Meg O'Connell discusses the benefits of employee engagement surveys, assessing workplace programs, driving strategy and development, and what can be done to understand the employee experiences of people with disabilities.
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Benefits of employee engagement
Transcript for Benefits of employee engagement
Hi everybody. Welcome to Accessibility Plus Summit. Thank you for joining our session today. We are going to be talking about disability employee engagement. I am Meg O'Connell, the CEO and founder of Global Disability Inclusion. And just a little bit of background for you, I have been doing disability inclusion work for the bulk of my career for about 25, 30 years at this point. And over the last 15 years or so disability employee engagement has been a passion area of mine.
So I have spent the last 10 years working with Mercer who many of you know is the world's largest HR consulting firm. And we have been analyzing global engagement data. We found that companies are not really investigating disability as a diversity segment within their organizations. So we began a study over 10 years ago looking at the global engagement of employees with disabilities comparing those without disabilities, and found some really stark differences.
So that's what we're going to be talking about today. It is disability Employment Awareness Month, and with the focus on employees employee engagement and the employee experience. I think it's a perfect time to delve into this topic, what we're seeing and what's happening in our world of work right now are some really dramatic changes, we have had the MeToo movement, George Floyd, Asian hate crimes, people working from home, remote work, hybrid work kids doing school from home, elder care, childcare, mental health is on the topic of everyone's mind. And so companies are taking a deeper dive into their diversity segments to truly understand what the experiences are like for the various populations. So that's why I think it's so important to talk about employees with disabilities and what their experiences are like.
So with that intro, let me share my screen. And we will jump into our discussion on disability employee engagement. So hopefully you guys can see my screen. I know this makes me a little bit smaller, but I definitely want you guys focusing on the data. All right, so let's start with the basics. We have what over 1,500 people at this conference, some may be HR folks that are deeply steeped in employee engagement and one that means and we may have folks that are part of it when we're talking about accessibility that may not be as familiar. So just to give you a brief background on engagement surveys and the purpose for them.
Engagement surveys are such an important tool and almost every company I know utilizes them in one way, shape, or form or another. So it's an excellent tool for employees to really provide feedback on what is happening, on how companies' policies, programs, and procedures really impact them on an individual level. How it helps them think about their world of work opportunities to advance and what that looks like for them and how they feel about working for the company.
We also know that engagement surveys really drive strategy, and development of new programs within companies. We know surveys help companies identify gaps that they may have in between populations or support services or resources that they're providing. So it really helps companies know the mindset of the employees and what they should be thinking about next, where they should be going next.
It's also a great opportunity to benchmark. Organizations can see how they compare to other companies, where they fall in relation to-- pick a topic-- a various initiative or a policy and see how that pans out for them and how they stack up against their peers in this area.
We also know-- and this is probably one of the most important aspects-- is that it provides a safe place for employees to really be honest and candid with their feedback and their experiences. We're not asking your name. We don't want you to sit across your manager and tell them honestly what you feel about working at the company, because we all know we're going to be filtered in that scenario. So surveys allow that anonymous opportunity to really give voice to things that you think should change within and the organization.
So that's just a brief summary of why they're important, and why they add value both to the company and to the employees as well. So as we started on this path myself and my colleague, Peter Ruttigliano from Mercer. And we were looking at their global database. And we were looking at the differences in the items that companies would explore related to diversity.
We found that 90% of companies explore gender differences as a diversity segment. 75% of companies explored race and ethnicity as a diversity segment, but only 4% of companies investigated disability as a diversity segment. So huge gap and also a huge opportunity that companies-- what this tells us is that companies are still viewing people with disabilities not as a diversity segment, but as a charitable group or philanthropic group ones that they should be writing checks to support.
And we know historically that's how companies have engaged with people with disabilities and disabled organizations. They haven't really viewed people with disabilities as part of their Talent Solutions or part of their consumer market, and this is directly reflected in this statistics that only 4% of companies in the Mercer database which we know is a global database are even asking about disability as a diversity segment. So while that is a little maddening I'll admit it's also an incredible opportunity. And that's the piece I really want to focus on today.
