- All right, thank you everybody for joining today. We are going to begin momentarily. We'll give everybody just a couple of moments to join and get set up. 76 participants so far. We'll give everybody just one more second. All right, I think we will go ahead and get started. Just a couple of housekeeping items first to kick this off. My name is Brad Henry. I'm the Director of Marketing and Biz Dev at TPGi. So I just like to extend my appreciation for everybody taking time out of their day to join today. A couple of quick housekeeping items. This session is being recorded. We will email everybody access to this recording after the events. We also have live captions available. So feel free to use those as needed. There is a toggle switch in everybody's user interface to be able to turn those on. We have enabled them on our side. We are reserving some time for some live Q and A towards the end. So please feel free to use the QA box. And if there are some questions that seem specifically relevant towards a slide, we may pause and answer those as they come in. All right now with that, I'm going to give a brief introduction. Alice is our Head of HR at Vispero and Jennifer is also going to be joining this presentation as well. I am going to hand over to those guys to do a brief introduction, and we'll start to share the interest slide here. So Alice, with that, go ahead and begin your introduction. - Hey, thank you, Brad. My name is Alice Barriciello. As Brad said, I'm the VP of Human Resources for Vispero and support both our brands, Freedom Scientific, Enhanced Vision, Optelec, and TPGi. I have just about 30 years of experience in HR and that ranges from working for big global consulting firms to small tech startups, to very conservative insurance baking industries. I'm involved in my community. I served as a Civil Service Commissioner and I'm always ready to learn and share more. So today, I've invited Jennifer Wei who supports our Enhanced Vision brand of Vispero to join me in our conversation. Jen, would you like to introduce yourself? - Yes, hi everyone. I'm Jennifer Wei. I'm the HR Business Partner and am located in Huntington Beach, California. So I've been with the company for a little over two years and it's been a great experience so far, and I'm excited to be here today with you all. - Okay, perfect. So Brad, we'll move on to the first slide. Okay, perfect. So as HR professionals, our role has evolved. I mentioned I was in this transactional role and I've been in strategic leadership roles. So with the pandemic, we've had so many new areas to learn and operate under a new landscape. One of them that was always there was accessibility, but not all of us either in business roles, HR leadership roles were as exposed as we are now and have the opportunity to learn so much, help educate our peers and other business leaders in this space. So today's session, we're going to talk about the business case for accessibility and fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion is essential for a company to flourish and even survive. We've seen the competitiveness as employees have selected other employers where they can be their best and show up as themselves. And so we need to make sure that we recognize, appreciate and value those differences that each of these employees bring to our workplaces and help make their workplace comfortable for them. So as we move to the next slide, what we're going to talk about today is very authentic. So Jen and I are going to share our experiences as HR professionals navigating this space and learning on a literal daily basis. It's not been easy. So we're not here to say, here is a handbook to make life easy for you in handling the situation. I myself have made some unintentional mistakes, have learned from each and we'll continue to do so. So some takeaways listed here are reviewing the benefits for employers who hire people with disabilities, how HR can foster the hiring and build recruitment strategies, how we can provide accommodation and retention of employees with disabilities, and finally the cost and return of making our workplaces accessible. We'd like today's conversation to be interactive. So if you have any comments or feedback, please put them in the Chat and Brad will position those to Jennifer and myself. As we move to the next slide, I'm going to turn it over to Jen. - [Jen] Hi again, what does diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility mean to you? And to me, I think this means to me is having a group of people from various backgrounds, bringing their strengths to the playing field and accepting all for what they contribute. Accessibility, providing the same resources to all with openness to balanced feedback. What are the words that come to mind when you think of the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility? Some might say it's about gender, equal rights, sex, legislation, equality, policy. What about you? Feel free to type your words that come to your mind. - [Alice] So Jen, as the audience either raises their hand or types some comments in there, I know for myself, just looking at this image that we have here, there's a lot of words that come out and how they were positioned in the bubble were based on the frequency. And when I've talked with groups of people, diversity pops out first, followed by equality. And then as you said, some other words, age, et cetera, and disability is small on here. And the reason why Jen and I selected this image for today's slide is because accessibility for a lot of HR practitioners comes after the fact. And thanks Maria there for putting a level playing field, et cetera. There there's a lot that we have overlooked and we have focused, especially most recently in the past years with social rights issues, et cetera, human rights issues on the diversity, equity piece. And from the inclusion perspective, again, I'll speak to myself. I have forgotten about accessibility. While I've used those words, I've not put them in the forefront of programs that I've developed and rolled out at previous employers or ideas and topics I've raised with my community. So