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>> And welcome to our Webinar today
on disabilities focused employee's resource groups,
strategies and best practices.
My name is Jill Houghton and I'm the executive director
of the US Business Leadership Network.
And today's event is actually sponsored
by the employer assistance and resource network
or we like to call them EARN.
E A R N. EARN is an organization
that supplies free support to employers related
to recruiting, hiring,
retaining and advancing qualified veterans an
individuals with disabilities.
EARN is also a program that is supported
by the US Department of Labor Office
of Disability Employment Policy.
Through Cornell University.
Today's Webinar we are offering HRCI credits
and if you're interested you'll want to stay on line
and at the end of the presentation we're going
to share an event code with you.
I'm going to turn it over to Mike from Cornell
and he's going to give us some technology tips.
Mike?
>> Thanks Jill.
You've been connected via your computer's mic
and speakers.
If you need to adjust your volume,
look in the lower left hand corner of your screen
and you will see this section with the audio.
You will see two sliders.
The top slider is for your microphone
but the bottom slider is for your speakers.
Move it to the left or the right to adjust your volume.
If you have any problems hearing us during the
presentation you can go to the tools menu,
then go to the audio menu and then go
to audio set-up wizard.
Run through the prompts and this will take care
of most common audio issues.
If you are, um, if you still can't hear
or if you prefer to use your phone we will send the
phone number and access code
to the chat box in a moment.
We do welcome your questions.
If you want to type your questions
into the chat box right here
and hit the send button we will get your questions.
And back to you Jill.
>> Thanks.
Okay, so in terms of questions what we're going
to do is we're going
to have our presenters present first
and then we're going to take questions at the end
and I'll facilitate that
but without further ado it's an honor to present you
to our speakers today.
I think you're in for a real treat.
Our first speaker is Anne Saddas and Anne is part
of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Practice
at Proctor and Gamble.
Her roles include diversity and inclusion culture
and capability leader for North America,
manager for global flexibility strategy
and consultation with Proctor
and Gamble's business unit on a variety of diversity
and inclusion tools and methodologies.
And HR leader for people with disabilities initiatives.
I would also just flag that Anne is a member
of the US Visions Leadership Board of Directors.
Our second speaker is Jenny Leflore [assumed spelling]
who is the Senior Director of Accessibility
who is a customer partner advocacy at Microsoft.
Jenny is very passionate about disabilities issues
and she formed and chairs the Cross Disability Group
at Microsoft which is an employee resources group
focused on enabling people to be successful regardless
of ability or disabilities.
And has been an influential force
in driving accessibility and awareness
of disabilities internally as well as externally.
And last but not least is Adrian Hawkins.
Adrian is the Senior Oncology Sales Specialist
with Novartis.
He's been at Novartis for 24 years,
he is currently the co-chair of Capable,
which is their ERG with Janice Ferraro.
He is also the chair
of their oncology field diversity council and he is --
his wife is an MS survivor
and he also has a 12 year old son with ADHD
and actually is the father of five children.
So without further ado,
I want to turn it over to our speakers,
so Anne do you want to take it away?
>> Thank you very much Jill and hello everyone.
I'm so pleased to see that there are so many of you
on the call because this is such a powerful topic.
And perhaps the only way to move most
of our organizations forward with regard to work
that supports people who live
and work with disabilities.
So I'm delighted to spend a little bit
of time sharing our subject matter
from Procter and Gamble.
So let me just take you through the topics that I hope
to cover today in a rather brief format.
I wanted to talk first
about how what we call our network.
Our EFG work in-service at P
and G which is a very important notion as regards
to the way we approach our work
and that includes why we are in business
in the first place.
And then talk a little bit more about a particular D
and I beliefs and our objectives.
Share with you some of our key approaches
or how we look at achieving the objectives
and finally wrap up a bit with some of the lessons
that I've learned over the time that I've worked
with our, in particular our employees
with disabilities network.
Which I have been doing for, let's see,
now about the last six years
and we've had a very interesting journey throughout
that time, growing by leaps
and bounds even though the organization has been
in business probably now for about 19 years.
So there's been a lot learned.
First of all the notion of being in service
to the company is something that's very much a part
of how the organization looks at its business purpose
and then it's organizational purpose
with regard to employees.
So here I have a picture of our Chairman, Bob McDonald
and he's a significant advocate of all parts
of diversity and inclusion as are most
of the chairmen of the companies.
I'm sure that you're a part of or I hope
at least the leaders.
It's very important and we've had some leaders
that have been committed for many years.
But Bob McDonald is, I think, at the top of the list
in terms of his connection with overall purpose.
So what's really important
to us is this very simple statement that he's made
that there is just no way to touch our consumers.
