Changing Minds, Changing Lives through Disability Inclusion

1. People with disabilities (PWDs) continue to be an untapped pool of talent with a unemployment rate double those without disabilities. Employers are struggling to find the right talent for their business needs and have limited exposure of how to manage/engage with PWDs. 

2. Disability Solutions changes minds of employers through education via webinars and in person trainings. We host a career center where our employers post jobs then conduct proactive outreach rolling those outcomes into an interactive dashboard that prove the talent value of PWDs. On the flip side we host webinars to train and empower talent with disabilities, as well as community based organizations, with job seeking tips and best practices.  

3.  Our solution increases the employment rate of PWDs by educating employers on disability, which in return leads to more inclusive employers all across the country. We are ultimately bridging the gap between employers and disability talent!

The problem our solution is solving is people with disabilities being a forgotten, untapped pool of talent due to several barriers to employment. Our solution is bridging that gap by changing minds of employers and changing lives of people with disabilities finding meaningful employment.  The disability rate in the U.S. for people with disabilities is double the amount of those without.  Out of thirty three plus million people with disabilities aged 16-64 almost half of them are unemployed. The factors that contribute to this are many, but we believe it starts with awareness. Many employers tell us they "don't hire people with disabilities" or "people with disabilities can't do our job." At the same time employers are also struggling to find talent that fits their business needs.The biggest hurdle is education and awareness to employers to show them we've help clients hire warehouse workers to scientists - all with some type of disability.   Our solution educates employers, connects them with qualified talent with disabilities and supports their compliance efforts. On the other end people with disabilities are getting job leads, receiving job seeking skills leading to gainful employment. 

Our solutions impacts three different parties - talent with disabilities, community based organizations who serve people with disabilities, and employers looking to diversify their workforce. Talent with disabilities are unemployed, undeserved, and underemployed.  In the US, out of more than 33 million people with disabilities, aged 16-64, nearly half are unemployed. Our solution not only provides valuable employer job leads to providers, but also provides education and tips for success for jobseekers to navigate the job seeking cycle.  This solution is disseminated to community based organizations free of charge to help both parties not only understand job leads, but also prepare them for success. 

Employers are struggling to find the right talent for their business needs, especially with historic low unemployment rates.  Our solution first educates them on the talent and market value of this population AND also educates leadership and employees to best engage, interview and lead people with disabilities. 

Our solution has proven to bridge the gap between employers and talent with disabilities. With our help, our largest client Pepsi was recently named Gold Winner of the 2020 award for Excellence in Disability Inclusion from the US Dept of Labor.  We have proven that disability inclusion works.

Our solution centers on impacting disability employment through three different parties:  employers, jobseekers with disabilities, and community based organizations that interact with PWDs. 

First our employer clients are provided leadership and employee trainings face to face or via Zoom webinars.  The trainings aim to dispel fears and stigmas in addition to educating them on the different types of disabilities and value among other requested topics.  These trainings support our Changing Minds mission and prepare the employers for success when attracting, hiring and retaining talent with disabilities.  Secondly, our employer clients post their jobs on our Career Center at www.disabilitysolutionstalent.org.  These jobs are scrapped from the employer's website daily. Our employer clients receive a quarterly interactive dashboard via PowerBi, where they are able to login and see their outcomes including jobs posted, applied to and number of community based organizations receiving the job leads. They are able to see this information broken down by city and state. In some cases, we include the number of hires depending on the data they share with us. This is a powerful tool to help build momentum internally within a company for hiring PWDs which will grow as well over time with positive messaging and tangible results.

As part of this solution, our team conducts outreach utilizing Salesforce to over three thousand community based organizations across the U.S., who serve jobseekers with disabilities with these job leads and resources.  As for training we are hosting FREE webinars via Zoom each month on tips and best practices for the job seeking cycle with a Q&A built in. This webinar is also available on demand on our website.  These webinars educate an individual on how to look for a job, how to get past an applicant tracking system (ATS), resumes, interviewing tips and follow up based on feedback from employers.  We find people with disabilities sometimes make strategic errors that get them knocked out of the process, such as giving too much personal information in interviews or having an incomplete/inaccurate resumes.  We look to address those frequent mistakes in our free training.

Our current solutions bridges the gap between employers and jobseekers with disabilities as well as those who serve jobseekesrs with disabilities. We are providing training, education and resources on all ends to connect these three parties with the intention of finding an undeserved population job opportunities while helping employers meet their business hiring needs.  

This solution is innovative because it seeks a three-pronged approach to increasing disability hiring.  There are few organizations in the national disability employment space to date and none have offered a comprehensive approach benefiting jobseekers with disabilities, community based organizations that serve people with disabilities, and employers looking to diversify their workforce.  This approach is innovative because it threads a needle with technology nationally in a new/emerging industry, disability employment.

