn't been a need for a ton of accommodations. And then also outside of this specific project, they did introduce us to the working interview. So I don't know if this is common across the nation, the working interview, I don't know, with voc rehab,

Ashlea Lantz (25:58):

Hopefully it will be after today.

Molly Gill (26:01):

So basically instead of a traditional interview, voc rehab finds you a candidate and you agree to take them on and voc rehab pays their expenses for up to 400 hours ish?

Ashlea Lantz (26:15):

320, really close.

Molly Gill (26:15):

320. Okay, really close. So several weeks and instead of the traditional interview, they come in and they work and they train. And so we did use that for a separate role, and it was a really eyeopening experience and a great experience for the candidate. And Michelle will talk more about that in a little bit. So back to my story about what we did within my space is first we focused on our accessible design. And so that's really focused on a better user experience for everyone. And since we were very focused on the Neurodivergent community, some of the things we learned is we needed defined goals upfront. So in the previous world, the users just found out the next day how many contracts they booked.

(27:00):

And in this world we let them know real time what they're doing. In the previous world, their work list was an Excel spreadsheet that they got to pick and choose to do the work as they wanted. In this one, we prioritized their work and put it right out in front of 'em. We worked really hard on creating visual cues so that things popped up to the person. And we also tried to eliminate as many clicks as possible. So we provided links and stuff like that. And then from a workless management perspective, this was definitely a benefit for all users. We gave them the ability to show that they were out of office and not be sent to work list. In the old world, their work list would go out whether or not they were in the office or not. So we were able to really use our accessible design focus to make it a better experience for everyone.

(27:54):

So here's a few more features that we did around managing the workload and giving them the ability to ask for help within the system and add notes. So as again, a type A accountant, here's the stuff that I think is super interesting and I apologize if you don't. So here's our results. Number one, we were able to reduce our training time for this role, which was huge in the past. It took at least two weeks to hire each or to train each person. And we hired 15 people a year. So that was 30 weeks of time spent in training. We were able to cut that in half to one week. So we reduced 15 weeks of non-productive time. And then also in addition to that, the error rate went from 1.5% per user, roughly 1.5% of the work they did. They'd find issues with two less than 0.75%.

(28:52):

And our neurodivergent users arrow rate was significantly lower than the average. So from a productivity perspective, we really had three user types. We had our straight up contingent. So using the contingent agency, they would come in and the contingent contracts were at least 18 months, I believe. So they had been in the job for a while. And then we had our neurodivergent contingents. None of the users knew the difference between each other in the contingent space. And then we also had our full-time employees. So you'll see here that in 2022 that the average for a contingent was booking about 30 apps today because we have two main measurements. One is the number of applications they book in a day, and the second one is the number of tasks they complete. So one application could have five tasks that need to be completed, another could just have one.

(29:46):

So we measure two different ways to kind of see if somebody's getting all the easy ones or how things are getting routed. So if you look at 2022, our contingents were booking about 30 contracts a day. Our neurodivergent contingents were booking 39, and our full-time employees were booking 34. Fast forward to 2023, our regular contingents were up to 31 prior to the application. The average was 20. By the way, our neurodivergent contingent were up to 42 on average. And our full-time had reduced down to 25. So huge productivity measures that really helped us speed some things up because we did have a challenge with our work queues were longer than we wanted them to be. So this is where we get down to that really value add for the company overall. The reason that wait time for booking contracts is a big deal in our world is dealers don't get paid until we book the contract.

(30:46):

Salesmen don't get their bonuses until their dealership gets paid. So if you're a salesman and it takes 10 days to get your bonus, if John Deere financial finances it or maybe a local bank might be a little quicker, where are you going to go? What are you going to push harder? So we really wanted to reduce that queue time down so that we were even a more attractive financing product so that those salesmen knew I'm going to get my bonus right away. So before the application in 2021, it took us an average of 10 days to get applications booked. We implemented the app in mid 2022, it was down to five days. By the end of 2023, we're less than a half day before we can book a contract. So it's great for the dealers, it's great for the salesman, it's great for the team because I mean, it was very defeating to them as we did the interviews and found out what we needed to do for the application, knowing that there was two weeks of work as a backlog that they had to get through.