We don't actually touch the lives
of our employees first.
And therefore that's the first and foremost
of our objectives for our diversity,
ERGs and certainly our people's ability to ERGs.
The idea of being in-service
to the company is there is a power [inaudible] employee
resource does lie in what we are able
to achieve for the community.
And in the community generally Employee Resource Groups
starts with the impacted community.
Whatever part of the population that may be
but more importantly the networks
and Employee Resource Groups need to have a focus
and an energy around doing what they can do
to support all employees.
And I, of course we believe
that that has to come first.
Then equally important or of course it's the basis
of all that but by helping all employees you're helping
the company.
And that all of these things are wrapped up together
and again, my personal belief is
that if we're not careful as we establish
and operate Employee Resource Groups sometimes the
ambitions or objectives or approaches
of the resource groups can run counter
to the overall needs of the company simply
because you've got different needs
and different agendas
and they can become very inward looking
and that's very important for addressing the variety
of needs that an Employee Resource Group does.
Which is about improving the access to career
and supporting and mentoring
and helping employees thrive.
But we've found and I think particularly uniquely
to the work with employees who live
and work with disabilities is there is an awful lot
that we can do from this prospective
that truly actually benefits all employees.
So that's very wrapped up in how we at Procter
and Gamble have really formulated our objectives
of the resources group itself.
So the first thing that we do is that we're going
to put on a universal designed thinking to all
of our objectives and for those of you
who might not have had a chance to become familiar
with the notion of universal design,
it really has come from the world of facilities,
accessibility to start with, but expands to all kinds
of products or process or living arrangements
that there is designs that helps not just people
who struggle with disabilities
but in fact improves access and use and pleasure of use
for all consumers and in our case folks
who are all around the world.
So what we look at in terms of our objectives are, one,
that we engage and inspire, oh, I'm sorry,
that we engage and inspire our culture towards
increased inclusion.
Everyone. And that we focus a great deal
on the work environment and the work processes systems,
technology, to make sure
that we're enriching accessibility for everyone.
And enabling all employees in the process.
And we intend to leverage our brands,
our facilities to serve global consumers
more completely.
So we've got an eye toward all of our consumers
which most certainly includes the best variety of folks
that live and work with disabilities.
So the idea is that work done for employees that live
and work with disabilities needs to challenge all
of our long accepted norms that just have been a part
of the way we've done business or thought
about achieving business
and that in the end we raise the bar for everyone.
So here one of the most important things,
and those of you who are I'm sure, along the way,
you know, in having Employee Resource Groups
that you've got to have sponsorship.
It's part of the leadership.
Certainly it was the thing that finally turned us
around in our, you know, 19 year journey
and not until we had senior sponsorship
at the top levels of our organization,
could we really begin to knit together our [inaudible]
so here actually is a photo of our network sponsor
and [inaudible] Pastorini is our chief information
officer and runs a huge,
huge part of Proctor and Gamble.
So and he in fact has significant hearing loss
that he actually acquired a couple of years ago
through an infection.
And he has a cochlear implant.
And so clearly he understands our issue
but we've always had some folks in the organization
that simply understand this work
as absolutely just the right work to do.
So we'll start with his support but he steps
out on our behalf as other leaders we've asked
to do the same and as we do as network to ask employees
in general, not just what the company actually can do
for employees but what can employees do
in these three questions that I've got up here.
So we've asked employees, you know,
what they are personally doing themselves
to leverage talent.
How can they make the culture more trusting?
It's such an important thing with regard to, you know,
for folks dealing with disabilities in particular.
The trust and the inclusividity
and the access just has some very particular issues
and then what am I doing to really inspire
that peak performance which is the primary objective
of all of our diversity work.
So, you know, we can't just have networks thinking
about what the company can do for the folks who are
in the network but what to do
so the network members bring back to the company.
So we have actually these areas of action part
of our overall objective and these are typical too,
I know lots of objectives of resource groups
and I suspect some folk that you will hear
after me will have a whole area dedicated to capability
to the work environment itself
which includes technological accessibility
and physical accessibility and other types of support.
Including engagement
and you know that's partly what I was just speaking of.
We have a very significant focus on market place
and external partnerships in particular
that can help us get there and USB Atlantic
of course is one of them and we've got others,
other folks that we work with
and then naturally Employment and recruiting
which has sort of been the foundation
of the work that we do.
So of these top approaches that we use to reach all
of our employees, the first one is that we have a
"be a champion initiative."
Which we've been pumping
up over the course of the last year.
And that's sort of the ally concept
that you might have heard from other organizations
and we're asking people to help us play a roll
in just simply becoming inclusive leaders.