So let's dig a little bit into the data, and what we found from this 10-year study. So I'm starting with some of the most stark differences where there were big gaps between employees with disabilities and employees without disabilities. So there are two charts on the screen, and I'll read out what they say and these are specific questions from engagement surveys and again comparing those with disabilities and those without. So you'll see on the left hand side the first question says, I have freedom to use my judgment in getting my job done.
There's a 13-percentage point difference here. So employees without disabilities rated this at 86%, and employees with disabilities at 73%. So why is this? We know a lot from our research focus groups, one on one sessions with individuals with disabilities, meetings with employee resource groups that focus on people with disabilities that often people with disabilities feel that they're really micromanaged, or they feel that there's a lack of trust on them making good decisions.
So they're not able to offer up ideas about how things should get done. They feel really they have to take the exact direction from their managers and accomplish the tasks assigned to them related to their work. So not a lot of judgment here in getting things done.
On the right, the question is employees can express their ideas. Views without negative consequences. And so this is a negative 12 percentage points. So difference between people with disabilities and people without disabilities. Those with no disabilities 69%, those with a disability 57%. So not a high score across the board but certainly dramatic differences between our two populations, and these two go hand in hand.
So if a person feels that they're going to be negative consequences if they bring up new ideas offer different suggestions or are risk takers, let's try something radically new that this might be something different. Obviously, you don't have judgment to make those decisions or to offer opinions you don't feel safe that you're able to bring in new ideas or new views, and that they're going to be repercussions for that.
So certainly not a great feeling for people with disabilities, and not a great feeling for those without at only 69%, but so work to be done across the board but definitely in being able to provide that safe haven for employees with disabilities.
Moving on this next slide also some stark differences here not as dramatic as the previous page but definitely some differences to address the chart on the left I receive recognition for management when I do a good job. 12 percentage point difference here those with no disability 68%, those with a disability 56%. So again not a high score. So managers across the board have an opportunity to give more good a job well done nicely done whatever, patent everybody on the back when they do a good job it's so important for folks to feel valued at work. But we know people with disabilities don't feel that in the same way as their non-disabled colleagues. They don't feel like they're being recognized for their contributions. So definitely an opportunity here.
The chart on the right my company takes an interest in the well-being of its employees. Employees with no disabilities, 73% employees with a disability, 64%, so a nine percentage point difference. So there are a couple of reasons that this could happen. My company doesn't take interest in my well-being, it could be that 4%-- only 4% of companies are even thinking about people with disabilities as a diversity segment that could definitely play into it. So they don't feel like there are resources and supports for them as an employee with a disability.
It also could be this move that we're in the middle of from shifting of don't ask don't tell your disability status to now being loud and proud. We have the millennials and the Gen Z generation who are definitely loud and proud and helping the world see disability a little bit differently. So we're going to see that shifting in our workplaces too. But where we stand now as employees with disabilities feel like the company doesn't really have their interests in mind. So as with all of this a huge opportunity.
We do have some questions that the differences are still there, but they're not as stark. And so always when there are differences that are smaller there's an opportunity to continue to shrink those at a faster pace. The first one on the left, I feel my career goals can be met at my company a negative 7%, employees with no disability 71%, employees with a disability 64%. So we know that employees with disabilities often again feel micromanaged, they feel pigeonholed into a particular role and there's not an opportunity for that professional advancement and growth.
So we want to make sure that we're creating programs that are equal for everybody that if you want to achieve more and have professional goals that you want to meet, you should be able to meet them within your organization. So we see companies working to move the needle in this area.
The one on the right, my company is creating an environment where people of diverse backgrounds can succeed. So this question I like because it has a fair amount of assumptions to it. It is generic when it says diverse background, so it doesn't say disability specifically, but we know when people respond to these questions based on the other demographic analysis, we've done to them is that when people talk about diverse backgrounds, they choose the diverse background that is most relevant for them. Whether it's a person of color, male, female LGBTQ, whatever the category, people answer this question with that lens.
