Saving One Star Fish: Employing People with Disabilities

27 Oct

I had the pleasure of being part of a Rotary Club in Omaha, Nebraska. For the last several years we’ve had an annual award we call the “Able Workplace”, which recognizes employers that are doing an effective job of hiring individuals with disabilites. We started the award to shed light on a significant problem– the unemployment and underemployment of persons with disabilities.

Truth be said, as a society we do a rather terrible job of including the disabled in the workplace. According to a  study released this summer, the unemployment and underemployment of individuals with disabilities is 80% higher than the rest of the population.

Shameful.

To address this, we thought it would be worthwhile to highlight companies that are doing a good job of bringing the disabled into their place of work. We thought if we could shed some light on these companies that we could learn from them and perhaps inspire other companies.

This year we recongized a company that had hired a young man who has been diagnosed on the autism spectrum. He likes to work with computers, and the social services agency that has been working with him thought he might work out doing data entry for this company.

He initally failed the typing test they require, but he was pretty close to passing, so the supervisor invited him to come back the next week. He passed the second time and was employed.

It’s worked out wonderfully.

A couple of things worth noting. This young man, previous to being employed with this company, didn’t have a job and had been languishing at home. What was waste, that a person who could meaningfully contribute was sitting at home for months.

The other thing of note was the company president, when being notified about this recognition from our club for working with this young man, didn’t even know he had a disability! He said to me: “I’ve met him a few times in the hallway and break room, and he just seemed like everyone else around here”.

Just like everyone else.

Yes, folks with disabilities may be a bit different, but they probably have more in common with the rest of us than we realize. Just like us, they want meaningful work that adds value to their employer. They want to be paid fairly for their labor.

They want a chance.

There’s a story about a young girl on a beach throwing starfish back in the ocean. They’ll die if they aren’t returned to the ocean, and the beach is littered with them. A man walking by sees the girl. He asks her: “There are so many star fish. How can you expect to make a difference?” She picked up another star fish, threw it back in the ocean and turned to him and said: “I made a difference for that one.”

None of us can help everyone who is disabled find meaningful employment. But the company we honored this week made a difference for one person. For one good person who just needed a opportunity to show their talents.

Who else out there is ready to make a difference for one “star fish”?

(photo courtesy of stock.exchng)

Tags:

Batting Practice at the Secret Park

5 Oct

My knee hurt, and I didn’t want to go.

But Jacob was determined to get in some batting practice, so we walked to the park where I would dutifully pitch and he would hit.

My knee was throbbing, but I knew this was important to him. He had requested my participation the day before, but the rain had kept us inside. I probably should have found more comfortable shoes for this outing but I was too lazy to trek upstairs, and I muttered to myself that I would have to bear this discomfort so number-one-son could enjoy batting practice.

“Number one son”.

So much can be wrapped up in this notion—you have a son in whom you place so many dreams and hopes.

We play at the “Secret Park”.

It’s not really secret, but it’s a park that is in an out-of-the-way area that doesn’t get much use, so we christened it such. My favorite part of batting practice at the Secret Park is we play in the middle of a grove of oak trees. I position myself so two of the larger trees are a few yards behind me, acting as center and right fielders, knocking down a few of Jacob’s fly balls in mid-air and reducing my retrieval time. I call these grand oaks the “Say Hey” and “Roberto” trees, after my idols Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. Being October in Nebraska, Say Hey and Roberto have fewer leaves, so balls often steal through their branches. They will improve their fielding percentage as spring returns.

Darn, “Say Hey” missed another one. “Nice hit,” I say, as I turn and trot after it. My knee is really going to be sore by the end of this.

At the Secret Park, Jacob is completely in his element. He is at peace.

Time stops for him.

All that counts is that he has a bat in his hand and his father is pitching. He loves to hit a baseball, and is actually quite adept at the task. I pitch it high, I pitch it low, or I take a little speed off. No matter, he makes contact.

