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So now without further ado, I’m going to introduce my boss.
Sandra Evers-Manly is the Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for Northrop Grumman,
and she wears a few hats in this role. She has a varied range of responsibilities, which
include: corporate wide EEO, Diversity and Inclusion, Ethics, Charitable Giving, Community
Relations, Employee recognition programs, and recently is our boss and our mentor and
our leader for the Operation Impact Program. She began her Northrop Grumman career as a
summer intern while she was in college. So I could go on and on and read a lot about
her, but I know her and I know she wouldn’t want me to do that. So I’m going to stop,
because she is my boss, and so ladies and gentleman, Sandra Evers-Manly, Sandra.
[Applause] Thank you so much Duane and good morning everyone.
Let me just take this opportunity on behalf of our Chairman, CEO, and President Wesley
Bush, to welcome you here to Northrop Grumman and to some of you to welcome you back.
This for us is an exciting day, it’s a day about opportunity, it’s a day about challenge,
it’s a day about celebration, and it’s a day about making a difference. And we are
so honored to partner with each of you and your respective organizations, for us to make
an even greater corporate America, and an even greater America.
This morning we are about to hear from one of those great advocates, a great leader in
our country, who has truly made a difference for individuals with disabilities. She is
not just someone who talks the talk, but she truly walks the walk. And we’re just so
honored to be able to have her here with us today to talk to us a little bit about some
of the great things that are happening, the opportunities where we can make an even greater
difference. We are excited to be able to host today’s Network of Champions, we are excited
to hear from our next speaker, but I would be remiss if I didn’t first thank Mr. Duane
Hardesty and Ms. Karen Stang, who are our champions who help to keep us focused on the
right things. So thank you Duane, thank you Karen for your tremendous work.
[Applause] So let me introduce our speaker, Carol Glazer,
President of the National Organization on Disability. Carol joined the National Organization
on Disability in 2006, as the Executive Director of its national Employ Ability Partnership.
She became President in October, 2008. Under her leadership, the National Organization
on Disability has double its revenue and increased its net assets by more than 300%. That’s
what you talk about leadership. She has not only increased the focus on employment by
a factor of 10 and developed a new important relationship with the U.S. Army, leading employee/employers,
national organizations, scores of new corporate donors to their programs in the CEO Council,
she put in place the National Organization’s signature employment demonstrations Wounded
Warrior Career program and Bridge program to business. I can go on and on about our
great speaker, but I think we are all here to hear from her.
Please welcome the phenomenal, Carol Glazer. [Applause]
It’s a pleasure to be here. So first I was a cat that’s being herded by Duane, and
then Sandra really raised expectations with those wonderful remarks. Thank you Sandra,
hope I can live up to it. When we got the invitation to speak here today,
the significance of the date was not lost on us. I think most of us here today that
are in this field know that today is the day the new rules that were issued this summer
by the Department of Labor that effect federal contractors go into effect; new effective
hiring guidelines for veterans, protected veterans, as well as people with disabilities,
for the first time ever numerical hiring goals. We believe this act by government has the
potential to be even more sweeping than even the ADA, in terms of disability employment.
As we know from the 70’s, Affirmative Action in the wake of the Civil Rights movement,
the hiring numbers didn’t really change until Affirmative Action came along. Similarly
with the ADA, which is almost a quarter century old now, the employment numbers for people
with disabilities have not changed since then. This has the potential, really, to change
the game. I think all of you here, whether you’re service providers, veterans, or employers
know about this. If you don’t now, you soon will. And it’s a pleasure to be here today,
hosted by a company like Northrop Grumman which has been a leader in this area long
before they were required to be as a federal contractor. It’s good to know that we have
role models in companies like Northrop Grumman and others in your Network of Champions that
can lead the way for us. I wanted though, to connect the dots for today
with something else. And that is the year 2014, and that year marks the 50th anniversary
of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I think that many of us in this field
don’t necessarily see our work as a civil rights issue. We see it as a medical issue,
we see it as fixing an impairment. But I think if you really stop and think about it, particularly
if you see disability as a normal part of the human condition, something that just about
all of us will experience at some point in our life, then you realize that people with
disabilities, just like people who are part of racial, ethnic minorities, women, LGBT
have a right and an opportunity to participate in going to the theater, going to church,
and most importantly to succeed in the workplace in the workforce. The signing of the Civil
Rights Act is something that some of us in this room might remember. I am one of those
people. You remember probably where you were when JFK was shot, when Martin Luther King
Jr. was killed, and that same year when Bobby Kennedy was killed. A vivid memory of where
we were on that day, just as vivid as those of us who remember 9/11.