That's where we're kind of appealing to employees
and we give them ways to choose where they want to help
and these are some of the ones you see listed.
And it will help us expand our resource groups,
help us mentor, get involved in recruiting.
Just be a personal leader as a part of the network
like the folks you will hear later.
You know, how do we work with just employees
that have significant responsibilities
with their own dependence?
So there are a lot of ways to be a part of this work.
We ask them to think
about workplace accessibility for everyone.
Help us make sure that we can make all
of our internal videos captioned, you know,
and keep an eye out to the accessibility
of our technology.
Because we've got to have people spotting us
from around the globe and so monitoring for us
and helping us understand some of the trouble spots.
And we're just in the early parts of all this.
I'd love to be able
to say we've got a broad based very highly connected
global region to all of our facilities.
We don't, but that's on our dream chart, you know,
of over time being able to influence as much
as we can around the world.
Thinking we ask everyone to help us become a part
of building capabilities.
And it's a challenge when we get out
and talk with folks and ask them to do this.
We have a online resource center we've built
that has a lot of information
about binding accommodations, you know,
talking with your manager.
Helping colleagues, learning about etiquette
and how some on line training modules we've developed.
And we continue to try
to build interactive support systems
that so you can tell people
that they can strive much more effectively.
And then we ask people to step up and think
about their community service,
whether it's the internal community events
or certainly external community.
And with all of you, you know,
we have different community events we participate in.
we've been a part of special Olympics for a long time.
we did some work in helping teachers
in the Cincinnati [inaudible] and Perlman Center
which was really nice.
And helping them use technology
to improve their ability to help the children there.
We recently opened what we call a [inaudible] Center,
it's a packing center in one of our plants and in Maine
where we've got 30 percent of our employees have,
or are, people with disabilities.
That's new, we started in August.
It's small but actually we've already begun expanding
so we're very pleased with that one
because it's selling the standard, we believe,
for a new way of looking at particularly technician
and plant based enrollment.
Here is just a quick summary of some
of the things that, you know,
that we have run into over the many years
that we've been trying to crack this nut.
There are some things that we've found
that don't work too well and the first one,
building a broad integrated PWD community similar
to what other networks have has been hard for us.
So that's creating a community where people
with disabilities all come together seeking the support
that's typically provided like mentoring,
education and career access and so on.
That we find is actually difficult.
We have half of our effort is driven by employees
that have special needs dependence.
So we actually again have adopted the strategy
of what can we do for the broad based culture at P
and G. realizing that there may not be the shared
interest that's similar with other networks.
We know that sometimes creating broad based initiatives
or efforts makes it difficult to sell
because it's just simply too hard
to get everyone's attention.
So we'd rather address things
on small incremental basis or in pilots.
We know we need a formal structure
to get o you're work done,
when the most significant challenges we ran
into for the first, say, 15 years was there were a lot
of influencing and times
where our folks were advising they are talent supply
department on how to make sure our recruiting system
was effective and tried to tackle various pieces
of policy but it was like pushing a rock up hill
because there are so many parts of the companies
that are involved in executing efforts
that are important to people with disabilities.
So we needed to create a formal structure
that made this much more possible
and in that case that's where I developed this people
with disabilities advisory council.
We started engaging our leaders much more effectively
and as I mentioned, we have our key sponsor.
But for us having someone in this central HR world
like mine, the roll that I play has been very helpful
because it actually is part of my day job
and it allows me to create and reach
out to the structure that was hard for others to do.
you've got to have your engaged leadership
and finally connecting everything to the business,
you know, naturally
as I think it's probably a no-brainer
but sometimes we forget to do that or find ways to talk
about that effectively.
And we're still trying to figure it out.
So that's my comments from the Proctor
and Gamble perspective.
Now, thank you very much for listening to our story
and I'm happy to answer questions of course at the end.
We find that, really, in summary,
just communicating what we're about and reaching
out to all of our employees remains our largest
challenge and I think it always will.
It is just hard and it is hard
in a rather complex company.
But we do find that it's remarkable how quickly people
get energized and engaged in the work we do.
It sells itself generally, you know,
once you have attention.
And that's, I think, one of the most gratifying aspects
of the work and why I would say, take heart,
there are those out there, everyone has a story
or an interest or an exposure and I think that's one
of the reasons why this has just immense power.
So thank you very much for listening.
[ background noises ]
>> That [inaudible]
>> My name is [inaudible] and I am a senior director
at Microsoft and I developed the [inaudible]
and such company my role
at Microsoft is really threefold.
My day job as I call it is I look
at the customer experience for accessibility
that the relatively new role
that we created just six months ago
and so I'm really immersed
in the accessibility experience
and [inaudible] external product
that our customer [inaudible].
