Craig Leen talks about his experiences as City Attorney for Coral Gables, Director of OFCCP, and advocate for persons with disabilities. He discusses best practices and lessons learned throughout his career.
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We'll Take Your Request Now: Best Practices in Reasonable Accommodation
Transcript for We'll Take Your Request Now: Best Practices in Reasonable Accommodation
Hello. My name is Craig Leen, I'm a partner at K&L Gates in Washington DC in the Labor, Employment, and Workplace Safety practice group. Prior to being at K&L Gates, I was the OFFCP Director, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs in the US Department of Labor. And prior to that, I was the City Attorney of Coral Gables. I've also worked at various law firms and at Miami-Dade County as well as an Assistant County Attorney, and Chief of their Federal Litigation Section, and Chief of their Appeal Section. I've also been a disability advocate for many years.
Going back-- actually all the way back to middle school and high school when I used to work with students with Down syndrome in my middle school and I was a coach in the Special Olympics. Also or recently about 16 years ago when my daughter was born, after a few years, she was diagnosed on the autism spectrum as having profound autism and intellectual disability. And for much of my life since then, I have been an advocate for her and for people with disabilities in the school system. I've had to really fight an advocate to get my daughter all of the accommodations that she's entitled to in school and to try to make sure that she has all the therapies, supports, everything she needs to do as well as possible in her schooling, and to be able to have an enjoyable life.
And everyone deserves to have an enjoyable life. And everyone with disabilities or without disabilities deserves to be included and have a full opportunity, and not be subject to stereotypes or discrimination and to really be given that full opportunity. So and that's in all aspects of life, not just in employment. So that's something that I've been an advocate about. And when I was advocating for my daughter, both trying to make sure she got the medical and therapeutical-- permit therapeutic supports that she needs, but it was also educational supports, a variety of accommodations. And it was not just her school, it was her therapy center.
It was in so many different ways advocating for her with insurance companies, with my employer to make sure that the insurance covered her, all sorts of things. And I saw how this is something that every parent, family member has to do and every person with a disability has to do. Advocate and fight for themselves, for their family members, their loved ones, to try to ensure that that person is treated fairly by the systems they're interacting with. And that led me actually to become a member of the Special Education Advisory board for DC public schools. So that's something I've done as well in the past.
And I'm also on the board of RespectAbility, which is a nationally known disability advocacy and disability rights organization. And also I'm the board-- both of them Advisory Boards of Disability in DC Metro. So much of my life has been focused on the inclusion of people with disabilities. I also self-identify as having a disability. And when I was OFFCP director, I made disability inclusion a primary focus of my tenure and helped create the award-winning Section 503, Disability Inclusion Program and Section 503, focused review program, to make sure that the agency was expending resources-- precious resources, seeking to eliminate discrimination based on disability and also seeking to increase affirmative action in favor of this to give people more opportunity.
That's where I'm coming from today. And in particular, I'm going to be speaking about reasonable accommodations under the ADA and the interactive process, pre-employment. So let's get to it then. Let me start with the City of Coral Gables section. When I was in Coral Gables, I lived there before I was city attorney. It's a beautiful city about 50,000 residents. It's a little bit to the-- generally to the West of the city of Miami in Miami-Dade County. It's a planned community. I was planned about 100 years ago. And it has really beautiful trees, and streets, and excellent architecture.
It's very proud of its customer service to its residents. But one thing I noticed as a parent of a child with a disability, a profound one, a significant one, who also needed to use a wheelchair or stroller quite often-- and still does to this day. So I know a lot about accessibility issues because I've been pushing that wheelchair, pushchair, stroller for many years and it's not a pleasure to do it. But I know what it's like trying to get into a door or upstairs, things like that. And it can be quite a challenge. So anyhow, getting back to Coral Gables, one thing I saw pretty quickly as a resident-- there is I love the city, but it wasn't as accessible as it could be. It did not really prioritize disability inclusion.