Employer’s minds are changed nationally by exposure to regular disability fear and stigma training, which leads to more inclusive interviewers and managers.  Results and forward momentum are captured via the interactive traffic dashboard, providing internal talking points and galvanizing the “we want to hire people with disabilities” movement that is needed.  We also track self-identification hires for the business (if allowed access) to benchmark actual disability hires, track that over time, and provide strategies to increase that number.

Jobseekers with disabilities and CBOs benefit from employers exposed to disability training and awareness by way of meaningful employment and better collaborative relationships.  Our webinar tools help jobseekers and CBOs all over the country better educate their potential applicants and also develop stronger business ties with employers.

The long term goal is to increase disability employment/opportunities to those seeking work who have been ostracized/discriminated against in their past because of their disability.  The very tangible and measurable goal is to see disability unemployment decrease to within a percentage point of local, state, and national levels. 

To do this a collaborative and concerted nationwide effort is required.  Companies need to open their teams up regularly for disability training.  This is part of the missing-middle.  Disability has traditionally been a taboo topic and it remains such for a startling number of decision makers at corporations.  Awareness paves the way for improvements in the application process, interview-format, and ultimately leads to results 

Evidence that this has worked can be best illustrated with our partnership with PepsiCo.  We have been aligned with PepsiCo since our business began around 7 years ago. Recently, they were named Gold Winner of the 2020 award for Excellence in Disability Inclusion from the US Dept-of-Labor.  We have used our approach to help train their leaders on disability and inclusion across the country and were instrumental in that award being given to them.  Since our project began, PepsiCo has hired over 1700 people with disabilities (self-identification hires), and from 2014-2018 saw an increase of 335% in self-identification hires and a 559% increase in overall self-identifications.  Those are startling numbers for any business, however Pepsico saw the value early on of disability hiring and consequently, we were able to help them break away from the pack.  Inclusion works!

Disability Solutions currently works with over twenty employers across the U.S. with plans to double that number in 2020. In five years the goal would be one hundred total.  We have trained over 1500 leaders on dispelling fear and stigma in the workplace and continue to increase that number every month through our webinar. The next year goal is to double that number to three thousand plus. In five years we have the opportunity to change the minds of six to ten thousand more. 

As far as community based organizations we are currently providing outreach to over three thousand with a goal of five thousand by the end of 2020. In five years the goal would to exceed ten thousand with outreach outside the U.S to best serve our employers with international operations. 

As of the end of 2019 our clients have hired roughly 2,500 plus people with disabilities. Our internal goal is to double that number by the end of 2020 to five thousand. In five years the impact of more than ten thousand hires.

These numbers don't reflect the number of people that will be effected including the businesses employers are working with, family members of people as well as the impact on the economy.  

Changing minds and changing lives not only effects people with disabilities it effects employers, employees and leaders.  As stated previously there are roughly 15 million people with disabilities who are working age seeking gainful employment. Twenty million U.S. families have at least one member of their family with a disability. We are working tirelessly with employers on educating them on the talent value and dispelling fears and stigmas. Not only are people with disabilities finding employment they're providing for their families, they are leading meaningful lives and impacting the economy. As we continue to change lives we are continuing to change the mindset of business realizing that people with disabilities are a valued source of talent. As people with disabilities find jobs their lives are truly changing for the better. Jobs provide family, structure, meaning and the feeling of being valued for your talent. This solutions impacts everyone. 

Three barriers are fears and stigmas, employer money/resources and talent.

Our biggest barrier is fears and stigmas. Again, employers tell us they "don't hire people with disabilities" or "people with disabilities can't do our jobs."  We are working to build our training library with on demand webinars, creating a learning management system to better serve the employers and continue to provide new content to "sell' the business reason and value add of PWDs. It's working, we are changing minds everyday. 

When we talk to an inclusive employers they speak of disability has the lesser of the diversity groups - their budgets are small, the time they give to disability is less.  We are condensing and stregthening our solutions and using technology to make them more affordable, but more importantly more of a value add to sell to our clients. 

We are paid directly by employers yet our best asset is the jobseekers. We are working with them, our community based organizations and our training models to provide the best qualified talent to our clients and that talent has a disability. Resources are needed and we continue to strengthen and encourage training programs to meet the need of employers. Our goal is to continue to impact the employers we are working with by doing just that. We are batting .1000 on renewals with our employer clients who are seeing the benefits of attracting and hiring PWDs. They are hiring talent and see the return on investment.

The first barrier of education is our first mission.  We are committed to training our employers and potential clients on topics such as mental health awareness, dispelling fears and stigmas, how to be more inclusive, how to strengthen your accommodation process, etc. We are listening to the employers on what they want to and need to learn.  Not only are we training our employers and their leaders/employees we have proved that the RIGHT person with a disability can do any job - from the mailroom to the boardroom. This hiring of talent with disabilities is the second part of our mission.  Our clients are hiring warehouse workers, sales people, managers, scientists and more!  Training is step one, finding the employer the right talent who has success helps prove our mission. These case studies for our different solutions provide real stats and stories that proof to our clients the business case for hiring talent with disabilities. That last barrier is continuing to prove our worth and the value of people with disabilities. We've added almost 50% of our client list in the last year and we expect that to grow with our case studies, awards and customer referrals. We are Changing Minds and Changing Lives!