I do a lot of work in customer [inaudible]
and the last is where I'm going
to get a focus today is my role as chair
of the disability group here at Microsoft.
And I am profoundly deaf,
I'm sitting here with my ASL interpreter so
but you'll notice that I'm British
but we do fine in ASL.
We find that's a better way of communicating
and it is slightly different
for British Sign Language as an FYI.
So I'll go over the work experience
but it's a history behind how we formed that group.
What we focused on and some of the areas of success
that we've rarely found over time
and this is really an absorbing journey that we're on
and we're very excited to be on it.
but let me start with a little bit of contact
which is this slide here.
though this is the HR global diversity
and inclusion strategy
which is just [inaudible] overarching group
and probably akin to the area that Anne is
in in Proctor and Gamble and really I work very closely
with these guys and they have the overarching strategy
for diversity.
Clearly Microsoft is very passionate
and publicly concerned about diversity
and we have a core strategy around how we go about that
which is really about representations and making sure
that we have a great pipeline.
Inclusion and inclusive strategies and then innovation.
How can we use that to innovate?
And it's important to shout out because that will help
to get contact on what we've done as I walk
through a little bit.
So part of that we actually have seven employee's
results created by the company, potentially eight.
We're looking at another one right now.
But those employee's results created are broad.
The quick history is
that the cross direct ability group
that has always been a huge number [inaudible] groups,
we have 10 groups here at Microsoft.
But they are not joined at the hip.
They weren't working together until a few years ago
and when I moved over here from London
and the UK it was really just joining together these
groups because we all have similar voices.
We all have similar needs and similar questions
and similar success stories
that we can help the business with regardless
of what disability and groups range from [inaudible]
and Microsoft [inaudible] and [inaudible] to MS
to Huddle [assumed spelling] which is our desk group
to VIP, visually impacted person.
So there is a broad range
but we all have similar needs and questions.
So we joined all groups together and became one
of the seven employee result groups.
And we really partner with global diversity
and with a lot of other groups around the business.
And I'm very excited to be the Chair of that.
The things that have really helped us
with having the policies is that we have a joined
and a very aligned set of strategies
that are how we think about diversity and how we think
about disabilities.
So our goal is how to enable the employees at Microsoft
to achieve that full potential.
That's a very broad agreement
and I could be [inaudible] in lots of ways
so the first thing we did
and the first thing I did was speak to a lot of seniors
and the leadership team to say, hey,
what does this mean to you and can you help [inaudible]
and to the team as we go forward?
And I'm really thrilled at the level
of leadership and involvement.
Steven Sponowski, [assumed spelling]
who is the [inaudible],
he's the president of Windows is one of our executives
on [inaudible] and so having that kind
of leadership buy in right
from the top was very key right from the get go
and in fact helped us to develop some videos
which we're about to put external
but we've had one developed internally a couple
of years ago which is about Windows 7
and how it's accessible and how that's important to us.
How we're passionate about it
and how we have everybody else knows about it
and wants to use it.
And if you remember that I'm a PC we did lots
of versions of I'm a PC.
It was lots of fun.
So we have a set of goals
and [inaudible] especially sure everybody is aware of
and when you think about it [inaudible]
but it's a broad subject and very important for an ERG,
for an ERG, and it's ability and we have a couple here
that are very much about accessibility,
of facilities, of buildings.
Clearly we need all codes that we want
to do more than that.
We don't want to meet just a code.
We want to set a new standard.
So we're really passionate about how we work
on emergency procedures,
how we help with new building designs.
How we ensure that our company events
which can be thousands of people have potentially --
one event that happens every year,
and I think it is right around 13,
000 or 15,000 people in a local stadium.
How can we make sure that it's the best experience?
We overlook software and we have a huge partnership
with our product teams,
with our accessibility group units and I'm going
to talk a little bit more about this
because this is really being where our focus has been
over the last few years and our focus will be.
And the cool reason is this.
It grounds us in the need for diversity
to promote our product, to innovate,
to be part of the market place.
Having people with disabilities helps us be better
at what we do every day.
We have an amazing commitment publicly
to accessibility, leveraging an internal community
of people is key to that strategy.
So this one helps us get grounded in why we are here.
It's so important to us
and it's probably should be talked about less.
Which I'll fully fix to the next time I present this.
We also do a lot of internal awareness
and we have trained all of our conferences on how to,
on disabilities etiquette, we've done internal videos,
we have conferences and we're really passionate
about making sure that we have a voice.
We all know the statistics on disabilities
and I know statistics are relative external
from the company to [inaudible] of the company.