And I ended up getting support, a lot of support from the city, from the mayors that I served under, from the city managers I served with, from the commissioners I served with, from Commissioner Pat Keon, who was a commissioner there, who co-sponsored-- who sponsored actually the principles of inclusion that I worked on with her. And put together and I start to spearhead what I call the principles of inclusion in Coral Gables, which the city commission adopted. And through much fanfare in a city commission meeting and essentially empowered all of the different division directors, department directors, to make our city more accessible.
We started with a focus on autism in our diversity and it expanded to all disabilities, and to inclusion generally, and principles of universal design and things like that. And every year now, the city readopts that resolution and lists all the different things that the city is doing to make its community more inclusive. And in employment, there's one other thing you should think about. Any time you grant an accommodation on employment, you are increasing productivity by definition. A person needs an accommodation to make it easier for them to do their job, to make it possible for them to do their job. Grant that accommodation. That increases productivity.
If you go on the Department of Labor's website-- and I'm talking more so former, former OFFCP director. If you go on the website of OFFCP or the Department of Labor, what you'll see is that-- and go on the Office of Disability Employment Policy, they have two resources: the Job Accommodation Network, JAN and EARN, A-R-N. Well, look at their resources there. What you'll see is that most accommodations are free. There is no expense at all. It's usually a policy or a shift in some sort of approach or practice. So that's one thing. And then second, the median cost of an accommodation that has a cost about $500.
So when you're thinking about the cost of an accommodation compared to the employment of an individual, which hopefully will be for many years, and you're devoting a lot of resources to that person, $500 is a drop in the bucket. It's not so much at all. And frankly, even larger amounts when amortized over time, if you have a centralized accommodation system and your budget for it in advance, these are things that are easily addressed and taken care of. And that's why I'm raising these points from the City of Coral Gables because even though I'm talking a lot about Coral Gables, they're recreational programs. It also applied in the employment book.
And one thing that we did in Coral Gables is the best practice. Is if someone in employment or in a recreational program needed an accommodation and requested it, it couldn't be denied typically, unless it was elevated to the city manager and city attorney. And I was the city manager. I no longer am. I have a wonderful success with that. But-- and who's very committed to disability inclusion when we say that. But it would come to our levels, to the level of the ADA coordinator and we would seek and try to accommodate that individual. And that's the way you want. You want a centralized accommodation system, and you want someone on top who cares about disability and wants to include and accommodate.
Once you have that sort of system in place, it becomes much easier. Everything does because typically the answer, can we accommodate this individual? Is, yes. So that was my experience in Coral Gables. Very proud of that. As one of the best things I've done and it led me to the Department of Labor and OFFCP. Like it's one of the reasons I was picked to be the director of the OFFCP, is because of my focus on civil rights when I was a Coral Gable city attorney. And in particular, my focus on disability inclusion in the city of Coral Gables. So that brought me to OFFCP. So I get to OFFCP and same thing.
I noticed-- I looked both internally and externally. Both within the agency and outside the agency, and I felt that there needed to be a much more extensive focus on disability inclusion. So within the agency, I enhanced training, I published a video as the head of the agency, which I also published, I put on the website so that companies could see a chief executive officer giving a statement about how important disability accommodation is and how we want our employees ask for accommodations. Think about that. How often do you see a company do that? I was often asked, well, can you-- somebody said we could ask the OFFCP director.
Well, can you go to someone and ask if they need an accommodation? There are times when you can do that. You have to be careful about doing that and there's confidentiality. But one thing you can definitely do, is you can speak to your entire labor force at once and you can tell them, we welcome accommodation requests. So if you're thinking about asking for an accommodation but for some reason you are being cautious about it or worried about it, I'm not sure how that will be accepted. Your concerned perhaps that you'll be retaliated against, which, of course, is illegal.
But any of those things that you're worried about, don't be worried. We want you to request the accommodation. We know that will help you. And we're an organization that cares about disability inclusion. So please request the accommodation. When do you hear that often? Not that often. Am I-- I haven't heard of that often. So but the best organizations do that. And that's what I sought to do at OFFCP. And then so-- that was sort of the internal approach. Although there was an external component because I wanted companies to do that to their labor forces too.
