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It's obvious to say that it's the right thing
to do from a heart,
feel good perspective
but it really is truly from a business perspective...
It's a business model that goes against an age old corporate stigma.
The notion that hiring someone with a disability
is more of a burden than an opportunity.
That thinking has proven to be the biggest obstacle
to the 800,000 disabled Canadians looking for work,
but as the CBC's Ioanna Roumeliotis
found out companies adopting newer thinking
are seeing huge returns on their bottom lines.
One look at Clint, Tonya and Pria
and you can tell they're not your typical Tim Hortons employees.
You may even think 'token hires'?
Think again.
They are the unexpected boom to this businesses bottom line.
They are proof there is a huge return on disability.
Hello, can we help you sir?
Mark Wafer owns seven Tim Hortons franchises in Toronto.
18 years ago he decided to do good and stumbled on a money making secret
that was very good for business.
When we first opened our store in 1995,
I realized very quickly that my staff weren't going to be able
to keep up the dining room.
It was a large store, 65 seats,
and ... the dining room,
my staff couldn't keep up.
I had a need.
I had to hire somebody.
I think a lot of people are going to come in for soup
and chili this afternoon and I want you guys to be ready.
Okay. Okay.
That somebody was Clint Sparling.
Ready to start working, like, yesterday.
And the thing is Mark got that.
Mark himself is hearing impaired.
His own disability made him open to hiring someone no one else would.
After about two weeks Clint was ready to work.
And very quickly I realized he had become my best employee.
Clint has Down syndrome but here it doesn't matter.
He makes the same money as everyone else.
He's expected to do the same work as everyone else.
But he delivers, you guessed it, like no one else.
Tim Hortons is a wonderful place to hang out.
And I look forward to work...
There are all these people listening, you can't say hang out at work...
All right, it's a different was of saying I was born to work.
He works so hard, loves his job so much that he hardly calls in sick and
he routinely has to be reminded to go home at the end of his shift.
As Mark's business grew he hired more people with disabilities.
And with every store and every hire profits went up.
Big time. 41 of Mark's employees,
roughly a third of his workforce has a disability.
From managers to bakers and they are not just his top performers,
more often than not they are his out performers.
We have one individual who is baking, in one of our busiest stores,
and she's profoundly deaf.
And her productivity rate is 18.4 percent higher than the person
she replaced and that person had been working that job for nine years.
Tanya Walsh also takes an obvious pride in raising the bar.
She has autism and a spotless work ethic
that has earned her two promotions in seven years.
{inaudible} and everything, that's how hard working I am.
Even though some of my other coworkers {inaudible} say to me too,
you work so hard Tanya.
And then there is Pria Primshup.
She has an intellectual delay
but has no problem keeping up with dirty tables.
A bit shy, she finds it easier doing her job then talking about it.
What do you like about it?
Hmmm. Tough questions, huh?
Yeah.
What's not so tough to figure out?
All three are loyal, productive, employees.
And the effect is contagious.
Not only do Mark's disabled employees tend to stick around,
so do his others in an industry
where the turn over rate alone can sink you, Mark is sailing.
It can cost me up to $4000 to replace a front line worker at a Tim Hortons.
If my turn over rate is 40 percent
and my colleague down the street is 75 percent
and we're both doing just as good a job I'm making more money.
How much of this is about charity for you?
Zero.
None.
*siren blares*
And in New York City, a Canadian is making a career
out of proving there is no mystery to those numbers.
Rich Donovan coined the phrase "Return on Disability."
Rich, who has cerebral palsy, is a self-described financial geek
who left behind a successful career on Wall Street
to crunch very different numbers.
And in true entrepreneurial spirit,
Rich suggested we caption his interview because his message is so important
he doesn't want you to miss a word of it.
This isn't about charity,
it's not about special jobs for special people.
There's real profitability in driving this forward.
Rich is used to sympathy and charitable stares,
but it is his mission to coach businesses to see past that.
