11 April 2008
How One Company Approaches Disability
From hiring and training employees to product development, the Microsoft Corporation is a leader in serving people with disabilities.
Technology has changed all our lives, but perhaps has had the most impact for persons with disabilities, opening new worlds of communication, access, work, and education. With the current estimate of more than 54 million people in the United States with some form of disability, people with disabilities and their caregivers and family members are a highly attractive market. Microsoft realizes that to understand this group, to know what will meet their needs, and to know how to reach them, the company can benefit from the insights provided by employees with disabilities.
If you use the Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia and look up the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King Jr., you will be able to hear his voice giving the speech. But you can also see the text written across the bottom of the screen. This addition, unique for this type of product, makes Encarta more useful to many customers and potential customers. Adding closed captioning to Encarta was the suggestion of a Microsoft employee who is deaf. This is only one example of the kind of contribution employees with disabilities can make to product development and marketing.
Microsoft has developed a multifaceted strategy to attract and retain qualified employees, including employees with disabilities, and to help them create products and services for people of all abilities. The company participates each year in National Disability Mentoring Day to help introduce students with disabilities to the world of work, and Microsoft encourages employees with disabilities to be involved. Students with disabilities often have had fewer opportunities to spend time in a work place, talking to professionals doing the kind of work in which they are interested, and even fewer opportunities to see people with their kind of disability succeeding in their target career. The mentoring program fills this need, while serving as an important element of Microsoft's outreach to this employee pool.
Like most companies, Microsoft has a recruitment program to attract talented individuals, including those with disabilities. But recruiters sometimes were concerned about how to approach these students, how to communicate with them, and how to make sure the team that conducted subsequent interviews was prepared to appreciate the candidates' qualifications. Microsoft developed training for their recruiters to smooth this process. But their efforts did not stop there.
According to Mylene Padolina, Microsoft's senior diversity consultant, the company goes on to ensure that the workplace is fully prepared for the new employee. She interviews the new hires to find out what equipment and other accommodations they will need to do their jobs. The office groups or teams they will be joining receive briefings about the needs arising from the new employee's disability. There is a plan in place to ease the transition into the work environment for the new employee. Padolina says this allows the employee to be as productive as possible quickly and helps team members focus on the tasks of the office, not questions about the disability.
Accommodation can include special furniture or special computer programs or hardware, such as screen readers for the blind that produce the material on screen in spoken form or on a Braille display. Plans are made to make work meetings comfortable and productive and to be sure everyone is included, even in the more social team-building events. If the employee is blind, for example, team members will be coached on how to provide guidance from time to time to help the new employee move around. For teams gaining a deaf member, training will be offered in American Sign Language.
Microsoft has developed a coordinated approach to recruiting and employing people with disabilities; but it has not done this alone, nor does it have all the answers. For more than 15 years, Microsoft has partnered with the National Business and Disability Council to create the Able to Work Consortium, and it is a member of Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities (COSD). Padolina explains that this networking gives her resources for counsel when she faces a new issue and allows all participants to learn from the experiences of other members.
For its efforts, Microsoft has won numerous awards, including a New Freedom Initiative Award from the U.S. Department of Labor in 2004. In presenting the award, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao noted that the company offers unique employment opportunities for job seekers with disabilities. The award also cited many of the achievements noted above. Learn more from Microsoft's 15-minute video, "Window of Opportunities" at http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/citizenship/diversity/inside/access.asp.