So we're assuming that those that answered this obviously we know there are some that are employees with disabilities that they are viewing this question with the lens as a person with a disability. So we know that they do not feel, people with disabilities do not feel that they can succeed at the same levels of their non-disabled colleagues. So again the lack of focus, lack of attention, lack of resources can all be influences and why people with disabilities feel that they can't succeed within their workplaces.
A couple of more questions where we again saw differences, but not quite as stark as our first couple of slides. I'm treated with dignity and respect at work. There's only a five-percentage point difference. So a pretty high score for both groups. 89% for people with no disabilities, and 84% for people with a disabilities.
So this is really not a bad story overall. Five-percentage points is still considered a call to action, and what's interesting about this when we looked at this data in more detail, the closer the group is to the individual with a disability. So their direct manager or their department or their direct team, that level of respect and dignity tends to be pretty strong. We know managers are pretty supportive, the individual with a disability is likely pretty connected to some of their team members like we all are. They're able to show that they're able to contribute and add value to the work products and programs, et cetera. So they really feel treated with dignity and respect.
Where we saw there were greater gaps were as you get farther away from the individual employee and their work team. So when we had the same question about leadership, the numbers were actually greater. So a bit of a mixed bag here but also kind of a good news, bad news story, and that your direct team and manager actually you were treated well and you felt equal almost equal to your non-disabled colleagues. So a bit of a good news story there.
The amount of work expected of me is reasonable. This had a six-percentage point difference. 70% versus 64%. Not a huge gap here, but employees with disabilities as we saw in the earlier slides feel like they don't have judgment about their work. They feel like they can't come up with new ideas or express new opinions. So this could be that folks feel like Oh I get a lot of busy work, and my workload it's reasonable, but I'm not getting that creative work I'm getting a lot of repetitive things to do or things that I feel aren't adding big value to the projects that we're focused on within our team. So again a better news story than we have but still a call to action.
So I've been talking about call to action and this comes up a lot. And so I've been throwing out 12-percentage points, 13-percentage points. Oh, we've got some smaller gaps at 5, 6, 8-percentage points what is the call to action? So we know that a five-percentage point difference is considered a call to action. So take gender differences since we know 90% of companies explore that as a diversity segment.
If men scored, let's say 90% satisfaction and engagement and women scored 85%, we know companies spend tens and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate what the disparity is and why? What programs do we need to create? What resources do we need both time, talent, and additional money to create more equitable experiences between the genders?
So when we see percentage point differences that are 12, 13, 14-percentage points, this is a huge call to action for companies, and a huge opportunity. So while disability has some of the largest differences across all engagement categories, we know this is such an incredible opportunity for two things first for additional data. Even though we're looking at Mercer's global data sets with over 12 million data points in it, only 4% of companies are even looking at disability as a diversity segment. So it's an opportunity for us to get better data.
And then for me the most impactful opportunity of all of this is that when we look statistically at the number of people with disabilities, 15% of our global population are people with disabilities. And the US, that percentage is 26% of the population. So it is likely that as you investigate disability and disability in your workplace, you have an opportunity to impact 15% to 20% of your employee population.
No other diversity group enables you to impact that number of people with some single initiatives or multiple initiatives related to disability inclusion. And we also know we've seen it over and over again if you design for disability and you create programs for people with disabilities, they're actually good for everybody else. So the opportunity to really influence your overall population here is really dramatic. So all I can do is encourage all of you to investigate people with disabilities as a diversity segment.
One of the things that I'll add and this came up as Pete and I were reviewing this data, someone tosses out or actually a couple of people did. Well, people with disabilities just aren't as happy as everyone else. That'll make all those in disability inclusion cringe on this call I know and some who are new to this space will say, well gosh that's a valid question. And when Peter and I were talking about it I kind of had the cringe approach and Peter said know that as a statistician I have to investigate that.
So we went back and looked at the data and looked at new hires both with and without disabilities to see how they rated their overall experience and enthusiasm as they started their employment with a company. And we saw no statistical difference between people with disabilities and without disabilities when they were starting their employment. Both were equally enthusiastic. We saw little differences in their perceptions about inclusion advancement, opportunities, ability to contribute all of those things were equal. Both groups felt really strong about their potential and experiences with this company.