And I was very outspoken about the importance of disability inclusion at the Department of Labor, schedule a hiring authority, making sure that we're focused on intersectionality, looking at, for example, veterans with disabilities, making sure that we're fully including them, that we're looking at racial and social equity in relation to disability, all of that. So that was very-- that's something that I was a big advocate for in the Department of Labor. Not just as OFFCP director but as an agency head. But as OFFCP director, I also wanted every company to do that. And I thought why has-- the agency has all this authority to do focus review.
And one concern I had was that when I looked at our enforcement numbers-- and it was both a positive-- there was a positive component to it and there was a concern. The agency was very successful at addressing discrimination and compensation or hiring based on race and gender, which is important. That's a key part of the agency's mission, and it needs to do that. It needs to do more of that. There's still substantial pay gaps in this country. It's important to enforce. The best companies want OFFCP to enforce because they're in compliance and they want every company to be in compliance. So strongly supportive. That's great.
But then, when you look at our numbers for compensation and hiring remedies for people with disabilities, it's very low. In fact, about 99% of the remedies were based on race and gender. Although the discrimination in terms of the numbers and the percentages is very similar between the three protected classes. The pay gap for people with disabilities is similar to the pay gap based on race and gender. The labor force participation rate is actually much lower for people with disabilities. And the unemployment rate is higher. So it was important that disability be considered as important as these other areas.
And that's the message I wanted to raise, that racism and sexism in employment is wrong. People know it's wrong. That's why OFFCP gets so much support for what it does. Well, discrimination based on disability, embolism, that's wrong too. And it should be treated the same way. That was my message. That's what I sought to achieve at OFFCP. I wanted to use what the agency was doing in the race and gender space, I want to use that as a model for what should you do in the disability space. And so we created the section 503 Focused Review Program.
And of course, in my tenure as OFFCP director, I didn't only focus on the enforcement, and remedies, and the proverbial stick, I also focused on the proverbial caring and guidance knowing that most companies want to comply. In fact, everyone on this call cares deeply about civil rights and disability inclusion. So I wanted to empower those stakeholders within companies by giving a lot of guidance in section 503 and best practices. In section 503 for those don't know, it's the same basically as the ADA. It's very similar but it also includes affirmative action components such as a utilization goal of 7% for people with disabilities. That's not in the ADA but it's in section 503.
There's also the ability to self-identify as having a disability. There's a requirement that federal contractors do that. So there's a number of requirements in 503 that go beyond the ADA. But anyhow, it's very similar to the ADA. So I wanted companies-- I wanted to give a list of best practices for how to comply with the ADA. And one area is in the area of accommodations, and hiring, and having accessible websites, and accessible hiring processes. So let's get to that now because that really is the heart of the message I'm trying to convey.
So you have an organization that cares deeply about disability inclusion. It will be evident from the moment that an individual with disability or anyone frankly, interacts with your company. They'll go on your website, they'll see a link that says that you care about disability inclusion. That they'll see that your website is accessible. If you're blind or low vision, you're deaf or hard of hearing, you'll be able to access the website. You'll be able to know what the website says. What information it has. You'll be able to access it.
Having an accessible website is really important and is a best practice. I know there's been a lot of focus on the legal aspects of having an accessible website, that's not my focus today. What my focus is that it's a best practice. It's definitely something companies should be doing because you care about disability inclusion. Now the legal aspects of it, you should consult the lawyer, there's Section 503, there's the ADA, there are some requirements. Different circuit courts have taken different views. But the point is, as a best practice, have your website be accessible. It's going to help people with disabilities. That's part of adding the A to DEIA. And what you'll find is that it's not as expensive as you think and it can be done pretty readily.
And that's what we found at Coral Gables. I was a big advocate there of having all the commission meetings, having people be able to watch them and it'd be accessible, a captioning. I remember at OFFCP, whenever we would prepare a document for posting, we would make sure that it's an accessible document that anyone can access it on the website. That was baked in to our process. The Coral Gables, when we would adopt a new policy or approach, we could always think about disability at the beginning. That was part of the principles of inclusion.
