Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast with host Darren Sheer, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. This is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate their local values into business. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all visions of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at ChristianityInbusiness.com.
SPEAKER_01On this episode, we're joined by Dr. William Hansen. Bill is a researcher and leadership consultant, providing a variety of services across industries centered on culture change, leadership training, team building, and visioning. He serves as an adjunct professor for Anderson University's MBA program that's in South Carolina, for those who might not be aware, where he teaches leadership and ethics. He holds a PhD from Clemson University and is the author of various leadership and ethics-related articles, including those published by the Academy of Management, the British Journal of Healthcare Management, the Journal of Business Ethics and Organizational Studies, as well as others. And he's a retired Army officer. So thank you for your service, sir. Thank you. And he possesses over 35 years of leadership experience in various organizations and civic groups. And one of his primary areas of research and consulting, which is going to be the subject of our talk today, our interview today, has been related to companies hiring people with disabilities, which is clearly something that is really at the heart of Jesus. So, Bill, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast. Thank you. I'm glad to be here, Darren. So, what led you to start researching companies who are hiring people with disabilities?
SPEAKER_03Right. I think to understand this question, or at least my answer, we'll have to understand that when you think about disability and the workplace, you think about what's the right thing to do or the good thing to do. How do you help people rather than ostracize ostracize them if they have a disability? And you start looking at like what can these uh these employees can contribute to an organization? And I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there. There's a little bit of literature out there, but there's not a lot of case studies on an organization that has a large number of uh disabled employees.
SPEAKER_01So, what is the impact of a company hiring people with disabilities?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's certainly a transformation when you're talking about someone like uh Walgreens that hired over 30% of its workforce in a distribution center. Um it has significant impact to the organization, but as it turns out, it had fantastic uh results. And it's almost as if we say they needed a challenge in order to rise above better leadership, better production levels, and a kind of a family-oriented type of environment.
SPEAKER_01And so, and certainly on uh on an individual level for the people with special needs, which who would have such a difficult time getting hired anywhere else, I mean, to have a job, I mean, that's just so central to a theology of work and the and the meaning and the and this and the purpose and really coming alive and becoming who God created us to be. There's so much fulfillment in that uh for the for the people, right?
SPEAKER_03I think there's fulfillment for uh everyone involved, for the senior leaders, for the managers, and for the uh other workers, as well as uh the disabled workers. It really brought uh all of them together. And it wasn't a simple, a simple uh change that they all encountered, but it was an extremely satisfying and productive change that not only changed their work, but changed their afterwork life. And I'm talking managers and employees both.
SPEAKER_01So there is an entire factory, one of the largest companies in the world, Walgreens, and they're at Anderson in Anderson, South Carolina, right there next to Anderson University, where you've been teaching. Right. And and 30% of the employees right in this factory have special needs, this disabilities.
SPEAKER_03Right. Well, actually, the number went beyond the corporate mandate. There was a corporate mandate, and it's uh it's in the 30s, high 30s sometimes. It you know, it shifts around a little bit. But uh they started this without any kind of uh you know model to operate on, and it caused a lot of uh a lot of consideration, a lot of uh transformation, totally different ways to do things, uh a kind of a humility in in the approach to to integrate these these various workers. Uh, you have to understand that uh a lot of the disabled people, um, as you stated, a lot of them had never worked really before in a steady kind of job. And as far as the managers went, a lot of the managers had never dealt with people that have autism or other kinds of significant disabilities, trying to motivate them and figure out you know how they work. So these kind of challenges really did humble the the managers and the senior leaders, and they they basically gave a wide latitude to the managers to try to figure it out with this with an understanding this was not an easy task, and certainly the senior leadership had no better answers than they did. So it was a learning experience, you might say, for everyone.
SPEAKER_01And one of the senior vice presidents, Randy Lewis, uh, his son has autism, right? Right.
SPEAKER_03This this was really where the initiative began. Uh his son had autism, and uh he what he had learned through his experiences, he wanted to see what what society, what business could do for uh handicapped people.