It so empowering all of us as people with disabilities
to be our own advocates and also I'm talking
about empowering managers to have the right tools
and kits and resources available to them.
it's called [inaudible]
and then at Stanley we have a lot
of passion similar I think to what I'm chaired
about how we participate in an [inaudible] if there is
and you hear me cut off don't panic.
I'm -- but we have [inaudible] think
about [inaudible] participation,
having an impact on the other community.
Helping with other coached communities
and many of these, the board
on one disability groups are passionate about external.
A couple of the names if you wanted to have a look
around you'll see that Ryan Adorian,
who is the Chair [inaudible] he [inaudible] the mascot
of the [inaudible] and the Seahawks being apparently,
[inaudible] but apparently the best American football
group in the country.
Is that the right way of putting it?
I think I'm going to get in trouble now.
And he said he is a huge advocate
for multiple sclerosis and he was volunteer
of the year last year
and raises a huge amount of money.
It was around $150,000.00 last year and their goal is
to try and do that again this year.
And clearly we're incredibly supported and [inaudible]
that we have that really have some focus.
So I just wanted to share one example is this
acceptability focus that we have in providing us
with the [inaudible] strategy
and the entire system release details
of the conference we had last month, or actually,
earlier this month.
And we had our second big conference here at Microsoft
which we [inaudible] and for those
who have seen the slide you will see
that our plant theme
and our logo is absolutely [inaudible] and Braille.
And we have a lot of fun designing that because also,
it also trains at the Window and branding
that [inaudible] designs that some
of you may be seeing out there.
Coming out very soon.
The goal of this was really
to have a broad community brought together
so it was a partnership between me as the Chair
of Accessibility Standards Group as well
as our [inaudible] group.
And together we put on a conference that had a focus
of enabling everyone to be successful both internally
and externally and we had amazing keynote speakers,
many of you know Caroline Casey
from Island the company Kanchi, the former and founder
of Kanchi and Kathy Martinez
and then somebody you might recognize here Jill Halprin
was here on one of the panels
and it was hugely inspirational.
And again I'm going to go back to that strategy
of it being a very grounded one of in order for us
to deliver amazing innovation in this marketplace,
to deliver amazing accessible products we need
to have people within the company
that understand accessibility,
that live and breathe it.
And the best people who can do that are people
who use it every day.
So it's key and fundamental to what we do.
To have this kind of focus and to enable everyone
to be successful, to help us
to deliver [inaudible] our business.
There are some pictures
on here you will see the top two are actually the top
is President [inaudible] who is a parent of children
with disabilities himself and he [inaudible] then some
of our award winners.
We gave out five awards during the day to people
who we're just being familiar
in accessibility innovation and contributing
to our future but also who we wanted to recognize
as helping people be great managers and mentors
to people with disabilities
and we really had a focus on that.
And then lastly you will see there was a lot
of humor in the day.
I think that humor is a great part of having fun.
And so that was definitely a component.
That's me and then let me hand over
and push questions at the end.
[Inaudible]
>> Okay, thank you very much and I'm glad
to be following the previous presenters and very,
very good information.
Again, my name is Adrian Hawkins
with Novartis Pharmaceuticals and I've been an employee
with Novartis Pharmaceuticals in various roles
for 24 years and today I am an oncology
sales specialist.
My reason for getting involved with disabilities is
that my wife, she does have MS. You know,
she's doing very well.
She is actually on the mildest medication Dilanious
[assumed spelling] so she is doing very well.
But this was my initial reasoning for getting involved.
My son also has ADHD.
In terms of Novartis overall
and this is new information in terms
of our diversity theme we were just ranked number 13
moving up [inaudible] from 21
so this is our new information.
I was actually at the diversity themed conference
earlier this week in New York City.
That's actually where I'm based in terms of sales.
And additionally in terms
of [inaudible] I believe our ranking was number seven.
So overall in terms of Novartis dealing with diversity
and inclusion it's still learning but doing a great job
in the overall area of diversity inclusion.
In terms of capable as an ERG this is one
of approximately 15 ERGs that we have
at Novartis Pharmaceuticals.
And I'm on slide number two,
I'm not advancing my slide.
So I'm on slide number two.
But in terms achievable as our disabilities ERG,
I'm capable that the ERG
that the [inaudible] new possibilities that helps
to enhance business objectives
by empowering both the individual
and Novartis Pharmaceuticals corporation
to reach full potential.
We've had a structure theme
around strategic imperatives.
Our strategic imperatives are talent,
culture and marketplace.
In terms of talent, you know, just a couple of things
that we deal with in forms of talent in terms
of our capable ERG is a disabilities mentoring day.