We currently have employers all across the country posting their jobs on our Career Center.  Disability Solutions also conducts phone and email outreach to community based organizations that interact with jobseekers with disabilities and provide them with our inclusive employers in their area job alerts and resources.  We are active in 44 states and are continuously adding community based organizations to the three thousand plus in cities all across the US.  We conduct live national webinars for jobseekers and employers on a monthly basis and have a library of free recorded content on our website.

We are Disability Solutions AT Ability Beyond. Our parent company, Ability Beyond is a nonprofit based out of Connecticut and New York and has provided services for individuals with disabilities for over sixty years.  Disability Solutions is a consulting arm of Ability Beyond created to help employers implement successful hiring initiatives to attract, hire and retain talent with disabilities. Our clients across the country include Pepsi, CenterPoint, Synchrony, Bank of America and many more.  Our motto is Changing Minds, Changing Lives.  Changing the minds of employers through education, success stories and proven methods, which results in changing the lives of jobseekers with disabilities turning into successful employees working for our clients.  Our goal is to take any profit from our operations and funnel it back into Ability Beyond which they are able to use as a unique funding source to further help people with disabilities.  The format is similar to the Newman’s Own model.  If you purchase Newman’s Own salad dressing or other products, the profit from those items goes to the larger Newman charity which is a non-profit and it in turn puts those dollars to great use in the community.

Disability Solutions is a small team doing big things!  We are led by our Director Julie Sowash her implementation team of two, sales team of two and a marketing/sales guru. We expect to grow the team as we grow our clients list.  

Our team is composed of individuals with array of backgrounds, but most importantly we've all worked on the business and non profit sides of the world, so we know how to speak both languages. Disability Solutions started off with a bang signing Pepsi as our first customer. Not only have we've changed minds and changed lives - 1000 employees trained, 1700 people with disabilities hired (to name a few!) - our work as been rewarded with the first EVER U.S Department of Labor Gold winner for Excellence in Disability Inclusion in 2020. The proof is in the pudding. 

Our employer partners include Pepsi, Synchrony, Polaris, CenterPoint Energy, Bank of America, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Experian, Catalent and more! We are working with them to increase their knowledge of the value of people with disabilities and providing them with talent for their business needs. 

We also work with over 3000 plus community based organizations consisting of state agencies, universities and veteran groups across the country including the Wounded Warrior Project, Arizona @ Work, Goodwill. We send job leads and resources to them bi-weekly, write partner spotlight blogs on their organizations and partner with them on employer and jobseeker based webinars. 

We also have strategic partnerships with organizations such as Job Target and Hudson Mann to increase and market our solutions and outcomes to a greater audience. 

Disability Solutions' services are fully funded by our employer clients. We provide services to employers that ultimately help with their strategies to attract, hire, retain and promote talent with disabilities. Our solutions include leadership/employee trainings, job postings through our career center, strategic planning, compliance support and more. Our key customers are Pepsi, Catalent, Synchrony, Bank of America and more. 

Our path to financial sustainability involves us continuing to sell a variety of products and services.  Currently, our Career Center yearly package with outreach and dashboards runs $12,000 and has been selling quite well.  We do have clients with larger contract amounts that involve a higher level of consulting, relating to their systems, accessibility, accommodations, and disability processes.  We have also added more companies/clients in the last year than ever before and are always striving for efficiencies.  We would love to use this grant to help develop pieces of our business that require dollars that cannot at the moment be spared, specifically an LMS platform where we can create courses to educate businesses, jobseekers, and community organizations and also to invest in growing our community organization contact list to help continue to spread the good word of inclusion nationwide.  It is our view that disability employment is good business for every party involved.   

Disability Solutions' "solution" is tried and true. Our employer clients are happy, getting the results desired and compliant. As we've stated Pepsi is best in class for disability inclusion. So why are we applying? The opportunity to grow our business with the prize money to invest in training and technology to do it quicker and better benefits all three parties of those we work with - employers, talent with disabilities and community based organizations. Connections and partnerships?! Our business model depends on these connections and partnerships. The benefit to grow our network is the gold of this application. The more you know, the more we grow!  The opportunity to gain personalized support from Solve staff and members of Solve’s cross-sector community will increase our knowledge and expand our work.  This prize will certainly accelerate the needed and important work we do and will help scale our solution ultimately helping people with disabilities find meaningful employment. 

Disability Solutions is always looking for strategic partnerships to promote both organizations solutions, expanding our talent outreach network with community based organizations and channel partnerships as referral sources for both parties.