Would it be something that was an afterthought, it would be thought of at the beginning. Same with the OFFCP. Disability was a huge part of everything we did. We were always thinking about, how can we help people with disabilities? So the same. When someone accesses your website or someone accesses your hiring process, it should be very clear right from the beginning that you have an accessible workplace and in addition to that, that you offer accommodations. Not only in accessing the website, but also in the entire hiring process.
And one thing I would draw attention to is having a neurodiversity at work or an autism at work program. A lot of companies have that. And there's a lot of different ways that you can add accommodations to your application process. But I'm pretty familiar with the autism network programs. I've visited a couple when I was at OFFCP, and they have accommodation built-in to those programs that address different accommodations that might be needed by someone utilizing the program. It could be accommodations, giving more time for the hiring process, giving breaks during the hiring process, doing a run through of the hiring process, making sure that people that are analyzing or assessing a candidate understand that an applicant with autism may not give eye contact, might have anxiety in the way they present themselves and that doesn't mean that they won't be an excellent employee.
And that's something that they should be granted at accommodation for essentially. And it should be taken into account that in the process, that that may not be held against them, which sometimes people will do if they're not knowledgeable. About that, in our society, eye contact has been significant. It's often raised as something very important. For some people, it's very difficult to provide eye contact and they're still an excellent employee, great at customer service, and all those things. So that's part of what-- and it's also educating people about disciplines so that in about neurodiversity, about an employee, about different types of disabilities that would be considered part of the neurodiversity spectrum.
Anyhow, so those are my thoughts in this area. Take a look at OFFCP's website and the best practices. There's a list of about I think 15 to 20 best practices. Consider adopting them. All of them are pretty easy to adopt if you're committed to it. I want to draw attention to two. I already talked about centralized accommodation systems and a number of these things. But two in particular that I want to leave you with. One is, having your CEO really take the lead. Do the message. Do it quarterly or at least yearly like Coral Gables does, although they do it more often than that. But that's-- once a year, they adopt the resolution. But they also talk about it all the time. It's all over their website. So do that.
And appoint a chief accessibility officer, a leader who's accountable for inclusion and someone that that's part of their job to be inclusive, so that when that person is contacted by someone with a disability, they're like, how can I help you? This is my mission. This is my job. This is why I'm here. You don't want to have that person have to be referred, oh, you have an accommodation? Here, talk to our general counsel. Something like that. Have someone that is dedicated to disability inclusion. Chief accessibility officer, that's a great personnel to talk to. And select.
So bring in the council, and lawyers have a place. And hopefully, that place is to facilitate inclusion and accommodation consistent with law. But have that chief accessibility officer, that's part of their mission because the best practices go above and beyond the requirements. And then the second point I want to leave you with is, look at having a disability Employee Resource Group, an ERG or several. Some companies will have an ERG for several disabilities. They may have a general disability one, they may have-- if they have a lot of employees with a particular disability, they might have one for one there as well. And sometimes, they'll have an ERG for parents who have children with disabilities.
And you want to build an ERG community but at the very least, have one. The very least have a disability-focused ERG because what you'll do-- a lot of times I'm asked, well, how do you get leaders at your organization, particularly at the grassroots to support all these initiatives? But tell us what we should be doing as a company from our employees instead of-- so it's not just top down but it's we're actually involving people and including people with disabilities in particular, in putting together these solutions. The best way is to have an ERG. Have a very strong and positive self-identification program, that's one part. And two-- and make that a positive thing. It self ID. Treat it as a positive.
Have campaigns around it and have speakers about disability inclusion, but also have that ERG with leaders. With leaders who-- and allies. Leaders in the disability community, within your company, allies of people with disabilities, parents and people with disabilities we're also allies. All of that have them all part of that ERG. And then you will have leaders, you'll have a chair of the ERG, and vise chair of the ERG. You might even have subcommittee chairs. They will advocate. And have that person meet at least-- if you have a chief accessibility officer, have them meet fairly often maybe weekly or monthly.