However, where we saw differences is as tenure increased. Whether it was two years, three years, five years, we began to see the gap between employees with disabilities and employees without disabilities. So and of course, employees with disabilities lagged behind in how they were rating their companies. And what we attribute that to. Is as you get into it things start to happen. You start seeing maybe the company doesn't walk the talk, maybe the programs aren't as robust as you initially thought, maybe their inclusion practices or their inclusive culture just really isn't there in the way that you had hoped when you started with the company.
So it really kind of blew up this hypothesis that some had of, oh people with disabilities just aren't as happy as other people
[COUGHS]
Excuse me. When we saw really as I started employment, everybody's equally enthusiastic, but as that employment continued, the enthusiasm kind of waned over time.
So we also get asked the question, is there an opportunity to make a difference? Well, absolutely. And this came from one of the companies that Mercer worked with. You see and the first time they started looking at disability data there was a six-percentage point difference, and they knew they had to address things and they created new policies, new programs, new procedures to really be implemented and really worked on their inclusive culture.
So when they looked at this again, it was a four-percentage point difference. So definitely an improvement and almost at the point, we say five-percentage points is a call to action. So really not a call to action here, but they wanted to continue to make progress. And you'll see, they got it down to just a three-percentage point difference. So not statistically significant at all, and in fact as they began studying employees with disabilities, the overall numbers increase from the original time of 77 to 86. So it just goes to show as you track things and measure them there's opportunity to really analyze what's going on and to improve.
Whenever I do these presentations, everybody always wants to know who are companies that you like and that are doing really well when it comes to accessibility and inclusion, and it'll be no surprise to many of you that Microsoft is leading the pack here. They do an excellent job on so many levels. But just a couple of big highlights, Microsoft has a Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lee-Flurrie that many of us know and love and she has a team that is focused on B2B and B2C making sure that employees with disabilities feel included as well as there are products and services for customers with disabilities.
They have a disability answer desk. If you have questions about how your computers work or an app works and you are struggling, they will answer your questions for you. They also host hackathons a couple of times a year to address issues and challenges that people with disabilities face and using their products. The Chief Accessibility officer as you would imagine reports directly to the CEO, so a great example of disability inclusion being recognized as a valued part of their Talent Solutions as their customer base at the highest levels.
So this is an organization that has amazing accessibility features in all of their products. It is one of the things that I recommend to everyone that I work with, everyone should be intimately familiar with the accessibility features how to make documents accessible, how to hold accessible meetings there are tons of resources. So if you go to Microsoft.com/accessibility, there's tons of resources for any company of any size that will help you be more inclusive in your workplace.
The second one I like is Northrup Grumman. They have been doing disability inclusion for quite some time, and have some pretty neat things that they're doing as well too. What I really like about them is they dive deep into their infrastructure supports and how they can really create that inclusive workforce. So they have nine pillars as part of their infrastructure, and they looked at each of those 9 and said, how can we make sure that we're really including disability in here so that we're being supportive and offering resources to our employees with disabilities.
They've got mentors, buddies, coaches, managers, people that are really digging deep on disability and inclusion. They have a central accommodations budget, so no department has to pay for an accommodation out of their budget, it comes out of a central fund. They have an employee resource group, they also have a self-Id campaign. So really a great company that's doing some amazing things and really focusing on that support and listening to their employees of what's going on within the organization.
There are probably a dozen or so. I could list that are doing great things too. These are just a couple of my favorites. I wanted to share with you quick Google search will probably help you find more some that are in your industry. But again just a couple I wanted to highlight here.
All right, and I know I'm getting close to time, so I will just wrap up with this, and it is a shameless plug but I won't be overly pitchy I promise. Part of my work with Mercer as we were investigating this, we saw the opportunity for companies to really investigate their employees with disabilities. So we created the first ever disability engagement survey. And so the survey will be a pulse survey it won't take place of the large strategic surveys that companies do every year or every two years, but this will dig deeper into the segmentation that we talked about at the beginning of this session of really understanding the different populations within your workforce, and how you can better serve them provide resources to them support them in the workplace, et cetera.