Other intricacies of baseball—when to hit and run, the suicide squeeze, the double switch, a balk–are not things he comprehends. Jacob will never share my love of baseball strategy. He won’t pore over the box scores or the statistics of his favorite players the way my dad and I did. But tonight, the reasons why father and son love baseball don’t matter.

It is a picturesque night. It’s cool, and the flush of my face feels good. Not a whiff of wind. I wiggle my knee. No pain.

Jacob calls for another pitch.

A mom and dad stroll by with two toddlers in tow, stopping to watch Jacob’s hitting exhibition. They don’t know he has this severe disability called autism. They just see a kid having fun with his old man– dad pitching and son hitting. I wonder what kinds of dreams they have for their child, what hopes they harbor. I wonder what they would be thinking about the future of their child if they knew about their baby what I know about our son. They pass. Jacob turns toward me and puts his bat at the ready.

I’ll try to remember everything about this night, the grass still green before the coming winter, the pale blue sky, the joy in Jacob’s eyes. There are going to be times, probably very soon, that will be difficult, when life with our son will be much harder, when his disability will overwhelm him and our family, when this world of ours will not be welcoming or gracious to folks like our Jacob.

But tonight, we’re taking batting practice at the Secret Park, and it is enough.

(Photo courtesy of Stock.xchang)

What The Janitor Can Tell You About Your Culture

29 Aug

An executive in a professional services firm, known and recognized widely as an engaging, productive workplace, was working late at his office. Most folks had gone home for the night, but he stayed to finish an important report.

As he was packing his briefcase to leave he met the man who was contracted to clean the offices in the evening. The executive had met him before, and he stopped for some small talk.

As their conversation was ending, the janitor said: “People must really like working here”.

“What makes you say that”, inquired the executive.

“That’s easy”, said the janitor.  “People who work here take care of things and treat the building and equipment with respect. They pick up after themselves. At other companies where I work stuff is trashed and broken. They don’t care about the place like employees here. It seems to me if you like where you work you care more about how the place looks. You’re more responsible.”

He’s right. There’s plenty of research out there to support this idea, such as more engaged manufacturing facilities having less equipment problems because employees take better care of them, or more engaged retail establishments having less “shrinkage”, which is our politically correct euphemism for employee theft. We talk about this linkage of employee engagement and key business outcomes in chapter one of Re-Engage.

How we treat employees and what we do to develop a culture that engages our associates can ripple, felt by our employees and those with whom we interact beyond our payroll-customers, vendors and even outside contractors like the janitor.

Want to know whether your workplace is engaged? Ask your janitor.

(Photo courtesty of http://www.sxc.hu/photo/743360)

Disability Doesn’t Mean Inability—Paul’s Story

18 Aug

In junior high I spent many a Saturday morning in a bowling league at our local alley. On the lanes adjacent to our league was a league for individuals with disabilities. They were a generally likable bunch. We often said our hellos and cheered for each other when someone did well. They also were kind in consoling me when I threw yet another embarrassing gutter ball.

One of the regulars in that bowling league was Paul. I don’t believe Paul could keep score in bowling, could hold a conversation beyond a few basic words, or read the sentence I’m writing. Paul had a profound cognitive disability.

But there is one thing I can attest to about Paul—he was a extraordinary bowler.

Paul was a delight to watch. His approach to the pins was graceful and smooth, and the ball seemed to explode out of his hand toward its target. When his ball hit the pins there was a deafening sound, a shatter, which echoed through the whole place. It seemed like the pins knew better than resist, and went scurrying to the gutter.

One Saturday Paul was really “on a roll”. He bowled one strike, then another, yet another, and then another. I noticed several people watching this display. Nobody cared Paul had a disability. What counted was that Paul could take up a bowling ball and perform a difficult task, and do so with excellence. And his audience found it worth their time to watch his handiwork.

I’m grateful for folks in that league. And I’m particularly grateful for Paul, because he taught me an exceptionally important lesson—disability doesn’t mean inability.

Yes, Paul was disabled. But he also had a talent.