His "Return on Disability" is an index he uses to track the shares of firms
that best deal with disabled people.
The bottom line?
Pity those firms that don't.
How do you change their minds?
Numbers. Numbers?
It all comes down to numbers.
It all comes down to an observable measurement that nobody can dispute.
And America's largest drug store chain
is the gold standard on how to do it big,
and how to do it right.
This is Walgreens distribution center in Windsor, CT.
One of twenty that the company operates --
and one of the most profitable in the entire country.
The secret weapon here too?
Nearly half of the 600 people who work here are disabled.
Right now we are between 40-45 percent of the people inside the facility,
at all levels, so... director all the way down have a disability.
Scott Sylvester runs the distribution center.
There's no "them" here.
Just a big, enthusiastic "us".
A vision born seven years ago from a savvy senior VP
who has a child with autism.
It's now a corporate policy and not because it is the right thing to do.
It's obvious to say that it's the right thing to do from a heart,
feel good perspective
but it really is truly from a business perspective,
the work force that we have in the facility
they're dedicated,
they come to work everyday,
they give 100 percent every day, they have good attitudes,
they thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to work.
The plant was designed to make it easy for anyone to work here.
Employees can opt to follow icons instead of text.
And pictures are used as markers.
And small changes made productivity go up for everyone.
So whether a person maybe doesn't read or can't sequence numbers...
maybe they can relate to a rhinoceros.
They know what a rhinoceros is.
So when you give direction
you can give direction to go to station 55 or rhinoceros.
Right. And when you're giving that direction
out to the group you can say it both ways
and however you ...
whichever piece of that message you need to use to process it you take.
Hey Jen! How are you?
It's inclusive and it also happens to streamline the work flow.
The payoff? Huge.
Our facility is one of the top facilities.
You know, the building itself is about 20 percent
more efficient than other facilities in our chain
and this is, ahh, it's been great.
Everything that we do, that we've designed into it
has benefited everybody.
And that is the genius behind the Walgreens model.
Its innovation designed with disability in mind that made the company big money.
I have 41 employees who have a disability.
In 2011 we did not have a single hour of lost sick time
for those 41 individuals.
"Dollars and sense" is the winning mantra
and closer to home Mark's message is catching fire.
On this night he's in Oakville,
Ontario giving the business community there his remarkable pitch.
He is so in demand
he gives more than 100 talks a year across the country.
You've gotta make change with this.
*taps chest* By talking about the emotional.
And we can't make change by talking about compliance, and laws,
and legislation.
We can make change with the business case.
Doing good. Because its good for business.
Now we're talking.
And Mark insists businesses simply
can't afford to miss out on the disability train.
We're looking at being about a million workers short by 2025.
And that's not just skilled labor.
We're talking about entry level positions.
If you don't do this now,
you're running the risk of not having ...
staff ten years from now.
And, you know, what's been good for Mark's business
has been good for workers like Clint too.
Clint recently married his sweetheart Katie.
They own a condo and live on their own with some help from their families.
Do you still see yourself staying here?
Or going somewhere else? Or...?
Actually, ah, there's no place else in the whole world but Tim Hortons.
How much did he pay you to say that?
Hmmmmm. Honestly?
Nothing whatsoever.
*laughs*
You can't buy that kind of advertising.
All because one businessman spotted an opportunity.
And discovered it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
Ioanna Roumeliotis. CBC News.
Toronto.
If hiring people with disabilities
is good for business think about this for a moment...
More than a billion people in the world have a disability.
That's a market the size of China.
And it is largely being untapped say for a handful of savvy entrepreneurs.
Leading the way, Sam Farber, who created "Good Grips Utensils"
to accommodate his wife's arthritis.
He sold his painless peelers for three times the going rate
and turned them into a kitchen essential.
And just recently Folgers has seen its retail sales skyrocket thanks
to the addition of handles on its coffee containers.