In the couple of weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I read Randy Lewis’s book, No Greatness Without Goodness: How a Father’s Love Changed a Company and Sparked a Movement. You know how I keep saying that hiring individuals with ASD is generally a small-business game? Apparently, I was completely wrong. (And I am woman enough to admit it.)
Randy Lewis is a retired Walgreens Senior VP and was instrumental to Walgreens’ decision and plan to hire individuals with disabilities (1000 jobs as of 2011). (Quick note: this book is a fairly easy and quick read and will probably not take you weeks to read. =) Although it is not exactly a work of literary genius, I wish that every manager, HR professional, and executive in the world would read this. It is as close to a “how-to” for hiring and successfully employing individuals with disabilities that I have encountered and it is honest about the process (not a straight road) and about the rewards.
My personal take-aways from the book, which may or may not be intended by the author, are that:
- Organizations that successfully hire and employ individuals with ASD must want to do it. The process is likely to be bumpy and the stakeholders need to hold on firmly to their seats or else the time, effort, and resources invested will be for nothing. But when it is successful, one will likely find it worth it.
- Although there is a general sense in our society that large organizations are money-making machines that only care about profits, large organizations are made of individual people and there are many wonderful people in these organizations. Change CAN happen.
- The goal of Lewis and his team was the hire individuals with disabilities (including significant disabilities, by the way, not just those that are high-functioning) as equals (equal pay/benefits and equal expectations) and still be profitable.
- According to the book and a research paper using data from the first distribution center they created, they reached this goal. Not only that, in 10 out of the 18 locations the paper studied, the employees with disabilities were more productive than their counterparts. (I will discuss this paper separately.)
- My favorite part of the story is the end. Walgreens now invites all interested organizations to view their centers, to learn from their experiences. Lewis also presses that it is NOT the technology that makes them successful (they put a lot of resources into the facilities to make them more disability-friendly). It is the flexibility and the creativity of the team that makes it work. And, he makes it clear that the team is everyone. There is no them and us.
So, there are definitely people on my holiday list that are getting this book. Their gift to me is to read it. =)
Employing the Spectrum 