SPEAKER_01And so how do you how do you frame this issue? Clearly, this is uh in the heart at the heart of Jesus uh to take care of the least of these. How do you frame this from a biblical perspective?
SPEAKER_03Well, from a biblical perspective, uh, we can look at Titus. Titus is one of my favorite books, and I just call it the leadership chapter, where they talk about all the attributes and the kind of behaviors expected of leaders in various churches. And uh, we don't need to get into the history of how Titus ended up on Crete, you know, with this mission to set up uh a church, but but when they were looking at other people to bring into this and other leaders, you know, they talked about some of the fundamentals that we've heard about uh during our whole life, about sobriety and uh good behavior, love and uh those kind of things. So I think when when all of this began, I would structure it as trying to develop the behaviors, many of which are found in Titus, in order to make it work. Uh it wasn't necessarily all about production, it was about love and acceptance and these other kind of virtues that we learned from the Bible.
SPEAKER_01And so, what uh what else has been the impact of uh uh when companies for we can focus on Walgreens, what because there were a lot of people and and I'm sure on the board as well saying that this was not going to be great for the bottom line, and a lot of uh skepticism, understandably so, uh, because you know, they're as they would say, we're not a charity, we're a business. So, what what was the outcome with this sort of experiment?
SPEAKER_03Well, again, the organization faced two, I'll I'll point out, two dramatic pressures. One was it had to be done, it was a corporate initiative. The other major pressure was the production levels had to had to stay the same. In other words, they couldn't use it as an excuse that they have all these new employees and therefore they cannot uh produce previous uh production goals. So these pressures created this humility with the managers, and the managers had to start learning. So we'd call this the learning organization, where they expected mistakes, they knew there would be challenges, and the managers banded together to work together, to ask each other questions, to learn from each other, and to handle problems together. For example, one manager would talk about trying to deal with some um autistic employees, and that standard methods that she had used in the past weren't working. So, what do I do? How do I motivate these uh different employees? And they started really developing strong relationships and they started experimenting with different ways on how to communicate or motivate uh different employees because they at first they really didn't know who had a disability. Let's say, for example, the this disability was very minute, maybe a uh disability physically from an injury, or maybe a disability uh from birth, you know, that was more subtle, or maybe significant, you know, mental uh uh challenges. So they would respond to each other, the peers, that is, these managers, and the management would let them bend some of the very rule-based policy they had. In other words, policy that there was nothing immoral about not following the policy, it was more about uh what was being experienced, the context and reality. And these policies had been written at a different time for a different purpose. So the managers had wide latitude, they started working with their teams, they started learning about these disabilities, and they they actually didn't have all the answers. And the humility that they had uh gardenered earlier, they applied with their team. They went to the team. I mean, maybe two, three, four people in the team were disabled, but they went to the team and they asked them for ideas and they asked them for solutions, and they became quite innovative teams across the distribution center. For example, there was one employee that, due to her disability, she couldn't reach a button that she had to hit to continue a process of product flow. And so they made a little step for her, and they had to put a big piece of, let's say, two by four on this button so she could slap it. So that was dealing with a physical disability. There were other disabilities in there that uh called for kind of a leadership by picture motivation. So the managers would start putting pictures up around a particular uh work space of a particular employee that would help that employee. Uh what happened over time was that these employees felt like this was the right place for them, that they were productive, that this was um good. And uh many of them started uh uh moving away from home. They had been dependent on their parents, living at home. Now they had money. And they had started, maybe they got a car, and then they rented a place to live. And uh without going too far ahead of myself here, the managers became involved in that process, helping them find a car to buy, a place to live, going visiting them at their place of their new home, you know, their place of of where they were living. And uh back to the plant, though, what ended up happening was that these teams, which had disabled and and uh non-disabled employees, with a manager willing to listen and involve the team in decision making, became extremely strong teams in innovation and the production went up. So by the time you know everything was said and done, the production levels of this distribution center were not only the same, they were higher. And they had over 30% disabled. They had exceeded the corporate mandate.