Closer to home, I just want to acknowledge Medgar Evers. A cousin of Sandra Evers-Manly,
a leader in the Civil Rights Movement slain and buried right her in our backyard, in Arlington,
with a proper burial with honors as a veteran of the Vietnam War.
When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act he said these words, “Those who founded
our country knew that freedom, not only for independence, but for personal liberties and
justice would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning. Americans
of every race and color have died in battle to protect that freedom and build a nation
of widening opportunities. Now, our generation of Americans has been called on to continue
the never ending search for justice. We have come to a time of testing and we must not
fail.” Those words are as true today as they were
a half century ago. But today the fight is for equal opportunity and justice for all
Americans with disabilities, including injured veterans.
So today you’ll hear about best practices, you’ll hear about what employers are doing
to support, recruit and support veterans who are coming into their workforce whether they’re
disabled or not. If you believe Rand, 1 out of every 4 veterans is going to have a disability.
You just may not know it. You’ll hear great things about my organization and many others
who are out there trying to help employers to do a better job of hiring veterans and
hiring people with disabilities. And you’ll hear, most importantly, that those veterans
need and deserve a special brand of support, but that the investment pays itself back.
I have to quote Duane, as you’re herding cats you also (where are you Duane?) Duane
says, “With a modicum of flexibility and understanding, you’re likely to find a disciplined
and successful team member.” It’s all true, and it’s all part of the central theme
today. But also again remember, today and throughout this year that giving veterans
the best odds of success is not about a medical problem, it’s not about fixing a disability,
it’s not about giving a veteran a handout, or expecting any less of him or her, and it’s
not about taking any greater risk than you would with any other employee, it’s about
the call to action that Lyndon Johnson issued when he signed the Civil Rights Act. In which
he asked every public official, every religious leader, every business, every professional,
and every business man, his words, to bring justice and a deep respect for human dignity
to all people. So thank you to Sandra, to Duane, to Karen,
and all of your leadership at Northrop Grumman for being a beacon for what other companies
can do, both to meet these federal guidelines, and to answer the call to action. And most
of all to all of you, for your continuing struggle for justice and ensuring that our
generation of warriors and civil rights struggle succeeds.
And with that, I’m going to start our presentation. I’m here today with my colleague Bill Lockwood.
Bill where are you? Bill runs our Wounded Warrior Careers program and we’ll talk more
about that program and what we’ve learned about the kind of support that seriously injured
veterans need as they transition into the civilian workforce when they come home from
combat. NOD is a 30 year old organization we’ve
always focused on various quality of life issues effecting people with disabilities.
But in this year, and the last 5 years, our exclusive focus has been on employment as
the single biggest barrier to quality of life for people with disabilities.
We have had several programs working in the disability field. The ones we will talk about
here today are the Wounded Warrior Careers demonstration program and some research we
did about the career aspirations and support needs of seriously injured veterans.
Our Bridges to Business program helps companies to meet their disability hiring goals. Our
surveys and I would site the disability Employment Tracker, which is a confidential self-assessment
tool. In the first round we have had 50 companies sign up for it. What they get back is a very
complete report, not only on how you stack up with other companies, but also about best
practices and the actual regulation and where in the regulation a particular question relates
to. So that disability Employment Tracker is something that some of you here today may
have taken, but I would encourage you, in the next round is some interesting data that
that Tracker illuminated. I would just highlight one piece, and that is that of the 50 companies
we surveyed, most of them federal contractors, everybody is doing better on veteran employment
than they are on people with disabilities. We can talk about the reasons for that, but
it is a piece of data that we didn’t necessarily expect to find.
Our CEO Council, some of you here today are members of that CEO Council, that’s more
the outward facing group of corporate employers who want to be seen as employers of choice
for people with disabilities and also leaders among their peers.