again, a learning session for each of us to remember to center accessibility in policies that we create, in our daily interactions and any opportunities that we have within the workplace to provide to who need that support. So thanks Alina. We see belonging and acceptance. Everyone has equal chances in there, good. Thank you for this. Psychological safety, that's huge, John Lewis, and I'd love to do a topic on that, psychological and emotional safety in the workplace. So I'm gonna leave that there right now and think about putting some things together for that 'cause that's a big piece of this. We'll turn it back to you, Jen. - [Jen] Thanks, Alice and thanks all for putting your words in the Chat. Next slide. So diversity, in the workplace, diversity involves hiring a wide range of diverse candidates. This includes age, gender, identification, religion, veteran status, language, ethnicity, race, and so on. Equity, equity is often confused with equality and they say sound similar, but have a key difference. Where equality is about offering everyone equal opportunities, equity is about leveling the playing field. And I read in the Chat that someone said that as well. So that's great. Inclusion, inclusion is the next step, and inclusive environment means that all your employees feel valued and accepted without having to conform to the particular standard. Accessibility, and accessible work environment means that all your employees can access their company's facilities, products, tools, and devices and services by direct or indirect access. It's more than the level playing field. It's ensuring access. Next slide. So what is DEI and how does accessibility fit in? A truly inclusive workplace is one where people with disabilities feel welcomed and respected, a workplace where the environment encourages participation and contributions from all employees. It is also where everyone has equal access to resources and opportunities for investment. Next slide. And Alice. - [Alice] Thanks, Jen. So I'm going to start with some statistics. And when I first heard these statistics recently from one of the executives at Vispero, when I applied for position here in HR, he shared with me, Alice. He said, "One in four Americans have a disability." That's a large number when I hear that. One in four Americans have a disability. He continued saying 70% are hidden disabilities. So in conversations that I've had with employees of TPGi, FSI and EVS, they've shared with me what that looks like, what that means to them. So recently, I talked a colleague who talked to me about being neurodiverse and how we don't always see these disabilities. And oftentimes when we do, we ourselves just push them to the side and don't focus on providing support for colleagues who have a disability from that and need support. Also, people with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed. We see the unemployment rates. We've seen some changes lately in the US. However, it's stunning for me to see this is a population that either includes us or as part of our family or our social network. So this isn't something that we can any longer, as HR professionals or business leaders, put to the side. It needs to be in the forefront of how we run our business. I was surprised to recently learn, as I said, putting together this presentation with Jen and just being part of Vispero for the past six months has truly opened my eyes. Some of you may know that the US still have pay federal laws where you can pay people with disabilities less. So we have pay equity laws in many states for gender, but there is a federal law that allows employers to pay people with disabilities less. That signals a message that we need to change. I understand tax rebates to help make your site more accessible, but to pay people less is something I think we need to help champion for change. So there's a cultural shift where accessibility needs to be a prerequisite to inclusion. And again, not something that I myself thought about after. So on this slide, we talk a little about untapped talent. So remember there's the twice as many people who have disabilities are likely to be employed. There's a lot of talent in that group, regardless of what the disability is, whether they're blind, low vision, hearing loss, deaf, if they have a neurodiverse issue, if they have mobility issues, whatever that is for them, they have other talents and skills that they can bring to us that we may not have even tapped into. In my research, I also learned that they have a higher job retention rate. We can, as employers, help reduce the unemployment rate among the disabled. We can create a diverse workforce where they bring innovative ideas and problem solving skills. So when you think about it, lot of employees and potential employees, candidates who come to an employer, they struggle throughout their day getting by in a world that we live in, whether it be getting on transportation, going through an airport, walking through a building where there's a lot of noise and distractions, they can bring a lot of problem solving skills to us who don't experience the world like they do, and who don't have a strong problem solving skills because we've never come across these issues. Also, lower work-related accident because they have greater attention to safety issues. I know I myself am clumsy. There are tax credits. I talked about the pay equity issue, but there are tax credits for employers for hiring and putting forward accommodations. In the past, I've worked with employers who when we've put forward candidates, I'll speak to one candidate who had mobility issues and used a wheelchair to help him get around. And I remember one of the leaders saying, "I don't want to be stuck with someone who is bound to a wheelchair." And even then it bothered me, the language that he used because we were overlooking a very talented individual and using the word bound was very restrictive. So this was years ago. It sat odd with me and it was harmful and hurtful, the words he used. But this is often seen in business world where a lot of executives, finance decision makers, et cetera, will not