Now this is a national disabilities mentoring day
that we participated
in this year will be I think our fifth year.
And what we do with this particular day is we bring
in about 40 high school students
from the surrounding area and, you know,
we put together a nice, you know,
half day for the students just I'm showing them
from a disability standpoint.
Yes this may be an obstacle but this obstacle in terms
of your disability can be overcome.
One of the activities
that we do during this day is we will pull actually
some of our employees out to host this panel discussion
with three to four of our employees
that actually have a disability.
And, you know, they will just give their story.
So this is very inspiring in itself just
for these students to see employees
that have overcome their disability.
In terms of USBLN I say USBLN in terms of Novartis,
this is where we gained a lot of our information,
a lot of our knowledge as in ERG
and in terms of getting hired.
GettingHired was an organization that we met
at the USBLN and we have several job school things
on GettingHired and this is of course a job
for the disabled website
and actually we have approximately,
I just looked this up,
we have approximately 1100 jobs posted today
on the GettingHired portal in terms
of Novartis Pharmaceutical jobs.
In terms of culture what we do a lot of,
and I heard this in terms of Proctor and Gamble
and I think it's just the type of company, you know,
that doesn't go far,
of course we have internal partnerships.
Internal partnerships of course with other ERGs
but other with brand teams within our company.
So that's a very nice transition,
a very nice partnership that we have
with the internal brand team so we do a lot
of activities there.
We have, of course, a lot of external partnerships
with organizations like the MS Society
within New Jersey that would be called the March County
Health Mental Health Association.
NORD, national organization of rare diseases.
So we will do events based on some of these.
Awareness days and just some
of these organizations in general.
Marketplace.
I've mentioned in terms of the USBLN
so this is another program that we just recently,
actually picked up this year
and this is the Disabilities Applied Diversity Program.
Novartis Pharmaceuticals just became a member
of that particular program
and also something else coming
out of USBLN is increased accessibility.
There is an organization that we are looking
at in terms of analysis essential accessibility.
So we do have ongoing analysis as we speak
on for increased accessibility
on our main Website Novartis.com.
And potentially some of our products website.
So I'm going to go onto slide number three,
the next slide.
In terms of basic building blocks
for productive disability ERG,
in terms of best practices.
Again some of this stuff has already been mentioned
by of course, executive sponsorship.
So our executive sponsor is a VP level.
Another thing that we find and I think I've kind
of mentioned this, I'm the co chair here.
We did start off with chairs for DRTs but we find
that co chairs kind of leaves some
of the responsibility and helps out.
So we have as much, and this is across all DRT,
we may have three co chairs for one DRT.
And this kind of helps so there is not one person
that has to lead a group
and you got probably can attend to this in terms
of doing things within the ERT there is always this one
core team but at least with co chairs you do kind
of spread the responsibility.
Creativity and innovation of course is very key
and it definitely maximizes, you know,
the ERT from a common interest standpoint to initiate
and maintain employee engagement.
So this is key.
Because a lot of times you will have individuals
that come out to maybe one event
and they may be interested in that one event,
lest say if there is something on autism
and you may not see them for the rest of the year.
But [inaudible] maintains creativity
and innovation throughout your ERT startup
and throughout his longevity.
Best practices.
Again, you have to be
on land once again we will definitely be
at the USBLN conference this year
but there is another organization
and this is the National Business Disabilities Council.
I believe they are based in New York City
and I know they'll be [inaudible] participating
with them and then also you have the local business
leadership networks as well.
What we do to maintain our consistency
and to keep things going is
of course hold monthly meetings
and we do this via teleconference and in person.
And that's always the second Wednesday of every month.
Last slide.
in terms of successes in ongoing initiatives.
Successes, it's definitely our disability
mentoring day.
Everyone at Novartis really likes this day
and just involved in engagement internally
and externally is incredible.
The Novartis ERG collaborations
for our internal events, excellent.
Just to put out one example, just black history month.
We engage our African American ERG as well
as of course capable and we had some
of the disability students that we had involvement
with put together posters, essays,
and or poems surrounding black history month.
What they thought of Black history month
and so we created a contest.
And so collaboration [inaudible] creativity
and innovation.
Again, I mentioned the product
and [inaudible] collaboration is external activity.
So these are all successes.
And last but not least these ongoing initiatives.
This was also mentioned.
Overall communication of importance and relevance
of disability ERG issues to the business.
So this is an ongoing initiative.
Communication is key
to continually have this information put out there.
Disability, employees self identification.
This is only if an employee freely chooses to do so.
they are of course, encouraged, you know,
through the ERG to do this
but it is totally up to them.