And then Start on Success which is a career transition program for students with disabilities
that begins in high school similar to the project search model, except Start on Success
interns are paid for their work. We were approached by the Army in 2006. Donald
Rumsfeld was at that time setting up a program, transitioning a program into something that
he was calling the Army Wounded Warrior program (AW2). He believed that all veterans, even
the most seriously injured, should be productive, contributing members of their community when
they come home. What that means obviously will differ. But that every veteran deserves
a chance to be in the workforce if that’s what he or she wants to do, to pursue an education,
even to pursue volunteer work, that kind of productive engagement is critical. He came
to NOD and said can you help me to design a component for the AW2 program that will
relate to a career. That began a relationship with the Army. It was codified in an MOU.
We started off with focus groups. We talked to over 200 veterans and family members to
find out what their issues were, what their career needs were, and we designed a demonstration
in concert with the Army where we collocated career specialists with AW2 caseworkers so
that those caseworkers referred over to us veterans that they deemed ready, willing,
and able to work and our career specialists took over and provided a whole web of support
that Bill will talk about in more detail. We started in three sights. We added a fourth,
so far we have 200… Bill are we up to 300 yet? (Bill’s response inaudible) So we are
at or slightly above 300. We started just with the Army, but in our Pittsburgh program
we are actually branching out to the guard and reserve population because that’s what
the Pittsburgh area has in great abundance. The outcomes of the programs so far have been
have been about twice the success rate of AW2 veterans who are not getting these kinds
of support services. So, it’s not a scientific evaluation but certainly we’ve been collecting
a lot of data going all the way back now for 6 years on that caseload of 300. Success for
us is defined as placement in a job, placement in a training program, or placement in school.
The research that we did, I mentioned earlier, is in a publication called Return to Careers.
I encourage all of you to read it because it really does have some really good data
about what veterans and their family members are experiencing when they come back home
and try to access the civilian workforce. It tells you all the problems with translating
your MOS into civilian skills, and all those other issues, but how veterans in particular
view those issues, experience those issues and what their aspirations are.
Bill I think I’m going to turn it over to you now.
Thank you Carol, it’s a pleasure to be here today. We are very proud of the work we have
done working with veterans with disabilities and today what I am going to do is focus more
on post-placement support, what happens after they are placed in the workforce. So, many
of you may have seen similar presentations from us in the past, but I will try to avoid
too much duplication. One of the first things I would like to mention is that we talk about
the signature injuries in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the estimate is that 30%
of the 2.4 million who have served will have some form of post-traumatic stress, traumatic
brain injury, or depression. We knows that that scares some employers and it scares some
managers because based on the media reports on what will happen if they bring someone
into the workforce that has these conditions. So if we are looking at approximately, maybe
800,000 veterans that have these conditions, that might be cause for concern. However,
there are 27 million Americans in the workforce who have similar injuries, similar conditions:
TBI, depression, post-traumatic stress. So even if you don’t hire veterans, you can
learn something from them, because you are going to have people in the workforce who
are struggling with these issues. We view the veterans as being the leading edge, and
they are going to help change the workplace because of the conditions that they have and
by you bringing them in and learning how to work with them.
Now, the other misperception is kind of momenta by the media, is that typically post-traumatic
stress and traumatic brain injury will result in violence in the workplace.
These are really what happen when you have these conditions, what’s the effect in the
workplace? We try to look at it from the workplace. It’s disorganization, it may be memory problems,
it could be anxiety or panic attacks that affect your ability to perform. Most often
it results in frustration. These are people who have had very successful careers, they’ve
had a lot of responsibility and when they get into the workplace and discover they can’t
do as well as they thought they could do, they can’t remember, or there is something
they just can figure out and have a hard time adjusting to, it can be frustrating. It can
make a major impact on their performance. That doesn’t mean that without the proper
support they won’t be loyal and dedicated team members, because they will. For those
of you that are in HR, I’d ask you to think about what might be the indication that in
a human resource role, someone was suffering from post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain
injury or depression… What do you think you might see?
[audience answer inaudible] Absences, job abandonment, maybe a manager
coming in saying, “I don’t understand why this person can’t do this. “ These
are all really common symptoms and you’ve probably seen them in those other 27 million
folks that are in the workplace. So I would ask you to consider that.
Now, what are the challenges of hidden injuries as opposed to visible injuries? One of the
statistics that I’ve seen recently is that there are about 52,000 soldiers who were wounded
in Iraq and Afghanistan, when compared to the possible 800,000 who are dealing with
psychological and cognitive issues, that’s not a lot. You won’t know who these individuals
are unless they tell you and there is a stigma against mental illness, so these are viewed
as weaknesses by many people. These people may not disclose, so it is important for you
to recognize what is going on and provide them the support the need in order to succeed.