SPEAKER_01Wow, incredible. What have been some of the mistakes that some companies have made? Because as far as I can tell, what has happened at Walgreens really kind of began a movement of other companies uh wanting to also uh follow suit and really reach out to hire people with disabilities and and also seeing the the success of not only in just a social impact, but uh the on the bottom line. I mean, that I as far as I could tell, there was even productivity went up in relation to some of the other factor. I think they said it was the most productive plant, right?
SPEAKER_03It was, well, certainly might have been one of the most productive plants. I can't answer that question because it was unique, right? And what happened with that was yes, all these other companies wanted to know what was going on and how was this done. So, you know, large companies like Coca-Cola and others went to uh this location to study it and try to figure out how to replicate some of it anyway, if not all of it. And there's a lot more to the story, of course, but these kind of uh achievements by this company uh not only made the company feel good, but the corporate office feel good. So that the corporate office expanded some of these initiatives. But the biggest challenge is uh compared to some of the companies that might not be so successful is this movement away from that rule-based environment. In other words, you have to have an environment where it's expected that mistakes will be made. It's okay for managers to be innovative and definitely be involved in decision making. Um, it's also important for organizations to set up these little support uh operations in the organization. This distribution center had a uh a training section where uh employees that were having difficulties could go back to this training area and and kind of be reprepared uh for whatever job it was that they had. Uh, before anyone could be fired at this organization, it went back to that group of managers I talked about, the peers, and they would talk about well, is there anything we can do? Can we motivate this person? Can we do we need to reshape their environment? Uh so all that to say, it wasn't forbidden to fire anyone, but they together as a group would think through it, and it was no small matter just to fire somebody because let's say the manager just couldn't figure out how to motivate them. Yeah. So the managers knew that they were going to be challenged too. So they didn't take uh these relationships lightly, they took it seriously, they knew that there was a process that would kind of review it, even if it was their peers, if they felt they could not work with an employee. So there were a lot of support kind of groups or support operations to help this function. I've kind of digressed a little bit from talking about uh some of the problems, but these other companies that have not been successful have that rule-based environment where they don't allow a lot of shared decision making. They don't allow any uh variance from the rules or policy. It's you must do it, you must do it this one way and it's the only way. And if you interview these managers, they would talk about the last place they worked and they would talk about how authoritative these places were. So I won't name any names, uh, but there were a number of organizations that would say it's we're really trying to hire more handicapped, but they didn't necessarily develop the relationships and they didn't allow the managers to share in decision making. And um you you can't have one without the other. You know, if you don't if you think you're not gonna have mistakes, if you think it's not gonna be hard, if you think that you don't want your managers to go around changing things, then you're you're fighting a losing battle right there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so what um uh would you consider that this the beginning of a movement that is that is taking place where there are how how many other companies would you estimate are are taking this approach?
SPEAKER_03And I can't yeah, I can't estimate that. I can say there's a lot of companies that have come down to Walgreens and reviewed their operations, and there are a lot of companies that say they are starting some of these kind of initiatives, but if you go in a lot of companies, you'll see that maybe their handicapped or um uh, you know, we can say menial jobs or low-performing jobs. In other words, I think uh at Walgreens, they raised the expectation of managers and employees, and they exceled. I think some of these companies find it hard to change their culture where they look at uh raising expectations. And the expectations are formed by pre-formed ideas about the limitations of disability rather than let's see what you can do, let's see if we can help you increase your production and maybe even perform in jobs that that uh we might otherwise think, you know, there's no way.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Bullgreens had another center where they started this initiative, and they actually had one of the main managers there was disabled, a little bit uh autistic. So it was quite um quite rewarding to see that.
SPEAKER_01What are some of the the particular disabilities that that might actually turn into strengths in a particular application in a particular task or job? Are there some that come to mind?