If you have-- if it's with the CEO, maybe quarterly, at least yearly. Have the CEO go and speak to the ERG and hear from them about what the company could be doing better. Can't tell you how much of a difference that makes. And I do have experience in this area. I was the OFFCP director. I spoke to a lot of companies, there's 25,000 federal contractors in the United States. I didn't speak to all of them but I spoke to a number of them. And the best companies in terms of Section 503 compliance, that's what they do. And they tend to have higher self ID rates too when they have very strong ERGs. So look at that in particular.
That's such an important process. Such an important policy program process you want to build a community within your company focused on disability inclusion. And then with that ERG, identify goals. And have every year, have a set of goals that you want to achieve increase disability inclusion. That's the best recommendation I can make. One last thing, go on OFFCP's website and take a look at the Section 503. Write this down, this is important. Section 503, Focused Review Annual Report, was the last thing that was issued when I was OFFCP director.
It was the culmination of my work in the public sector as a letter from me at the beginning where I mentioned my daughter and my son who was also diagnosed on the autism spectrum as when he was young. And my efforts to advocate on their behalf and then also more generally, the importance of disability inclusion in the United States. So there's a letter. But even more importantly for all of you, there's then a list-- from your list. It's more than the list. There's then a comprehensive guide based on a couple of hundred audits that OFFCP did. 500 audits were ordered of the largest companies in the United States and their corporate headquarters.
We had them finished all 500 when I was there, so this was done with the first couple hundred, to annual report that was issued, and it had-- and it goes through those audits. What was found? The good things, the best practices-- and there were a lot of them, and then also the things where there needed to be improvement, violations, problems, and it lists them all. It talks about them, it gives great tips and pointers, best practices, ideas, it's a really excellent document. You can rely on it. You can take that document from the US Department of Labor and build-- you can build a disability inclusion program around.
And I highly recommend that. [AUDIO OUT] So thank you very much. I really enjoyed getting to present today. And this is such an important issue for this country, the full utilization of people with disabilities in all aspects of employment. So be an example and be a leader in this area. Thank you again for listening today.
Live Q&A
Transcript for Live Q&A
(Kevin McDaniel) Thank you Craig so much for your presentation. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kevin McDaniel. For those of you who were not here with us yesterday, I just to introduce myself once again. I'm the Editor-in-Chief for Accessibility.com.
I'm a white male, wearing a blue shirt with a blue tie. And I have the pleasure of welcoming Craig Leen to our Q&A this morning. Thank you so much for the presentation and thank you for joining us today.
Craig, it's such good. So great to see you again.
(Craig Leen) It's wonder it's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much. I hope everyone enjoyed the presentation today, and it's, you know, I I've known about Accessibility.com for a long time and I've enjoyed all my interactions.
It is such a wonderful organization. So anyway, honored to be here.
(Kevin) Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's for folks who don't. I just want to say again how grateful we are to have you here. You know, I personally had the opportunity to speak with Craig on multiple occasions about his work at OFCCP.
And I can attest to the the. I was a beneficiary of his work due to Craig's policies, his work at the OFCCP and the focused review program. This led to real, real, real instances of people with disabilities getting work opportunities where they would not have in the past.
And so I know you talked a little bit about it, but I just wanted to thank you and just kind of, you know, you represent to say, Hey, it was an incredible job. Because a lot of folks don't know what the OFCCP is and the role they play, you know, and I'm just grateful that we're happy that you're here with us today.
(Craig) Thank you. You know, I always when I became our OFCCP director, it always had occurred to me when I was in Coral Gables that having leaders of organizations speak very assertively and strongly about the importance of disability inclusion could make a big impact for an organization and really elevate that to being one of the top priorities for an organization. So when I was at OFCCP, as I mentioned in the presentation, I just saw there was so much more we could do to help people with disabilities and that this is something that was so central to what OFCCP's mission was trying to ensure that people are advanced based on merit and merit alone in employment. That's something that is in the interest of the United States government, the interests of the American economy, and that we were underutilizng people with disabilities in employment.
And that's why that needed to be a central focus. And I got a lot of support for that. Once I started speaking strongly on those issues, I found that I had a lot of allies within the federal government structure, among the business community.