(31:47):

And whenever you're behind at work, it's not a great feeling. It's very defeating. And so for us, being able to help them chew through that backlog and get it down to less than a day and really speed things up and make the dealers happy, make the customers happy, it was just a great experience all around. So then what did our users say once we implemented all the accessibility work? Well, all great responses here. This is a chart of just the actual user responses. They love the collaboration of it. They love the accessibility and the speed of the performance. So it was just a real big win all around. And if you remember from the first slide, it really didn't take that long to implement. So before I pass it over to Michelle, what's next for us? We are working with our local community college on some part-time student postings that are reserved for just their Strive program is an extension of IEPs into College. Strive allows these students to maintain their IEP while they're at university. And then as job postings come along, we do ask about rehab for some help on occasion just reviewing 'em and getting some feedback on better ways to word the job posting. Thank you. And on to Michelle. Thank you.

Michelle Krefft (33:04):

So I am Michelle Krefft and I am with Iowa Workforce Development. I am the Bureau chief of Business Engagement Disability Services. That's a huge mouthful. And we do all business engagement for vocational rehabilitation. So before I go any further, can you raise your hand if you're familiar with your state's vocational rehabilitation program? Well, I'm really excited. I hope you all take a huge nugget away from today. And that is call your local vocational rehabilitation office in your state. It should be at your state government website. You should be able to search disability services and get to voc rehab. And so we are a federally and state funded program in every state. And the services I'm going to talk to you about should also be available within your state. Molly talked about the job descriptions and the jobs, and Ashley talked a lot about the value of people with disabilities in the workforce.

(34:14):

I'm going to talk to you about how to get the talent. And so at voc rehab, when we got the phone call to come in and collaborate with, I get the best partners, right? My job is so fun. We got to come in and collaborate with these gals and we learned about the job. We brought our voc rehab counselors with us because how in the world can they help a person they're serving with a disability, do the job if they don't understand the job themselves? And so we brought our staff in. They took a tour, they kind of learned about the culture, they really looked at the job descriptions and what made sense and what didn't make sense. Kenzie is one of our deaf counselors. And so we really at voc rehab believe in having a workforce that represents the people we serve. And so we hire counselors with disabilities as Kenzie who is deaf, was able to go out and really identify what was going to help the deaf job candidates she serves.

(35:24):

And so our staff then come back and they meet with job candidates. So in Iowa, we currently have 14,000 job seekers with another 24,000 we serve in high schools. That's a lot of people that is a large talent pool just waiting to work with you on getting a job. And so our counselors have a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling. And what they're doing with our job seekers is they're meeting with them regularly and they're providing counseling and guidance on what does it mean to go to work? What is on time for work? How do you ask for an accommodation? What accommodations do you need? And so their work really revolves around preparing those job seekers for work. We're looking at the essential functions. We're determining if they're able to do the essential functions and if they're not able to do them, is there an accommodation or potentially a job modification that would help that person be successful?

(36:32):

We then like to help make sure the onboarding is successful. And then the retention, what's most important to us is that our job seekers are still employed years later. The last thing we want to do is refer somebody who is going to leave within a couple of days because that's not good for you. It's not good for the job seekers. And so we really work on making sure we get the right people in the right jobs so that everybody at the end of the day loves the program, which I feel like in Iowa, they pretty much do hopefully. So I just wanted to share a couple success stories at John Deere. The first one I want to show you is Libby. Libby is on the screen with a bright green John Deere hat sitting at a desk with a computer in front of her. Libby was hired in 2018 at the John Deere factory in Dubuque, Iowa, and she started as a material handler while Libby was working.

(37:40):

She went back to school and got her MBA and she was promoted to a supply management specialist. And so I think that that's a good showcase of upskilling and bringing somebody with a disability in having them learn the job, get more education, and then growing within the job. And my guess is Libby is going to be there forever because she absolutely loves her career. Molly talked about the working interview, and so I'd like to introduce you to Joe. Joe is one of our students in college for finance. And Joe had a difficult time with a traditional interview, but his counselor knew that he had some pretty amazing skills and was going to make a wonderful employee. And so Joe participated in 320 hours of that working interview at John Deere Financial, and we wanted to get a video of Joe, but he got a little nervous and didn't want to get in front of the camera.