invest in talent that isn't easy to make a return. And finally, building awareness in other employees around inclusivity. And I'll ask Jen to talk a little bit about this because she and I have had conversations recently within our workforce. - [Jen] So an example I have is I'm actually working with IT on an IT Security Awareness Training. And some of you might've already seen that training go out last year. So this is an annual training that has to be done, and I've been more exposed to making things accessible. And it's kind of, I guess, eye-opening to me because I didn't really think of, is this accessible to employees? So now working with IT again and working with different team members, they're telling me that screenshot images, they're not helpful. It doesn't make sense to someone who's using JAWS as a picture will read a picture containing text, question mark, description automatically generated. So I'm learning more and being aware of trying to change my thought process and also the way I interact or respond through email because sometimes you don't know who you're interacting with. So it's just kind of being more mindful and being aware. - [Alice] Yep, thanks Jen. As we move to slide eight. - [Brad] Hi, Alice, real quick, there was a couple of questions that I think they're related to slide seven. Some of them specifically around the laws that allow for employers to pay disabled less, understanding which laws those are, and if there's any specific states worth calling out. Now, I know that's an illegal question. So if you prefer to defer that till later as a follow-up, that's totally okay, but just wanted to ask if you could expand on that. - [Alice] Yeah, so that's a federal law that allows for lesser wages for people with disability. I know recently some states have challenged that. We've seen this, I called out the pay disparity and pay equity within gender. There are a few states and I'd have to reference which they are that have outlawed this federal pay disparity with disabilities. And I think some of them are starting in 22 and 23. So right now, Brad, I don't know off the top of my head, but this is a federal law out there. This is something that's coming from the highest law of land, I'll say, that this is still okay. - [Brad] All right, fantastic, thank you for that. We will follow up afterwards with any sort of links that we can find that's helpful for the specific walls. All right, we'll go to the next slide now. - [Alice] Thank you. So compliance aside, right? A lot of people come to, I joke with colleagues on the HR Witch or the Old HR Lady, et cetera. Compliance aside, HR can play a strategic role in fostering, hiring and building recruitment strategies. So we'll start with outreach efforts. And I saw some comments in the Chat on this. So using disability inclusion statements and job advertisements in the career section of the company website is good, but it's not just, again, the compliance piece that you feel you are obligated to put a comment in that we're an EEO employer. We do not discriminate based on, fill in the blank. It's actually living that, it's actually showing up in your actions, in showing by your hiring population and what you do as part of that outreach. So more often than not, a lot of online job portals are not even designed to be accessible for people with disabilities. Jen and I, and Christianne who supports the TPGi group here under Vispero have seen this recently where our provider that we use for our ATS, our Applicant Tracking System, is not fully accessible. So we've had to make work arounds, which is hard for us as an organization that promotes accessibility to see this. So we're championing that with our providers also. We want to make the application process accessible to send the message that we're not just an equal opportunity employer. Also blind, low vision applicants, if they struggle to complete the application due to accessibility, they're going to be discouraged from applying. They're going to think this company does not truly put accessibility front of mind. And if at the first stage during the recruitment process we don't show up like that, they probably wonder how we actually are in terms of our policies and practices. As we move forward, I'm going to ask Jen to talk a little bit about the feedback. She shared some that we have through programs and processes that she's been going through, but encouraging everyone to move beyond a mental block of how a lot of us have a fear that individuals with disabilities, those who are visually impaired aren't the right candidate for job. So we disqualify them from the beginning, and this is unconsciously done, even in the application process, by not making the applications accessible in the formats that we use. I talked to some candidates recently that we hired within TPGi about reasonable accommodations. And I was very happy to hear that they felt from the recruiter on my team, Matt, as well as the hiring managers, that their accommodation was welcomed. And we were able to meet that for them so that they could show up the best they could in terms of the rest of the interview process. And I'll turn it over to Jen to talk about educating employees, especially managers, about working with employees with disability. - [Jen] Yeah, I think I mentioned it's just kind of being more mindful. I know that I had supported someone that was blind and it was her first day. And for me, I haven't been exposed to working with those who have this and I wasn't really sure of how to interact or what should I do? What should I say? So it's definitely a good experience for me. And I would appreciate all the feedback that I can get because I think the more awareness or more exposure that people get, then we can understand on how to make someone feel more welcomed on and that they are included in our team. So I think it's just kind of being more, I think, just be more mindful and being more aware in terms of maybe how is the onboarding, if you're a new hire, you're completing your onboarding checklist? Are these forms accessible? And in terms of having someone, where do we locate them? In Huntington