Ready & Able Sidebar: Shared Insight
Tips from Walgreens on employing people with disabilities
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Andrew French
The Walgreen Co. (WAG) has hosted executives and employees from Lowe’s Companies Inc. (LOW), Best Buy Co. Inc. (BBY) and other companies at its facilities to demonstrate how they can successfully employ people with disabilities. Here’s some advice from the Walgreens team.
1. Start With a Rock Star
If the first person you hire with an obvious disability does well, doubters are likely to be won over.
2. Find a Staffing Partner
“Tap into the expertise of a [local] agency that serves people with disabilities,” says Deb Russell, Walgreens’ manager of outreach and employee services. Such an agency can provide job candidates and often offer preliminary training to ease people with disabilities into the workforce. In addition, it can advise on what people with specific disabilities need to be successful in their jobs.
3. Face Fears With Education
While Walgreens does not provide extra training for its employees with disabilities, it does coach managers and co-workers on how to be sensitive to those employees.
4. Regard People Individually
“A lot of our managers were concerned about saying the wrong thing or making a mistake when working with people with disabilities,” Russell recalls. But there are no rules, and unexpected obstacles are sure to arise. “We have to learn what works for each individual,” she says. “That may involve taking some risks — for example, trying someone at different workstations or looking for different motivators.”
5. Hold Your Ground on Standards
According to Randy Lewis, Walgreens’ senior vice president of supply chain and logistics, “everybody has to do their job, and we pay our employees with disabilities the same as we pay everyone else.”
6. Shrug Off Criticism
“We hear that we’re employing too many people with a particular disability and not enough with a different disability,” Russell says. “We hear we’re hiding people with disabilities by having them work in our distribution centers. We just take it all in stride.” And Walgreens will continue to do so, because “this is the best thing our company has ever done,” Lewis says.