There is a fear among many veterans that they won’t be hired simply because they are veterans
because someone may consider that they have traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress.
Another thing is that you may hire someone or someone returns from a deployment who is
fine, and then after a while the injuries begin to appear. So it is very important to
be able to recognize them because often the individual who is injured doesn’t recognize
it themselves. Naturally there is a fear on being diagnosed
because that might affect your career. And probably one of the most important things
is that symptoms and effects change all the time. So just saying we’ve addressed this
individual, things are taken care of…something else might happen. So support is extremely
important because of that. I would like to talk a little bit about the
wounded warriors. Most of you have worked with these veterans, you’re aware of who
wounded warriors are. Let me tell you how the typical wounded warrior in our study appeared.
First and foremost it’s important to understand that they are mid-career with an average age
of 34, they are married predominantly, at least two children under the age of 18, have
significant family responsibilities, most were in combat specialties so they would have
been in infantry or armor, these are specialties that don’t really translate very well into
a civilian job as most of us don’t have armies in our civilian corporations. They
have limited job experience prior to joining the military. Most of them, when they came
into the military, didn’t really know what their career path was. They thought they were
going to be in the military. With an all-volunteer army, the goal was to be in the arm or to
gain the GI Bill benefits to be able to be able to develop a career. They typically have
a high school degree or GED. Prior to leaving the military with 7 years of service, probably
somewhere around an E5, were probably making about $51,000 a year. That’s total compensation
so housing and base pay. So they aren’t entry level and I think this is very important
to understand. Other areas to understand are that they don’t
really recognize their disabled, nobody wants to be disabled it’s not a label that you
take on, and they aren’t really familiar with disability. They didn’t grow up with
a disability and in fact they wouldn’t be in the military if they weren’t healthy
and able-bodied in order to be in the military. Many of them are still healing, healing can
take time. And I think this is also an extremely important
point, they are… we’ve all changed jobs, I’m assuming everyone in here. From the
looks of it everyone has been employed, gotten a job, changed jobs… this isn’t a job
change. This is a major life change. They’re changing their career, they’re changing
their employer, they’re leaving the community that they have been in, they’re leaving
a culture that they have been in, and they have a new disability that in most cases they
aren’t even sure how that disability affects them yet. So they can’t predict how they’ll
perform in a job because they don’t know what the job is, and they haven’t had an
opportunity to do it. Once again, these are not insurmountable problems, they are just
reality. So what do they expect of employers? When
we did the Return to Careers project we spent a lot of time looking at what they wanted
out of employers and what they wanted was fair consideration. So veteran hiring preference,
they thought that should mean something. Very often they are mystified by applying for a
job and hearing nothing in response. Or they are excited because they got the automated
response from the resume management system. They expect good supervision and management.
They want a well-defined career path. They want to know where they are going. They are
willing to get their foot in the door, but they need to know where that is going to lead
them as they go on. They expect the education and training that they are going to need to
do their job. They like performance feedback; they want to know how they are doing. And
they want to do significant work. Once again, these veterans have had very great responsibilities
in their military positions so sometimes the offer of just any job is demotivating and
they feel like they have been pushed aside by society.
So I’m not going to dwell on this but there are some workplace challenges. They’ve got
to adjust to the culture, they’ve got to adjust to the new career, and they don’t
necessarily fell like they fit in. So, when we did our work, what we identified
was what we call the Intensive Career Transition Support Model. What this model does is it
essentially says you have to begin knowing where you are going. That’s a pretty basic
idea I think, Stephen Covey liked it. You really need to take some time planning. It’s
difficult to plan a career when you really don’t have any idea what the job is on the
outside, so it takes some personal support. Also, individuals that may be having memory
issues, focus issues, may not come back to this very well so they need some guidance
of somebody that really understands both the military and civilian world. They need to
prepare. Many of the people we worked with in our 5 year, veterans that we have worked
with, are still in the preparation phase. School may take a little longer, or they need
a bachelor’s degree then a master’s degree in order to achieve their career goal. They
need more support in job seeking. This is where employers can really come in and help
them out: job previews, internships, the opportunity to see the job is and say yes I can do this
job but that job is going to be difficult for me, is very helpful there. And finally,
post placement support which is really all about the employer. You can’t really rely
on other agencies to do this particular work. It’s a lighter touch work. It involves mentorship
in the workplace. So, post-placement support is absolutely essential.