Beach, if you haven't been there, we have downstairs and upstairs. Our downstairs is our warehouse. If someone who is a barrel tester, where are we supposed to seat them? In terms of equipment, where do we locate their outlet plug? Do we put it on the floor? No, that wouldn't make sense. We want to put it where it's a reachable distance or somewhere they're comfortable. So I think it's always being mindful. And then also just asking for feedback because we won't know what we need to improve on if no one tells us what we need to improve on. - [Alice] Exactly, Jen. And that's where just from a blind or low vision perspective, I've benefited from a lot of the employees at FSI, Enhanced Vision and TPGi who have trusted me to come to me and share with me the limitations that they have and the barriers that we have an or as an organization have put up for them. So it was hard for me to reach out and feel comfortable talking to new employees or employees who are new to me and asking them questions, but I was able to lean in and I have made mistakes since and have overlooked things, but they've given me the grace to ask questions so I can do better. One example I'll share with you is Vispero has adopted a mandatory vaccination policy for our employees who come onsite. And this has been in play now for a couple of months. And when we sent out the documentation, we made sure that the form was accessible, that it was fillable. We have a large blind population. And so I thought, yep, I got that done. Check off the box. I am listening to and living the words that I myself am trying to instill in my team and other employees. And over the weekend, some employees reached out to me and said, "You know, Alice, I'm blind, and I can't take a picture of my vaccine card. I'm going to have to wait until my mother comes to help me this next week or I tried to do it. I hope it comes across and you could see it when I email it to you." Those words hurt me because I did overlook, again, something else. So I put them in front of mine and I speak about this with my team as an example of how even though we're best intentioned, we are going to make mistakes. And I appreciate that the employees didn't come to me with anger and frustration, but they know that this area is new to me, despite the years of experience that I have in HR. And they extended me that grace and also helped provide me hints and tips so that I could do my job better. So as we move on to slide nine, I want to talk a little bit about accommodation and hiring, right? So the interview strategies. This is where we need to focus on the candidate's skills and experiences and measure those, not their interview skills. Again, I was fortunate to have one of the TPGi recent hires share with me their experience in the interview. And they let me know how sometimes it's a challenge for candidates who, again, are neurodiverse to be put into interviews where their experience and skills are not being measured, but how they interview is being measured instead. So I'll give you an example. If we're recruiting for an engineer who has high level autism, they may not be skilled at expressing themselves. So conducting a behavioral or situational interview with a group of many interviewers, that they were not prepared to be in a room with or even over a video conference with may not be appropriate. And we're not testing for the right skills. This candidate may have an outstanding portfolio. They may be a specialist in their particular field of engineering and their accomplishments are more important than what we're doing in HR or as hiring managers, by evaluating their ability to talk about them in an uncomfortable environment. So again, we want to focus on the candidate's strengths and for the role, and never assume that just because they have a disability, regardless of what that disability is, that they lack the education, training or experience to perform the job. And this is something that's embedded in so many of us. And it's uncomfortable for me to talk about it oftentimes with my colleagues, and it's uncomfortable for me to even reflect on practices that I myself have played in the past, where again, by unconsciously working through a certain routine of an interview strategy or process, I've overlooked so much talent that could have brought greatness to the company and also to me. Selfishly, I'm learning throughout this process, as you've probably heard me say throughout today. So on slide 10, we're going to talk a little bit about now, once the employee is hired, how do we accommodate them and retain them, right? So again, as we interview and we show up well and strong in our hiring practices and in the application process, so now it's great. The employee is part of our team, and diversity is nice, but if those employees don't feel that they can participate or feel welcome or they're not able to access the same opportunities, we're failing. We're failing as an organization and its people. So I'll share with you an example of a recent company that I worked at, where one of the executives was colorblind. I had no idea, and I'm a person who, even here at Vispero, when I would send out emails, I'd love to bold and highlight in red or the highlight yellow on emails to staff to call out points to their attention. Again, not something that was intentional. It was unintentional because I didn't understand and didn't use the accessibility features available to me in Microsoft Outlook, et cetera, and all the resources that I have here. Well, back to the story, this one employee, this executive, I would send out charts and graphs and was data-driven as an HR professional. And he appreciated it. And one day said to me, "Alice, could you support me with a different format because I'm colorblind? Please don't share this." And I thought, wow, here we are in this organization where an executive doesn't even feel comfortable letting his colleagues know about this, which could make his job easier. Again, this was about five, six years ago. So it didn't make as big as an impact as it's making on me now. So I helped him as an individual, but didn't see or realize the