(38:53):

So I have a quote, and I'm sorry, I have to read the quote so I'm not going to look at you. I don't want to mess up his quote. So Joe says, this opportunity meant a lot to me because it allowed me to gain the experience within the accounting and financial fields of work. And if I'm being truly honest, it was not for the assistance of Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation services, I would not have had this opportunity. My advice to others looking for opportunity within finance and accounting and working for a large company like John Deere is to soak it all in like a sponge. It was a great opportunity to learn what you like and what you didn't like about the job.

(39:39):

And so we are really running towards the end of our time. I'm going to just briefly share with you some of the services you can expect from vocational rehabilitation. And then the next three slides, I'm not going to go to them, but they're going to be resources for you and then we're going to open it up for questions. Some of the things that your state voc rehab office can do would be to assist you with inclusive language and jobs descriptions, helping you make sure those postings are inclusive of people with disabilities. We are able to look at your websites and your publications to make sure they're accessible for all users. We like to look at your application and your interview process and make some suggestions for maybe making that different for attracting a larger talent pool. We provide disability sensitivity trainings. So a lot of times our staff will go in and do lunches with businesses multiple months in a row and do a series of trainings.

(40:52):

We really like all levels of management at those trainings. So we work a lot with hr, but if we don't provide that training to the hiring managers and other people that are going to work with the individuals that we bring in, sometimes it's not always successful. So we think it's really important to have a lot of people at the table. We really look at the jobs and the tasks of the jobs, so we are able to understand it and then provide that information back to our job seekers. And then with some of those safety assessments of both your physical building and your programmatic materials, some of the important things I think we do are the retention services. So like I said earlier, when you hire a person with a disability from vocational rehabilitation, we are able to come in at any point during their employment, whether it be two years or 20 years, we are able to come in and provide some retention services to make sure that you are able to keep that valuable person. And so with that, I think we have about 10 minutes for questions. Don't be shy.

DEAMcon Attendee (42:14):

Yeah, I know. Just a quick question. So do you feel or has data been documented that retention services, when you're talking about retention services for persons with disability, do you find that they're equally beneficial for persons with abilities?

Michelle Krefft (42:31):

Yes. I feel like if we do it right from the beginning and all of us are at the table and we are making an inclusive and welcoming and belonging environment for everyone, the retention for anybody is better.

Ashlea Lantz (42:52):

I think going to Molly's example around the usability or how many of you raised your hand using your smartphone every day that was built in mind of disability is innovation. Because if we are designing things with the utmost of accessibility, that's good for everybody. And I think we see that retention is stronger across the board because people feel more, I think they feel a sense of belonging. There's teamness, but also the usability, I think of your tools that are also developed increases as well. So just it's a benefit for everyone. Good question.

DEAMcon Attendee (43:38):

So I may be with John Deere also and have worked with these three, and they have done a wonderful job for us, and their commitment and support has been awesome. So if you'd just like to maybe share with the audience what you see or what you hope for in the future for Olive. We're at this point in time now, but where do you like to aspire to for people in corporate America?

Molly Gill (44:05):

Sure. I'll start with that. So Olive is eight and under parents' wishes, in her IEP, we have that. She's a taxpayer. Again, I'm very much an accountant because to me that's all encompassing. I want her to contribute to society. I want her to have a job. And she is such a hard worker. The kid would be super unhappy to not be a meaningful member of society. So seeing what we've done at Deere, I have hope that she will be able to have a career in whatever she wants. I mean, she's way more creative than I am, so I would be shocked if she took a similar career track as me. But I think there's a lot of opportunity. We have a long ways to go as far as making the application process and everything as accessible as possible and really leveling that playing field. We have some work to do, but I think we're starting the work. We're doing the work. And in the next 10 years, I think we'll get there.

Ashlea Lantz (45:09):

Building on what Molly shared, I think in 10 years, I hope that disability is not a bad word right now. Disability still kind of comes with that implicit bias of less than. And if we could flip it to, well, if I felt comfortable enough to share my disability in my cover letter, I read that and I go, oh, this is a person I've got to bring to the table that I want to know more about. Because disability often means creativity and innovation because that person has been living and operating in a society that wasn't necessarily designed for them. So oftentimes they're the most creative people on your team, and that we find a variety of ways to support people to get their foot in the door. Yesterday we talked about AI, what you put into the AI system is what comes out. And that bias, right?