He could bowl, could do so superbly, better than most. And I’d bet there are other things Paul could do. I’d wager each of the members of that league had some skill or ability that could be put to good use.

I think of Paul as we struggle to hire individuals with disabilities. The unemployment and underemployment of persons with disabilities is staggeringly high, several times the rate of the so-called able-bodied population. And according to government statistics this community has been penalized even more in the recession, losing jobs at a higher rate and when employed at a far lower wage.

I wonder if one of the problems we have in hiring people like Paul is because we only see disability; we don’t look for or see the talents or skills or potential that may be there.

We only see what the Paul’s of the world can’t do, versus what they can do.

A car dealership I know hired a young man who is on the autism spectrum. As is the case with many individuals with this disability, he was a compulsive type, who liked things neat and orderly and clean. The dealership trained him to be a detailer, preparing cars for customers. After a few weeks on the job his manager remarked: “He’s the best detailer we’ve ever had. Customers love how he takes care of their car.”

Another company I know has been hiring disabled employees for years. Compared to peer groups this cohort of disabled employees  stay longer, are absent less, and even use less health benefits.  And the cost, on average, to make “reasonable accommodations” so these employees can be successful contributors? About a hundred bucks.

Kudos to these employers.

They look beyond disability and see an opportunity where good people can contribute, can add value, and like my bowling pal Paul, can do something very, very well. I’d bet there are many more opportunities for employers to secure the talents of folks who may be disabled, but who can, like Paul, bowl a perfect game.

Leigh Branham on why good employees leave

25 Jul

My colleague and friend Leigh Branham has reported his latest findings on why good employees leave. The full report can be found today at our web site Re-EngageBook.com.

The summary clearly shows that the vast majority of employee turnover is largely within the control of company leadership and direct line supervisor. Leigh summarizes the study:

  • Most Turnover is Avoidable. The vast majority of respondents–94%– report leaving for push reasons than for pull reasons–only 6%. These percentages are almost exactly the same as those reported in my analysis of post-exit data from the Saratoga Institute in The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave (AMACOM, 2005). These more recent findings add still more evidence that most turnover is at least potentially preventable if there is a commitment to re-engage and keep the individual. Of course, we may not care to avoid some turnover, though it may be avoidable.
  • Trust in Senior Leaders: The #1 Reason…But Why? The most-cited reason for leaving was lack of trust in senior leaders. This may surprise some and certainly runs counter to conventional wisdom that employees leave managers–usually interpreted as one’s immediate boss. However, this finding confirms the conclusion Mark Hirschfeld and I presented in our analysis of 2.1 million engagement surveys from 10,000 employers, as described in Re-Engage (McGraw-Hill, 2010)–that caring, competent, and trustworthy senior leadership is the number one driver of employee engagement. We believe this may be related to the events of the past 10 years–the fall from grace of many CEO found guilty of malfeasance, reports of disproportionate CEO compensation, and the greed of Wall Street senior executives before and after the financial collapse of 2008. CEOs, who were considered innocent until proven guilty, are now considered by many guilty until proven innocent. This generalized distrust may be having a dual and counterintuitive effect–increasing employee cynicism while at the same time raising expectations of CEO behavior at our own employers.
  • Pay is A Significant Push Factor For Some. Insufficient pay was the second most-cited reason for leaving and continues to be a “dissatisfier” that causes some employees to move on. Actually, as you may have noticed, three of the 39 reasons are pay-related. When we add reasons #17 (Pay not based on performance) and #19 (Unfair pay practices), the percentage that selected pay-related reasons becomes 10.4%, still second to senior leadership, but a significant root cause for many. Note that reasons #17 and #19 have more to do with dissatisfaction with the way pay is determined, not the amount of pay per se–an important distinction.  Keep in mind also that respondents were asked to cite up to five reasons for leaving, so that pay may not be the number one reason, but one among a handful of others.
  • Leaders and Managers Can Prevent the Push Factors. Reason #3–Unhealthy/undesirable culture–is mostly influenced by the values, mindsets, and standards of senior leaders, but also by managers who must be counted on to uphold the cultural values and people practices. Most of the remaining push factors in the list can be influenced and prevented by the actions of both senior leaders, managers, and supervisors. “Lack of work/life balance”, for example, is influenced by staffing/budget decisions and work/life policies made at the most senior levels, but also by the daily decisions of direct managers about granting time off to care for sick children and family emergencies, etc.