And we really I'm very proud of what we did at OFCCP, building a very comprehensive section 503 compliance program and focusing enforcement resources really for the first time in a very significant way towards ensuring nondiscrimination based on disability status and also ensuring that there is affirmative action and a focus on greater utilization of people with disabilities in employment.
(Kevin) Yeah, I again I think that what a great place to have the presentation today, and there's a ton of questions probably to get to, but I just want to say, you know, we have, you know, several thousand a couple thousand folks here today that are registered and for everyone, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you. I remember 2018 getting called in by some of your staff or you didn't know who I was, but getting called in by some of your staff in Florida and they were, you know, we've got it.
We're focusing on this, this and this. And I remember talking to one of them and saying, You know, where's this coming from? You know, I didn't understand, you know, the focus they were putting on it. And then, you know, a few years later, you know, get to see this lead to real, real hiring initiatives from federal contractors and I get
to meet you, sir. Again, thank you so much. It was. It's just really great. I have no, I really mean it and I have some questions here and they keep coming in. So I hope that I have a chance to get to them all.
Six more just came in. But you've talked about the presentation. You talked about eye contact and this is really important because we have several questions about eye contact, Autism and accommodations. So the first question that I do want to get out because there were several questions that were very similar to the first question, which was directly from one of our first.
When our first question is how can we train leaders and managers to look for non-obvious disability clues, you know, things like averting eye contact, the ability to shake hands and so on, so that others will not enjoy the, excuse me, judge the employee or the employment candidate, and that we can kind of
build an environment that's empathetic to all people. Where do you start?
(Craig) Well, I think that there's two ways to approach that. one is can we train our H.R. hiring managers, the people who do the actual interviews that we that they understand that there's different norms for how people act in an interview.
First of all, there's different cultural norms. I mean that we need to remember not everyone and not every culture is looking someone directly in the eye is considered a sign of respect. Or so there's different. There's different ways to approach it in the disability community, recognizing that's that some people applying may not be able to look you in your eye. There may be a disability that's causing that person to have difficulty doing that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't fulfill the basic requirements of the job. So it's a challenge, though, because you know, there are going to be for certain jobs.
You know, they may be looking for someone who is going to provide eye contact, is going to walk right up to someone and shake their hand or something like that. That may be the archetype that they have in their mind for this position they want.
And it's and it's it's sort of and it's convincing them that that's not that there can be different ways to greet someone. Or to be in sales or to approach someone, and you don't necessarily need to do all those things.
You don't necessarily need to walk up to someone to shake their hand and look at them a certain way that you could be equally effective in other ways, too. But the challenge is that you know in our still in this country, I feel like a lot of employees and they have the right to do this.
But people applying for a job do not want to disclose at an early stage that they have a disability, which would allow an accommodation to be granted. And so people would know that, well, this particular this particular applicant may not be looking at us, and that's not something we should hold against them.
But, you know, a lot of a lot of applicants don't want to do that because they're concerned that they're going to. There's going to be stigma. Stereotypes are placed on them. But I brought it up because I did.
I did attend a couple autism at work programs and saw that those programs specifically would would tell the people in the program that the people doing the hiring, you know, these are some characteristics you sometimes see with Autism.
And you know, this has been disclosed. You cannot hold that against them. And in fact, the entire program, these Autism at work programs were intended to include people with Autism and make it easier for them to get hired. Recognizing that they had a lot of value to add to the company if they could get through the hurdle of the application process, which puts so many obstacles in their way because of stereotypes, stigmas, et cetera.
(Kevin) Mm-Hmm. When you talk to about. And it's a good point you talk to about accommodations for persons with Autism. And so that kind of is a perfect segue way to the next question here, which is we had a one of a participant here who says that, you know, I have Autism and I'd like to be able to work from home, but I'm nervous. I don't want to ask for accommodations for the fear of retribution. How can I advocate for working from home as a person with Autism?
(Craig) The first of all, you know, I think what's happening, there's a lot of extraordinarily extraordinary challenges that have come about because of the pandemic, that that's caused many people to have to go to work from home, obviously, and many to lose their jobs.