And last, increasing awareness
in further improving [inaudible]
to become even more disability friendly.
So this is my story and I'll stop here
because I know we want to go back
to Jill for questions.
So thank you guys very much for this opportunity
to share the Novartis story.
>> Excellent.
Well, I thank you Anne and Jenny and Adriane,
this has been awesome.
I want to pick up on some of these questions out here.
One of the questions that's been raised is really
directed to the panelists and just kind
of wondering what each of your companies is doing
to recruit and employ highly skilled people
with disabilities in high level positions
for which they are qualified.
Do you want to touch on that?
>> I just really briefly, again,
we are connected with GettingHired which is again,
the portal [inaudible] for the individuals
with disabilities seeking employment.
We have 1100 of our jobs postings
out on the GettingHired data base.
So that's what we're doing
and I know we can improve upon that in terms of,
you know, potentially internal training but that's
where we are right now.
>> And this is Jenny from Microsoft.
I mean, these are [inaudible]
as we hire people regardless of disabilities.
Regardless of the ability or disabilities.
I mean, our job is to enable people to be successful
so if the right candidate comes
down with the right skill and the right level
of experience and they need the job requirements they
will get the job.
And you know, it's not about whether a person --
I'd like us to think about it more in a mainstream way.
So from my job, you know, I'm the senior director
at Microsoft, I had 11 interviews for my job
and it was tough and it was hard work and that's
but it's about making sure
that you're the right person,
you have the right skills.
And then Microsoft's philosophy is that you're going
through any recruitment processes and as long
as you start identifying yourself
in your recruitment process in the Web
that you need any accommodations,
it's Microsoft's responsibility
to fulfill those and they do.
So really, the accountability is on anyone applying
to make sure that they have self identified
and are very clear about what they need
to be successful.
>> This is Anne from Proctor and Gamble.
I definitely would agree completely with the approach
that Microsoft takes.
That mirrors what we do except that Proctor
and Gamble is a build from within organization.
So we typically don't do external employment for,
you know, [inaudible] or high level employees simply
because we're doing most of our hiring at entry level.
There are times when we need to hire specialists
that we would otherwise have approach just again
as Jenny said in terms of Microsoft.
But with the college recruiting, you know,
we're spending a lot of time on college campuses
with dedicated recruiting teams.
Developing specific relationships with certain colleges
and certainly developing relationships
with the career offices.
>> Excellent.
This is obviously a hot topic
and the questions are pouring in here.
So here's the next one.
Anne, you mentioned business case being a necessarily
component to these programs.
That this individual said that they have not heard any
of the speakers address that other
than a corporate responsibility prospective.
They are wondering if any of you want to touch
on any examples that you have
of where you're ERGs have positively impacted your
organization bottom line?
>> We have, at Procter and Gamble,
we're actually trying
to spend more detailed time talking with our brand folk
as Adriane mentioned earlier
and in the past there has been a decent amount
of engagement on some products with regard
to accessibility of the product.
So yes, it's helped in those products.
Like we had a -- back
when we actually owned Folgers we were recognized,
that product was recognized in terms of accessibility.
We no longer own that product
so we're actually working very hard
to get much more focused on product and packaging
and creating a level of awareness that is baked in some
of our processes but just doesn't come naturally simply
because the, you know, the product focus would
and should be everybody,
but when you've spent years developing, you know,
brand identities you tend to, you know, focus in on one
or the other aspect of that brand and so we're trying
to figure out amongst all of the brands
that we deliver, you know,
how to talk about some of them as well.
Because many of them are very accessible.
For example our Swiffer product happens --
you know, we've got lots of folks
that are wheelchair bound and they've had conversations
with our brand folks and looked at that
as just a great product because it makes it
so much easier for me to actually be able
to clean my house and, you know,
manage my floor clean up and so on.
And so we're working at that.
That is our reason from being as pride
of making sure that, you know,
as a company people understand that we're overly,
we're aware, so that we become not only just a --
you know, you want to be an employer of choice
but you want to be seen as a company
that understands these issues
in general as specifically.
>> And, Jill, I'll throw this out.
It's very hard to, you know, determine impact in terms
of the bottom line.
It's very subjective but I will say this,
in terms of Novartis we do diversity and inclusion
in training, going through different topics.
And again, we have 15, 16 ERGs but last year
and I think actually the current topic for diversity
and inclusion training
at Novartis is people with disabilities.
And in terms of this training the outside consultant
actually came to our ERG to put together the curriculum
to assist in training the Novartis house.
So if you think of that from a savings
of so much time dealing with the consultants trying
to gather this material, we were straight
and to the point to help them design this curriculum.
So I think that's a good success story
and most likely it did help at the bottom line.