For additional information, please check out Leigh’s web site: Keeping The People.

Tags: ,

Culture Clash

6 Jul

I had the pleasure of co-authoring an article with Rob Moss on the importance of paying attention to differences in culture between two organizations that are considering a merger or integration. The article appears in hfm magazine, a publication of the HealthCare Financial Management Association.

Here’s a link to the entire article, entitled Culture Clash.

Tags: , ,

The Wisdom of Sergeant Esterhaus

1 Jul

“And hey, let’s be careful out there.”

For fans of television’s Hill Street Blues, this is the admonition that Sergeant Phil Esterhaus proffers at the end of roll call to his fellow police officers as they head out to face the dangers that unfolded each week on the 1980’s Steven Bochco drama. It turns out companies who are recognized as “Best-Places-to-Work” have leaders much like Sergeant Esterhaus, who are effectively managing employees in a way that creates a more productive and safe work environment. Consider the following comments from employees who work at highly engaged workplaces:

“I have worked in this industry my entire career and have never come across an employer more concerned about safety than our company. Nobody gets placed on a job here until they have completed an intense safety training course. And continuing education is not an option. We will shut down a job before we proceed any further if the safety issues aren’t 100% in order. There are no exceptions. Everybody comes home at night.”

“We have a great, safe office!  We have gone more than 7 years being incident-free and injury-free and were recently given an award by the president of the company personally at a celebration.  Our office is used as the bar in most other offices globally.  The atmosphere here is much different in our office due to our camaraderie and caring for one another.”

The leaders at these companies have taken approaches that are making a significant difference. Several independent studies support the idea that a more engaged workforce is a safer workforce. One such study showed that after factory floor workers were given the training and freedom to make repairs to their own equipment rather than having to call a supervisor every time they had a problem, they reported fewer occupational injuries and increased job satisfaction.

Contrast that with the employers we see reflected in the comments of their disaffected employees, for whom the idea of engagement is no more real than the dramas we see on our television screens:

“Most people are job-scared– too much negative reinforcement.  Management is more concerned about the Pay-For-Performance than the safety of the workers. They are so busy cutting costs that they don’t care about the safety factors involved in maintaining our heavy equipment and cranes.  Managers speak out the side of their mouths.”

“I have been an OR nurse for over 20 years and this is by far the worst surgery department I have ever worked in.  Management does not treat employees with respect, nor do employees feel as if they are valued members of a team.  Managers are also unprofessional and condescending.  If you asked the Registered Nurses why they remain at the hospital, the overwhelming response would be because of the money.    In addition, patient safety is often compromised and nothing is done to rectify the problems.” 

“I work between shifts and the manager for the second half of my shift is a total loser. She can get the schedule correct and just does not know to manage. They have put into effect practices with total disregard for the safety of the employees. With constant standing, many employees, me included, are having leg, knee, leg, and back problems.”

According to the U.S. government an injured worker spends an average of eight days away from work. A bit of sage advice applies here: “prepare and prevent, don’t repair and repent”.  More employers should take a Sergeant Esterhaus approach to safety and employee engagement.

As we think about the steps we should take to create and maintain a great workplace, let’s be careful out there.  It all starts with caring enough to take action.

Tags: ,

In Ten Words

15 Jun

At a recent Best-Places-to-Work award event each employer who was recognized for their exceptional level of employee engagement was given very specific instructions on what to say in their acceptance speech. As they came to the podium to receive their award they were each asked to respond to the following: “In ten words or less, describe why your company is a great place to work.”