So again, we will survey both employees with disabilities and employees without disabilities to get both the lived experience of a person with disabilities, and what are the perceptions of those without disabilities on how their colleagues with disabilities are treated. So we'll cover the big buckets that are usually hit and engagement surveys of diversity and equity leadership, achievement, identity. And of course we'll have new disability inclusion questions that have never been asked before and engagement surveys around self-Id, accommodations, disclosure, workplace safety, emergency preparedness as someone with a disability. So we really tried to be holistic in our approach here and what this looks like.
The survey will run from February 14 to March 4th, so a period of three weeks in early 2022. If you want to learn more about the survey or have any questions for me-- I know we're going to take questions here in a minute. But have questions for me about this survey, you can email me at meg@globaldisabi lityinclusion.com. And I'm happy to talk to you more about the survey, provide more information and share that with you.
So with that, I will wrap up and say thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate your time. And I hope this was some valuable insights for you on disability employee engagement. So thanks very much. We'll go ahead and take some questions. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your conference.
Live Q&A
Transcript for Live Q&A
(Kevin McDaniel) Thank you so much, Meg. I'm so grateful that you were able to spend some more time with us. It's really just a pleasure to visit. It's a pleasure to hear from you more more often and that you share a lot of these insights.
You work with really large companies. And so the very valuable insights that folks don't get access to. So I really appreciate your time again and good to see you again.
(Meg O'Connell) Yeah. Good to see you again. How's it going?
You've had a busy day.
(Kevin) It is going great. I'll tell you, we have some great questions and it's I tell you, I don't know if we anticipated this kind of feedback. It's been really great. And it's really possible because with you and Andy and some of the great speakers we have first Judy and Carolyn, all of our great speakers to thank you so much.
(Meg) Oh, absolutely.
(Kevin) I get to choose. I get accused of being too chatty, so let me get right to the questions.
(Meg) All right, let's get to it.
(Kevin) OK, so I have some questions too, but I want to get to the questions we put in and I do want to just say real quick. As as Alycia said, for folks who are still putting questions in, if I can get to them, I will. I would encourage everyone listening. Please just continue put your questions in during the presentation so I can jot them down because what's happening is I'm getting a lot right when the speaker comes on.
But so the first one, though, so this was the first question. I thought that was really good. So mark this one. And what they asked was does being open and out about their disability impact these ratings, meaning if they're they choose to disclose or not disclose?
Did you find that there was any correlation between how open they were with with the survey?
(Meg) So everything was a voluntary disclosure, as most surveys are right in any demographic diversity of demographics. It's completely voluntary to disclose. So we didn't see.
So we only compare data from those that voluntarily disclosed with those that were non-disabled or if someone said not a preference, I prefer not to answer. You know, we pulled those out as well, too. So we only compared the data from people that check the box.
I'm a person with a disability.
(Kevin) OK.
(Meg) So and we know, as you saw from the data, only 4% of companies even ask for disability as a as a diversity demographic. So my assumption, and just statistically, we know there are so many more people with disabilities that didn't respond in in the survey database that we had.
So definitely more work to be done.
(Kevin) Yeah, that was that was one of the questions I have, too, later who have been a great Segway here, but I want to get to everybody's questions. Just the disclosure piece companies, you know, are they or people more encouraged when there's a strong there's a stronger culture, you know, we want you to disclose, we understand what the needs are or vice versa, but I'll get to. Hopefully, I can get to that. Another question here says did you ask participants who were who had a disability if they felt positive or negative about their disability?
And this is this is a direct quoted question. Did they have a positive opinion of how society perceives the disability community? I feel that a person's self opinion of him or herself and their disability, in their opinion of how society views the disability, will affect their opinions of their employers and employees and coworkers.
(Meg) Right, right. You know, self-perception is everything, right? How how you perceive yourself disability or not, that's going to impact how you view the world. So to the question related to the the disability part of that is the Mercer survey database.