I want to talk a little bit about how we know personalized support, I mean that makes sense
but, in our work in the Wounded Warrior Careers program what we found…I think about this
as self-directed career transition which is what most of us have done. You get your resume
together, you figure out what you want to do, and then you go try to do that, and maybe
you find out it doesn’t work so you do something else and over time you begin to figure out
where you are. But with support they can do much better. We saw an 85% increase in education,
training and work when they came into our program. There was an increase in volunteering
because we were able to guide them to where they could volunteer. There was an increase
in employment because we were able to help them with the transition and with the support
they needed. And an increase in education and training, which, part of that is due to
the recession because after looking for jobs, many of them went to school. But that means
there is a much more highly trained base out there in the recruiting pool. We found that
timing was important. There was a 29% fall off in those that waited till a year after
they left the military to begin their transition. Ideally, if you can catch them before they
begin the transition, which is of course a lot about what Project Impact does, it will
help them make the transition better more easily. We also found that there was a relationship
between the number of days of contact they had with the navigator, a guide or mentor,
and their successful transition…almost double. So that was an important piece, now based
on the data we have we can’t say that that’s absolutely a direct causation but there is
a relationship there. Overall in our program, we achieved a 70%
engagement rate in education, training, and work compared to a 30-40% rate in those who
didn’t have support. You probably would see the same thing with the folks you work
with that are in your companies, there is a relationship between support and retention.
We saw that once they had career goals, they had in their ability to achieve those goals.
Not only that, they knew what their goals were which is important. Very often, especially
with memory issues, they might not know what the goal is. But a good motivating goal stays
with them and they remember what they want to do. Overall, we estimate that the cost
of this was $3,500 per employee per year. This is for our program which is dedicated
to these wounded warriors. So it’s not expensive, you probably spend more than that on a lot
of other programs each year. Conclusion: it helps to have support. The
self-directed model, which is focused on the job only, no support or limited navigation
support, i.e. it’s a good idea to have a resume, it’s another good idea to network,
a lot of times has no consideration to disability or the impairment that results from the disability.
There’s all of this transition that goes on, you are handed from one recruiter to another
recruiter to another recruiter, or from one agency to another agency to another agency.
Along the way the goals change and get confused and pretty soon you’re back to the job.
So, this is why we talk about supported career transition, which you all play a very important
role in all of this. It’s focused on the career, it’s focused on the veteran, I would
ask you to turn your recruiting processes upside down. Start with the veteran, not with
the job and you probably have a job somewhere that would fit. It’s proactive, it involves
outreach, and it’s got to be consistent. With coaching and mentoring it matters if
you have someone that you can talk to as you’re going through the process.
Now I would offer this as kind of a model of what you have to do in providing post-placement
support. First of all, it begins with preparation. Figure out if you are really ready to do this.
It’s going to take some effort, it will be well worth the effort, but it will take
some effort. You have to begin with the recruiting process, you can’t just begin with, “Okay
we got them hired so now let’s figure all this out.” It may be, as I’ve said, that
you may not know which job will work because they haven’t seen these jobs, so an opportunity
to move around. Some supervisors work well with people with disabilities, others may
not be so flexible, I think we all know that. Then you have to provide support. The onboarding
process is important. Mentors once again I can’t emphasize that too much. Understand
how to accommodate and look, maybe the first accommodation isn’t going to be the only
one that is needed, but there has to be an accommodation out there that will work. Finally,
keep training them, keep providing performance feedback, and you will retain them, keep motivating,
and engaging them. So that is a model and I think we are going to talk about all of
those aspects during the session today. Then I would also say here that there are
some resources. Carol mentioned the disability Employment Tracker, it helps you figure out
if you are culturally ready and you have the systems in place to support veterans in the
workplace and people with disabilities. There are two components of it, one is disability
and one is veterans. Then, our Bridges to Business is an advisory service that helps
connect employers with service providers and the people with disabilities. I think one
of the common things we especially hear with people who are beginning programs to hire
veterans is, “So, exactly where do you find them? Where are they?” They aren’t always
right where you are looking for them; they aren’t just standing outside the door.