Here are a few of the responses (not all in the ten word limit), but worth examining:

  • “Passionate, zany culture with remarkable service.”
  • “Great people who love brutally competitive athletic competitions.”
  • “Hire passionate people and unleash them.”
  • “Mission made possible by exceptional people.”
  • “Corporate social responsibility is alive and well.”
  • “Challenge each of our partners to the best every day.”
  • “Our team gets to live summer camp every day.”
  • “We exist to build great things through great people.”
  • “We’re 100% employee owned and don’t work for a rich guy.”
  • “Fun loving people with great interest rates. Call us!”
  • “An environment for great people to become exceptional.”
  • “Care for employees. They care for customers. The rest takes care of itself.”
  • “It’s an honor to serve our customers.”
  • “Golden Age of biology. What could be more exciting?”
  • “It’s easy to love your job when you get to help patients and do it in jeans.”

Mind you, these were all given impromptu, but they show a passion and care for their employees. The most applause went to the financial services firm who ended their statement with “call us”. Clever, but indicative of their culture.

You’ll also note they’re different. They don’t all focus on the same thing, which fits with what we see in the most engaging employers, those who take the building blocks of great workplaces and add their unique “spin”. We call this evolution turning “employee engagement universal drivers into signature drivers.” The great cultures we’ve studied have many elements in common, but they’re able to forge those elements into something that fits who they are. In doing so their culture is more bullet-proof, one that can withstand the elements.

How would you, in ten words or less, describe why your company is a great place to work? I’ve used this question in workshops and conferences since then, and I highly recommend you start asking it where you work:

  • Try it at a staff meeting.
  • Talk to the human resources recruiters who are out in the market and see what they’re saying to prospective employees.
  • Take a few minutes at a senior leadership meeting and see what kind of discussion you have.
  • Ask a few valued customers.

This exercise might sound straightforward, but don’t let its simplicity fool you. I’m guessing it might create worthwhile dialog. You might note, for example, that some of your associates have trouble coming up with any description about why you’re a great place to work-might that be a problem? Or how would you feel if you did this with a group of your leaders and they couldn’t agree with what makes this a great workplace-that’s a problem too, right?

I think companies with highly engaged workplaces do a lot of things right, and one of the outcomes of their efforts is they have a language about people stuff. It’s a language that aligns them. It’s a language that makes talking about certain things much easier.

Ten words to describe why you’re a great place to work. Try it.

Living In Fear At Work Is No Way To Live

18 May

I spoke with a friend of mine who is looking to leave her current employer. She is an outstanding employee– hard working, highly skilled in her functional area, considerate and helpful to her coworkers, and passionate about serving others.  Her direct supervisor loves her; in fact, when her supervisor learned she was being wooed by another company a couple of years ago she was persuaded to stay.

Why would someone leave a job they like with a supervisor who wants to keep them? A senior leadership team that uses fear and intimidation as their modus operandi, that’s why. Here’s what she told me:

Most people here are walking on egg shells around the CEO, who is a tyrrant. We are all scared of her irrational behavior. There are times when she intimidates people, thinking this somehow will motivate them. It does just the opposite. My boss tries to shield me from this, but the fear people feel in the office can be cut with a knife. I love what I do, but life is too short to put up with this crap.

I feel badly for my friend. She is a good employee stuck in a company run by a leader who should be supervising a Cold War Soviet gulag instead of a twenty-first century company.  Sadly, her lament is something we hear far too often from employees who weigh in via employee engagement surveys collected by our research partner Quantum Workplace. Here’s an employee offering a similar sentiment:

There is too much fear in the organization. It prevents us from making quick and decisive decisions. Form over substance is the primary guide for certain management. Heavy politics prevents success.

What a shame. What a waste of time and talent. The philosopher Sophocles said “To him who is in fear everything rustles”. Too many employees are in environments where they “rustle”, where their hearts and heads cannot be put fully to the task at hand for fear of the despot leader.