This is from their global engagement survey data. So generally there they are standardized questions that are not disability specific questions, which is why, as you saw at the end, I talked about Amplify. We created Amplify so companies can have the ability to start asking those questions about disability disclosure.
Was it a comfortable experience? Did you regret disclosing all of those components are so important? And there is not a tool out there, with the exception of Amplify that asks disability specific questions related to the workplace. So when the survey launches in February, we've we've got a handful of companies signed up already.
We're hoping to have a lot more data to come out with. To share with you guys around disability specific questions.
(Kevin) That's the reason I like that question, too, was because they didn't get directly to it, but I do feel like, you know, an organization the way you know, which model do they view disability?
Does that discourage or encourage the participation? You know what I mean? And I'm anxious to see the results of that. So let me get to another one here because I thought this was so good, and I think you and I share some some war stories in this department.
Yeah, it's I love the question because I completely get it. You know, I have to agree in some cases and we've been to job fairs and we've worked on initiatives where this has been the case, in my opinion, whether it's, you know, well it is wrong.
But this is why are new hires or people with disabilities mainly just hired as entry level, whereas thousands upon thousands of PWDs, which is people with disabilities, have backgrounds and skills that are that are rarely advanced or if they are advanced, that's when they're further along in the company.
And I'm I'm modifying the question a little bit to make the point clear. So this is a real issue and has been for a very long time. What would you suggest for companies to do to improve this?
(Meg) Gosh, that's a loaded question, right?
And you're right, there are plenty of war stories in this space. And, you know, having been an HR person in several large companies, you know, job descriptions. For one, there's an opportunity for companies to better across the board around hiring practices in general.
Job descriptions for one are written for the dream candidate, not for what you actually need to get done on the job. So a lot of people kind of get weeded out before they can even apply because of this dream candidate job description that's been written instead of, oh yeah, really, somebody with three to five years
experience would be great. But, you know, they write the job description. We want somebody with ten years experience or more. So, you know, job descriptions is one piece. The interview process is another piece that we have an opportunity for improvement and just interviewing questions and interviewing styles.
You know, we have a great social media and interaction and engagement and somebody shared online when we posted an article that was in Forbes earlier this week about the interview experience for candidates with Autism and what that feels like.
So the rapid fire questions, the nuance questions that don't make sense to them, those types of things. So there are a lot of things that companies can do better. And we hope that this conference and the the summit that Microsoft puts on every year and other avenues that really educate employers, that they're taking that to heart and understanding that there's opportunity to do better. And the last piece, I'll say, is that people with disabilities need to fight for their worth and not settle. And I get it. We all. If you need a job, you need a job, and sometimes you just have to take what what is available to you.
But that doesn't mean you don't stop looking for that opportunity. That's going to be the right fit for your skills and your abilities and get that J O B and go for the career why you got the J O B.
(Kevin) Yeah, I completely agree.
You touched on something that you got. You get to my point here. I noted a couple of stats here. one of them was, you know, do I feel like my career goals can be met? And the difference was, you know, 71% of people without a disability versus 64% with a disability.
And I wonder in that, along with some other stats, how much that has to do with you touched on the job description piece. We talk about outdated job descriptions. You know, what are some examples and today is for hiring managers, for professionals, if they're going to look at their job descriptions today and say, You know, what are we doing here? You know, is this an inclusive process? Where would you start?
(Meg) Right, right. Gosh one of the biggest offenders is the, you know, qualifications, things like saying, you absolutely have to have a bachelor's degree or a master's degree when there are plenty of people out there who maybe have a lifetime of experience that is probably more valuable than somebody that's just graduated from college a year ago. So it's really understanding looking at the job description and from the standpoint of where we are setting up barriers that don't need to be set up.
Whether it's years of experience, whether it is, you know, bachelor's degree, whether it's a certain type of certifications, if you have to have it, then absolutely include it. But if it's again, it doesn't really matter. You've got somebody who's got, you know, 15, 20 years of experience but never went to school or didn't get their degree. What's more valuable?