So as people are coming back to work, I think one part of the pandemic that is a and I don't want to say anything is with the pandemic is positive, but 11 aspect of it that can lead to something positive in the future is that I think we've seen that telework is a really effective way for people to work, and it's very helpful to the disability community. It's also helpful in expanding your applicant flow. You're able to have more people apply if they're not necessarily tied, having to come into work every day. And of course, you know, it's always been.
It's it's intuitive that if you don't have to do a one hour commute each way, and for people with disability, sometimes that can. You can be even longer because of having to get ready for work, get into work, particularly if that person needs help or an accommodation with transportation.
So telework is the way to go. In many ways, I've been challenging companies, both as an attorney, you know, asking them to take a look at this, but also previously as OFCCP director challenging companies to take another look at telework.
You know, if it is effective at OFCCP, we were more effective on telework than not on telework. We actually increased productivity during the pandemic. So that's true. What I, you know, from studies and from talking to people, it's true for a lot of companies.
So for jobs where you really don't have to be in the office. I really would implore employers to think about telework and recognize how much that can help someone with a disability be able to be employed.
(Kevin) Mm-Hmm. Well, and that's, you know, we talk about telework.
There was another question here that said they ask Did you have any suggestion of how to effectively request workplace accommodations post COVID-19 so that they are win-win. That question is it really clear to me, 100%. But I think what they're asking is where if you are, if you are an employee and you want to make the case for teleworking as an accommodation. What are some efficiencies that they could refer to to maybe nudge the employer in the right direction?
(Craig) Well, I think that there's two ways to approach the telework accommodation. First is at least prior to the pandemic, the general view in employment law was that an employer would be deferred to generally on telework. So if an employer felt that a particular job, you needed to be in the office, that would typically be viewed as a basic qualification of the job or basic requirement of the job. And so, you know, the employer would not typically have to grant telework to employees.
Well, I think that thinking has changed. So one thing so there's one way I would approach it. If you have a disability and you'd like telework, and you feel that that would be an accommodation that would be helpful to you is first explain why it's not required for the job.
You can point to productivity during the pandemic when that job was done on telework. That goes a long way to showing that, look, this is a job you can definitely that can definitely be done on telework. Then in terms of your accommodation, show them how it will help you be able to perform the job in that in that you'll be able to meet all the goals of that particular job, which is typically the reason why, at least legally, someone might deny an accommodation because they might feel that, well, you're not going to meet all the qualifications of the job or it's going to cause an undue hardship to the company. So if you can show that you're going to meet all the qualifications of the job, then really the only question is does it cause an undue hardship at that point.
And if you can show that it doesn't, you know that you'll be able to do everything that the employer wants and that then you know, that really is the way to get an accommodation. The other point is. In this this it would be more helpful to raise this to an ERG probably or through advocates within your organization, a more collective approach to some extent, but you make the point that look is the company allowing a lot of people who don't have disabilities to telework?
Are they are they increasing their applicant flow by having employees that may not be located in this metropolitan area, be able to come in once a month and otherwise telework or something like that? Wolf, they're doing that.
Then they got of think, you know, the ADA in section 503, you're not. You're not. You're not supposed to. You're really not allowed to treat employees with disabilities worse than employees without disabiities, so if you're going to be granting that telework option to other employees, you need to make it available to people with disabilities too. And raising that point, I mean, you can raise that individually as well, but it's often more effective to have an ERG at a company raising it and then to have leaders in the company recognize that I recognize that right away, at OFCCP.
So I made that point and I made sure to embed that concept into our plan to come back to work, that there would be robust telework, that people would not be required to come back if they have a disability and preferred to stay at home as an accommodation.
(Kevin) You mentioned the ERGs. We did have three other questions here, but they're all acronyms related questions. I have many more, I don't knowhow much more time we have, but OFCCP for everyone listening is the Office of Federal Contract Compliance.
But two questions here regarding ERGs and Section 503. We have some European delegates in here today that are here to learn, they some questions. Can you talk about what ERGs are and what the mandate from section 503 is so that they understand that?
(Craig) ERGs are employee resource groups.
They're also called affinity groups sometimes. And it's it's basically you would have a subject or topic. It could be, for example, disability inclusion, where you could have an affinity group for people with disabilities and allies at your company.
Anyway, you'd have a disability-focused. Some companies have a couple of them. It could even be neurodiversity. There could be one. There could be one for the focus focuses more on accessibility issues for people with physical disabilities could be a variety of things.
But depending how large organization is, but the very least OFCCP recommends at least not one disability ERG with with with individuals who have self-identified in your company as having a disability, being the leadership of that organization and encouraging people to self-identify, having weekly or monthly meetings to support other employees with disabilities, talking to employees with disabilities about what are challenges you're seeing in the workplace. Can we raise that with corporate leadership? Typically, you'll have someone from corporate leadership who's liaison to the ERG and works with them. It's considered to be a cooperative venture, something that the company supports and uses positive.
And then you have allies that support the ERG. And the ERG may have, for example, for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, that the ERG may sponsor some speakers, activities, things like that, but it's to bring attention to disability inclusion and to advance the concept to the entire workforce.
That disability inclusion is a positive thing. It benefits everyone and it builds a better work environment.
(Kevin) And we really I really appreciate it, Craig. I tell you I have several questions, but I'm getting the countdown here from Alycia.
I really hope we can spend some more time together, maybe in a future session because you have so much knowledge and we're really so grateful that you took the time to come and do this with us. So thank you so much.
(Craig) I'd like to thank you so much. Kevin, it's been an honor to be here today and and I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the conference.
(Kevin) Thank you. Thanks, Craig.
(Alycia Anderson - MC) Craig. For me, this has been amazing personally. Oh my gosh, so.
First of all, your presentation was so insightful and you're such a kind person, too, so I really enjoyed just your vibe in itself, but your mentions on accommodation and how leveraging it as a positive and breaking down the leadership, the cost versus the gain of hiring somebody amazing and the dollar, like all of that resonated with me and spinning the conversation instead of it being this like litigious liability of dollars that are going out of the door. But you're bringing in talent. I thought that that was just amazing, and I think that's exactly how we need to be shifting conversation.
So I was obsessed with that. So good. And. Your mention on leadership and encouraging CEOs and top trickle down to shift the conversation into a positive and encourage accommodation conversations to sort of maybe start stripping away some of these stigmas, I know for me and I, I'm definitely turning this on me.
I have been in corporate America for years and my career. I am a salesperson selling tech, so I am trains, planes, automobiles, in different client offices all the time, experiencing all different kinds of accessibility, great in some situations and lack thereof in others, and the stigma that are attached to disability from this standpoint.
I don't tell companies when I'm showing up for meetings that I'm showing up in a wheelchair because I don't many times have been worried about the stigma myself and I have shown up to meetings before, where CEOs have been more concerned with what if their building was accessible enough that they missed the presentation altogether?
And I'm like, Are they going to buy from me? Versus going to one of their properties and being, I mean, this is an extreme like story, but I was excused off of a property because they had been sued and they were worried about that moving into the future.
And so I really think spinning the conversation is now where we start. Like this was so good. I'm I just love everything that you brought to the table. So anyways, I'm fired up about it. This was really, really, really good.
Thank you so much for your insight.
(Craig) Well, thank you for your leadership and your advocacy. And I'm sorry you had that experience to hear that it is troubling, but I'll tell you your leadership and your example is what makes the difference and we really do.
We really do need to see our leaders prioritizing disability inclusion, speaking about it positively and right from the beginning, and not as an afterthought that would make a huge impact alone. So, so thank you for what you're doing.
(Alycia) 100% trickle down effect in play with this stuff. Leadership needs to lead and really like, yeah, make this a very inclusive conversation. So I you're doing amazing work. I'm definitely gonna find you on LinkedIn. I'm so happy to have met you.
I'm going off on a tangent at this point. What time is it up? two minutes? So thank you for being a part of our event. Craig, it was awesome.