(46:07):

So do you have a group of people with disabilities also auditing your AI systems or the working interview, which allows someone to really, truly compete rather than more of our traditional process. When we think about the parody of access at high school students, are we making sure that students with disabilities are also part of those training opportunities and investing in students so that the goal is that Olive is going to be competitive. She's going to be employed, she is going to be, A

Molly Gill (46:42):

Oh, she's competitive

Ashlea Lantz (46:43):

A badass female with a disability, killing it in the workforce, making more money than her parents. That I think is the hope then taking care of her parents. But I think we're having conversations now that we weren't having 10 years ago, and this is a solution to a workforce crisis and leveling the playing field, I think.

Michelle Krefft (47:09):

Well, and I think another, I don't know if any of you attended the session yesterday by Recruit Rooster. They talked about by 2025, 25% of our workforce will be Gen Z. And then the previous day, our keynote had said 55% of Gen Zs receive treatment for mental health, and they're willing to talk about it. And so thinking about the future, we have a whole generation that's willing to talk about their disability. And I think that's going to change the landscape of everything that we know today. Because like Ashley mentioned in the past, it's been a bad word. And I think moving forward, it is not a bad word. People are talking about it.

DEAMcon Attendee (47:59):

My question is, with the DEI programs, they're cutting back in organizations and funding sometimes for newer diverse candidates, sometimes business units take on the cost, and that cost sometimes can be shared with the voc rehab. So could you talk more about that and what that's looking like for you and how is that working for you? Because I'm concerned about that as well.

Ashlea Lantz (48:26):

Absolutely. Do you want to talk about it from the VR perspective?

Michelle Krefft (48:28):

Yeah, go ahead.

Ashlea Lantz (48:32):

I think the DE& I topic is a tough one right now. And I think when we think about creating places of work that are universal and that they are accessible. And the other piece around disability is it’s intersectional. Right, and that when we create it’s about creating inclusive workplaces. And there are KPIs and metrics around that and I think we have to really look at it from instead of having DE&I as this affinity group that this is something that is culturally part of every single piece of your work. That’s future proofing. That’s building long term value of your companies and when we talk about this next generation, I think if we are planning for them, they are going to blow us over. Because they want that I think in workplaces. So that’s my personal hope and I know I come at it sometimes from a Pollyanna perspective but we’ve got to make sure it’s part of everything that we do in our work.

Michelle Krefft (49:39):

Well, and I feel like if you reach out to your local vocational rehabilitation, they might be able to help you. So one of the things we do in Iowa is we embed staff within business, and that means that we have a staff that's fully immersed in that business. They're there regularly. They're checking in on the people they've placed. They're helping HR with accommodation requests that come in, and they're helping with some of those groups. And so they're a speaker at the group, they're a resource at the group. Maybe they're just meeting with potential new applicants. So maybe one of your employees acquired a disability and they are struggling to do their job. And so they could go in and meet with that VR staff and talk about what resources are available them, including becoming a, in Iowa, we call them job candidates, but maybe in other states they call them clients of vocational rehabilitation. And so I think that you could work with vocational rehabilitation to develop something that works for your company. And of course, since we're funded by the federal and state government, there would be no charge for you to have that individual within your organization.

Ashlea Lantz (50:56):

I think building off that, there's a huge opportunity where with Michelle, talking about state vocational rehabilitation and federal policies such as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act, that really focuses on high school students. And I think there's opportunities for vocational rehabilitation to help companies develop training pipelines that are within schools that could have more universally designed training at the high school level, at the post-secondary level, where there are state and federal funds that honestly are a bit untapped to build that pipeline for more skilled positions as well.

Molly Gill (51:41):

From a tactical perspective, what we've experienced is you need to plan out ahead, especially if you're working with students with disabilities, if there's an IEP involved, you need to be six months ahead of your start date. We're generally not that far out, so we've learned a lot, but it's been great as far as the candidates we're getting. You just have to plan a lot further out than we typically do.

Michelle Krefft (52:07):

Well, and to piggyback off the IEP, if you get involved early enough, the school can change the IEP goals. We had a young man who had difficulty reading and writing, and his IEP goal didn't make sense, and so he wanted to be a welder. And so we partnered with a business and his reading goal became reading a blueprint. His math goal became using a tape measure and converting measurements to decimals. So they were very practical to his goal so that when he graduated from high school, he was instantly hired as a welder, making probably more than me and loving life.

DirectEmployers (52:58):

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