So I think it's really looking at that, looking at the interviewing skills and being open to the fact that you may need to shift your approach in assessing the candidate. You know, we one of our most requested trainings is to teach recruiters and hiring managers how to interview without using behavioral interview questions.
So the, you know, perfect example is folks on the autism spectrum are not going to understand the nuances of a question. So how do we get hiring managers and recruiters comfortable with shifting mid-stream, their interview style from kind of that behavioral nuanced?
Tell me about a time you handled a difficult situation. You know, that doesn't always translate for folks. So going to really, what are you after? And, you know, shifting to that kind of just the facts type of interviewing so you can truly assess the candidate on their skills and abilities.
(Kevin) I love the behavioral piece because because I think that are professionals and a lot of cases are in many, depending on, you know, discipline and are trained to look at cause and effect type answers. And you know, when you are working with people who are who have various types of communication methods and backgrounds, there's not this one size fits all. But you said something, too, about the the job description when you talk about degrees. What about things like like, you know, I'm a library clerk and one of the requirements is you have to be up to lift 50 pounds.
You know, this templated job descriptions, you know, beyond the professional.
(Meg) Right.
(Kevin) Go ahead. I'm sorry.
(Meg) No, you're absolutely right. That's another big barrier. Really, I mean, if you're working in a Lowe's distribution center, then yes, that is a valid requirement.
If you're a receptionist in a law office, you. Maybe that happens once a month. So is it a stretch to say that that is really an essential function of the job? No. There's always going to be somebody that can be, Oh, grab that for you.
So do you really need to put that in the job description? So it's really analyzing all aspects of the job description and make sure that again, that you're not setting up those unintended barriers that weed people out. And you know, we've been talking about it a lot today.
The great resignation. Everywhere you go, there's a help wanted sign or we're hiring sign. So something's happening in our world of work that is making people dissatisfied. We also have, you know, a pandemic that woke a lot of us up who maybe weren't satisfied with our jobs and said, you know, life's too short.
I'm going to go after what I really want. So we really need to do better about being more inclusive and making sure we've got retention programs that really engage employees so they're satisfied with their experience and they really want to stay with the company long term.
(Kevin) And I think my favorite example, because you've been talking about job descriptions for a long time and several years ago, you did a presentation at a conference I was at. And I think my favorite example was, do they really need to?
Someone really need to have a driver's license, you know? You know, in a Target or a Walmart and automatically that screens out folks who use public transportation for no reason.
(Meg) Absolutely. Absolutely.
(Kevin) So I know Alycia came and she's given me the the one minute mark here.
But where do you think? Because there's another question we had here was given all these stats, and I know that you guys are still compiling data and looking at where these go. But where do you anticipate the results of that?
Where do you think? What do you think the results of this survey can improve business relationships include improved the initiatives in the long run?
(Meg) Well, it's really going to be the first time this data has ever been captured, so it's provide a baseline of information for companies about what is actually happening within within their workplace and how people with disabilities feel about their experiences. And we know companies spend tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars on creating equity within the workplace, and this is just information that they don't have. They don't know what employees with disabilities think and feel about their work experiences.
But now they will, and it will create actionable insights that will help them really drive change and creating more equitable and inclusive workplaces.
(Kevin) Wow. Well, I appreciate you sharing it with us, Meg. I would just say and would give it to Alycia. I just say one comment, not a question for you was "Wow. Impressive. That took a lot of planning coordination. And thank you for sharing." So I really, really appreciate it Meg.
(Meg) Absolutely, happy to join you. You have a great rest of the conference, everybody.
(Kevin) You, too. Thanks.
(Alycia Anderson - MC) Can I just echo that just very quickly? Amplify so needed as an employee with disability that has taken many surveys that don't necessarily feel that inclusive.
So I think another win is employee. You know, we we will feel included in finally asking some of the right questions.
(Meg) Excellent. Thank you Alycia. Everybody on the call make sure you tell your companies about Amplify. Get them registered by February.
(Alycia) I definitely will.
(Meg) Take care.