Of course, people don’t have to be managed by fear and intimidation. The companies with highly engaged employees we studied and who are profiled in Re-Engage actually work hard to minimize fear, knowing that this approach brings little long-term value to the enterprise. Contrast these feelings with the following employee, who lauds his employer for allaying fear in the midst of these more difficult economic times:

In these uncertain times the leadership of the office has gone out of its way to hold staff-wide meetings to keep us informed of how the firm is doing and what it is doing, short of layoffs, to hold down expenses, and to try, generally, to assuage the fear that is naturally going on right now.    Trusts its employees to do their respective jobs without undue interference or micromanagement.

Here’s another employee, who has chosen to stay with her employer, in part because of a leader she can trust:

I have had opportunities to leave the organization, but have chosen to stay because of the leadership of our operation and the opportunities that are afforded me and my fellow employees.  I believe leadership is honest and provide crucial information about the current state of our industry in light of the economic down turn.  This transparency has kept me here.

Bravo.

Employees don’t have to be motivated by “do-this-or-else”. Leaders who feel a need to manage by fear and intimidation are, in my view, broken. In this case of my friend, the CEO has a Napoleon complex that serves no one. It’s pathetic, really.

We’ve found employees can be motivated in so many more productive ways, such as desire to contribute to something important, a need to feel part of a productive team, or an opportunity build one’s skills and talents.  What leaders need to do is help employees find the best within them to bring out that talent.

Want to engage and re-engage employees? Stop leading with fear.

(Photo from by stuant6 on Flickr)

Tags: ,

Killer Culture???

23 Mar

Could the organizational culture of a hospital impact patient health? Put more bluntly, can a poor culture kill patients? According to recent research, reported by the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, the answer is yes.

Researchers from Yale studied the top 5% of hospitals whose patients were still alive 30 days after a heart attack, and compared those results to the bottom 5% of hospitals. Their findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine conclude:

Hospitals in the high-performing and low-performing groups differed substantially in the domains of organizational values and goals, senior management involvement, broad staff presence and expertise in AMI (acute myocardial infarction) care, communication and coordination among groups, and problem solving and learning.

What does a “healthy” hospital culture look like? The researchers report on a number of factors, including how mistakes are viewed and the regard given all hospital employees. From the Wall Street Journal blog, citing Leslie Curry, one of the Yale researchers:

Using mistakes as learning experiences as opposed to reasons for punishment was another characteristic of top performers, Curry says. And views of nurses, pharmacists, technicians and even housekeeping staff were highly valued in the team approach used at the best hospitals, she added.

A few years ago I conducted a study of employee engagement at twenty U.S. hospitals. They were the top and bottom ten in employee engagement rankings from a national sample, provided to me by the research firm Quantum Workplace. 

What differentiated the top 10 hospitals from the bottom 10? My analysis revealed that employees at the highest-scoring hospitals are more likely to have:

  • A strong feeling that the senior leadership of the hospital is committed to making it a great place to work and truly values employees as their most important resource,
  • Confidence in the organization’s future success and an understanding of how the employees contribute to that success,
  • Open and honest communication between employees and managers,
  • A sense that the hospital is committed to investing in employees, an investment that will help them develop their careers,
  • Opportunities for employees to be recognized when they contribute to the organization’s success,
  • Fair pay for their contributions, and
  • Benefits that are not perceived as typical of other organizations.

An employee at a bottom ten hospital summarized how she believes the culture where she works impacts the health and safety of patients:

Employee morale is reflected daily in patient care. I work on a unit where our director does not know our names, or interact with us. Although she is a nice person, her personality comes off as uncaring. This creates anger and frustration on the unit with the staff which creates less caring behavior for our patients. If the hospital wants its retention rate to increase or stabilize, they need to take the time to ensure that employees are well taken care of, and that their needs are being met.

These studies point to the same challenge-the culture of a hospital can impact patient mortality. Having honest discussions about hospital culture needs to occur more frequently and steps should be taken to build a more engaging, healthier culture.

Patient lives depend on it.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →