Impressions - August/September 2023 - 33

the facility. We have folks who are running
three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar DTG (direct-to-garment)
equipment. At this point,
roughly, 10 percent of our staff has developmental
disabilities.
AC:I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
the organizations out there expressly designed
to not only help with the hiring process but
ensure disabled employees are successful in
the workplace? You've mentioned in the past
that if you had to pay for a consultant to do
this same kind of work, you'd be paying a lot
of money for it. And yet these support networks
are free.
JS: Th e reality is it's not that people don't want
to hire with people with disabilities. It's that
they either think they don't have the resources
to do it, they don't have the know-how to do
it, or it's going to impact their bottom line.
What disability employment service providers
do is look at all your open positions to see what
might make a good fi t after which they'll help
with hiring and onboarding. You might think
it's just a gentleman who's going to work in
the warehouse or just somebody who's going
to do a physical task or something custodial.
But the reality is people with disabilities learn
from repetition. Ninety-fi ve percent of what we
do as printers and fulfi llers is repetitive. Th at
can be monotonous to people who don't have
disabilities, but it's actually where people with
disabilities fl ourish, where they feel at home.
[Th is includes] high-skilled repetition. I'll give
you an example. I linked up a screen-printer
with a local disability employment service.
Th e service went in and they did the audit.
Th is screen printer thought the person they
hired was going to be cleaning screens, doing
custodial work. Well, turns out the best fi t position
for the candidates they had was doing
all their order entry. Th ey're getting all these
PDFs and purchase orders, and then they're
going and plugging them into their system.
Certain disabilities like autism, make people
actually more detail oriented than most. So it
makes that a perfect position...Getting back
to [disability employment service providers],
they'll come in, they'll do an audit, and they
will look at all of your open positions. Th en
what they'll do is fi nd, screen, help hire, onboard
and train these employees for you, all
of which is at no cost to the employer. You're
talking about basically having a free hiring
agency, a free training agency. Th ey'll also train
your managers on how to best work with that
employee and provide ongoing support and
job coaching. Th ese folks will really work with
you. If you get into a situation with an employee
and you don't know how to handle
it, your managers don't need to know how
to handle it. You just pick up the phone and
call the job coach-or the job coach might
even be on site with some folks who need a
higher level of support.
AC: I wonder if you could give us the names
of a few of the disability employment service
providers out there that would be a good place
to start for employers interested in possibly
hiring people with disabilities.
JS: Absolutely. Number one-every state has
a vocational rehabilitation offi ce, a federally
funded offi ce. It's not just dedicated to people
with disabilities, but one of the core things
they do for the disabled community is help
them fi nd employment and support employers.
Th ey're diff erent from state to state. Some of
them will provide all the services that I mentioned...some
will refer you to a local agency.
At the local agency side, it's just like any other
hiring agency. Another great place to start is
Th e Arc (thearc.org-a not-for-profi t dedicated
to advocating for people with disabilities
and their families). Th ey are a fantastic global
organization that has local chapters in every
state. Some of their chapters actually provide
these services. If they don't, they'll refer you to
some local providers. Another is APSE (the
Association of People Supporting Employment
First-apse.org) a national trade organization
for disability, employment service providers.
Stakes actually had the honor of being named
national employer of the year by them last
year, which is one of our greatest accomplishments,
and was really awesome because it got
us working even closer with them.
AC: What kind of companies make for a good
fi t in terms of hiring disabilities? Also, are we
talking full-time, part-time, or both?
JS: Every single company is a good fi t. Your
10-person company has a company culture,
has jobs, has openings, has things that need
to be done that are no diff erent than your $1
billion dollar company that's publicly traded.
At our facility we tend to only hire people who
are doing full-time work. But the reality is,
Jed and the Ink Kitchen's Rick Roth
discuss hiring the disabled at a recent
Impressions Expo Shop Talk.
Aug./Sept. 2023
P.33
http://thearc.org http://www.apse.org
Impressions - August/September 2023

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