SPEAKER_03I I nothing comes to mind in that way. What comes to mind is when we start seeing them as people, i.e. the disabled with some severe disabilities, and we start treating them as equally as people, uh, because somebody's having problems uh speaking does not mean that they lack intelligence. And so I think what we have to be careful about is having these pre existing ideas that, oh, well, they've got autism, so they can't do this and they can't do that. That's that's the barrier right there. So I don't know if I really answered your question. Question. But the way I would see it is you start out at the at the uh top with full expectation that this person's the same as me, that they have you know various challenges, but I'm gonna give them the respect and the consideration just as if they were, you know, another person I work with.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And if you don't treat them differently, you might find out they may not be different.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03If we go back to God's word, you know, and talk about love, you know, uh when when we're faced as managers with these challenges, if we first of all display love and then we display some of the other attributes that we find in our in our Bible, like in Titus, I think that sets the stage for that kind of treatment of someone, even though they're they seem different, treating them the same. And you will be surprised when you raise those expectations of someone how well they can you know rise up to what it is that you're thinking or seeing, rather than keeping them down because you think they're you know have a problem, then they'll never be the same as you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well said. As we wrap it up here, Bill, what would be your parting advice for Christian business professionals, uh, regardless of what echelon of a company they're in, uh, whether a business owner or somebody that just really um has a heart to see more people with disabilities getting hired in their own uh offices, departments, factories. What would be your uh your advice for them?
SPEAKER_03My advice to them would be the same for disabled or non-disabled, and that is uh think in terms of Christian love. Um I had a boss once in the army that actually brought somebody in to fire them, and I thought, well, this, you know, that never turns out well when someone's getting fired. But he surprised me, he was the only leader that I had seen that actually fired someone, and the person walked out of the office smiling and happy. Now, how does that happen? Well, whether disabled or whether not, if we treat them with that love and respect first, uh you don't have to be loud and show anger and be mean to fire someone. Now, this firing went in even more than the normal firing where the leader got on the phone and started calling around and he said, What kind of job do you want? Because you know, things aren't working the way we need them to here. And he got on the phone and he worked just as hard for this employee to find another place for him. So to me, that says, first and foremost, love as God instructed us, treat them as the equal, and rather than looking at firing as anger, you look at it as okay, it's a time for something different. How can I help you move to another place or move on or whatever?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So just being being guided by love, and and uh that's such such great advice. What would be the best place for people to read more of your articles and uh just hear more of more about this issue and best practices and and how to implement this in their own organizations?
SPEAKER_03Well, there's uh a number of things I think they could look at. Um one, they could look at the Anderson University website. Uh I don't have the link in front of me, but I know you know which one that is. And it has uh some links there to uh to various research we've done there. You can also look in journals like uh uh the Academy of Management or other academic journals. We haven't published a book, you know, for the the common um business focus, but uh I think it's about time Jeff, Dr. Moore, my counterpart, uh I think it's time what we wrote something, you know, that we could put out there. So um I would say, you know, just kind of look at uh uh these the operations officer. Uh I'm trying to remember the title of the book that you I think you quoted it at the beginning.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Ran Randy Lewis is right the the author, um something about goodness and great goodness and greatness. I can't remember the top of the the title, but if you if you go on Google or Amazon, type in Randy Lewis, goodness, greatness, you're gonna find it.
SPEAKER_03That's that's one book I would look at. And uh but as far as business goes, the one of the challenges, as you probably know, is you do the research and you write these academic articles, and usually or sometimes it takes a while for a book or something else to be published out there for you know the everyday organization.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Well, excellent. Bill, thank you so much for your time and for sharing this research. And uh just thank you for the work that you're doing, and uh may God continue to bless uh everything you're you're putting your mind into right now. I know you're uh you're still still helping out Anderson and uh and helping those students and uh appreciate you continuing to uh just impart that wisdom.
SPEAKER_03Well, thanks a lot, uh Darren. I appreciate it, and uh I wish all the listeners, you know, uh good luck, and let's remember uh all persons in our daily life, including those that are disabled.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.