>> And yet, very quickly, I mean, I'm not going to talk
about my bottom line and how we've helped
and the strategy and what I really shared,
helped to highlight how we are very focused
on this being part of our business.
Enabling people with disabilities
to be successful helps us to deliver
and innovate great products and great accessibility.
And so it's core and sentimental and I think a lot
of the stats that are publicly available really help
talk to some about in terms of how [inaudible]
and can come around just in terms of it being,
I think the [inaudible] 88 percent
of companies would rather work with companies,
or to buy from companies that are sympathetic to people
with disabilities but only 20 odd percent
of marketing see them.
And that's a lot of money spent
by people with disabilities.
So I think that there is a gap there and a lack
of opportunities which clearly I think any of us would
like to ensure that our organization has helped.
>> Excellent.
Okay, I want to be mindful of the time.
It looks like there is kind of a sea of questions
out here that are related to self-identification.
Just I want to combine a couple here,
so just in thinking about, you know,
do you have any words of wisdom in terms of how you go
about starting an ERG when people may not want
to publically disclose and then along those lines,
you know, how do you effectively attract people
to join these ERGs?
>> Let me share a little bit about our journey
so I can definitely understand
that we definitely face them and [inaudible]
and anybody, myself included,
I came from T Mobile which is, by the way,
it wasn't a great place for me as a person [inaudible]
but I came to Microsoft and I wasn't really public
about my own disabilities even though I cannot hear
speech, I clearly need captioning and interpreting.
And I think once you're
in a company that's very supportive
and obviously supportive I need to come aware of that.
I think mentality does change over time
and our journey is [inaudible] together we have grown
4000 percent over the last three years.
And we haven't done anything other than be visible.
During October disability awareness month,
we sent out facts of the day, we had conferences,
we're very visible with our external activities as well
as our internal activities.
And in joining up the A list
and as Microsoft clearly leads monthly in an email
and making sure that distribution happens
on that [inaudible] and we've found
that really our great grove through word of mouth
and some groups are hidden.
In terms of people that are part of them
and that is the choice of that particular group.
Most of them are not.
And again, I think that is primarily done
to have support.
As Microsoft is and making sure that their [inaudible]
and participants are very aware of that.
We actively encourage diversity within this company
because we know the business benefit.
We know that it's the right thing to do,
not just for our own health and sanity and career
in directions, but because it's the right thing
to have the right [inaudible] empathy and direction
with our customers.
So it's critical to us
and I think what the [inaudible] culture changes
at the time and it grew and evolved with all of that.
There is more that we can do to be more
in the [inaudible] and we're definitely doing that
but that helps a little bit.
>> Does anybody else want to touch on this topic?
>> Yeah, and Jill, I'll jump in really quickly.
As I think back, it is a very difficult, well,
I'll say challenging ERG from a [inaudible] standpoint
but I think that once you show value then you can get
back [inaudible] and what we did
in the beginning is we would have sessions
and everyone would kind of explain why they wanted
to be involved and what the personal story was,
whether it was a family member or whether it was them
as individuals that had the disability.
But we had to create a safe environment
and once you create that safe environment then it kind
of took off from there.
Of course engaging the product brand teams.
Again, in our environment that was a great thing.
The other thing is that we would ask our potential
members what topics they would like to see.
We would do watch and learn.
I know myself I learned a lot in terms of Asperger's
and celiac disease and these are all things
that I did not know about
but some of the potential members
and colleagues were interested in this.
So once we allowed them to put forth their points
of interest then it kind of grew from there.
>> Well, I'm looking at the time and clearly I would
like to thank our speakers.
I think that this has been one
of the most attended Webinars that I felt to moderate
and lots and lots of good questions
which is clearly a reflection of the fact
that we have got incredible speakers so thank you
for your presentations today.
And thanks to each of you
for participating in this Webinar.
I want to draw your attention to two things in closing.
One is that we're going to put some information
on the screen about a tool kit that EARN has created
for establishing and maintaining successful employee
resources groups.
You can actually go to the Ask EARN.org website
and there is a step by step guide
for developing disabilities focused ERGs.
It can be downloaded from that page
as an accessibility pdf if you're interested
in sharing prints or email copies of it.
And then also we're going to put some information
up on the screen with the event code for those of you
who are interested in obtaining HRCI credits.
So that should be popping up on the screen as well.
And then all of this information is going
to be available and archived on the ASKEARN.org website
so you're going to be able to go back
and see the slides that you wanted us to go back
and show you again and as well
as access to transcripts.
So thanks again to each of our presenters and thanks
to all of you for attending today's Webinar.
On behalf of EARN have a great day.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.