bigger perspective of what this story was telling about this organization, where it wasn't able to create this welcome and trusted environment. So not all disabilities are the same. As a company, we can't put forward a statement that says here, this is how we're going to cover everything. We need to be able to be open, receptive, and flexible to change. And we need to lead by our actions. And we need to signal to our disabled population that they are talented. They do contribute, and they should be eligible to be hired into leadership roles. We do the same with females and people of color, but I think we could do a better job signaling to the disabled that we don't just sit with our unconscious bias that they maybe can't handle challenges, and we're not willing to support them and break down these barriers. Another example is an employee who has autism. They may struggle with sensory overstimulation in crowded, busy offices. So as HR professionals and leaders, how can we adjust that environment? Offer a flexible working environment for them in the office or even outside as we've seen now with remote working. So I'll ask Jen to talk a little bit more about that. - [Jen] Yeah, so I actually had a new hire this year who, a part of the onboarding process, you need to verify if someone is authorized to work in the United States. So if someone in HR professional asks you to bring in or send your acceptable documents to verify your I-9 verification, they'll need to send in a picture if it's through remote or on Zooms or whatever. So this person I wasn't aware was actually blind. And I had asked if he could send me a picture of his acceptable documents. He mentioned, "I'm blind. I actually will have a difficult time. Can my wife send it for me?" So I actually connected with his wife and just talked to her. And then she had helped me with completing the I-9 verification. So you kind of have to tailor it to that person. Sometimes I honestly don't know if someone is blind or needs an accommodation unless I'm being told. So it was definitely a nice he had no issue of letting me know and that I needed to work with his wife, but it was a good opportunity for me too, that I was able to connect with his wife, not just my new hire. So I think you have to just kind of tailor it to more specifically on the different types of onboarding that we need to do. - [Alice] Thanks, Jen. So as we talked also, right, so the world has changed. Oftentimes employees will come to HR thinking that we know all or know something that they don't know that they need help on. And again, this is one area of accessibility where I can learn more. And I know a lot of my previous and current colleagues can certainly together support each other as we learn more. We called out early on Jen's slide diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, that accessibility piece, right? That DEIA is not there. The A, we very rarely see. And so my goal is to help put that forward and promote it. When we talk about offering a flexible work environment, we're able to relieve so much stress from employees who are challenged to get into the office, regardless of what that disability is. And we've seen as employers that it works. Where in the past, we operated under a model that everybody needed to be in, literally punching a clock, eight to five, nine to five in the office, stay until your boss leaves, et cetera, and not focus so much on getting the right work done, it was where it was being done. And now we're treating employees more like adults and letting them decide when and where that gets done and measuring their performance based on what that is at the end of the day, the product that they're delivering. So this includes, if they do come to the office, employees who need accommodations, we take for granted things like even their desks set up. I know a recent employer that I was at. I saw employees challenged getting underneath the desk, and these were fully mobile employees, getting underneath the desk to plug in their laptop power cord versus having an adapter put on the desk where they could plug in or companies that are more modern building that accessory into the desks so they could plug in. Those are some challenges and some things where we just need to think and put accessibility, even in the design phase of our equipment. Using inclusive communication tools. So for today's presentation, I removed all graphics that were in there, as Jen said, knowing that they may not be accessible. And instead, using words to help represent what I meant. We also today tried to verbally describe the chart, the picture that we had earlier on slide four, I believe it was, so that we can provide support and provide visual aids. I encourage other employers to also do that. And finally, on this slide, we talk about employee resource groups. So as part of programs that I've developed, we put forward employee resource groups for different populations. We forgot this one big population. I reached out to a former colleague and asked if that organization has considered that yet because that was a big miss for all of us. I put programs together. I've even spoken videos where I say that we're going to put people who have disabilities front of mind, and then I went on to talk about race, gender identification, ethnicity, religion, veteran status, everything. And while I said those words, and I wrote those words, we didn't consider it in our policies and even these employee resource groups that'll help those employees find support internally, and also then be able to reach out to business leaders and HR for more support. So as we move to slide 11, I want to talk a little bit now here about the cost and return of making the workplaces accessible. Businesses are in place to make conversation or to make a profit, to make money. I get that. However, the costs that are associated with purchasing equipment, modifying workstations are minimal based on the return. And I'll talk about the tangible and intangible benefits from that. So sometimes employers think of ramps, automatic doors, braille signage when it comes to accessibility. These are obvious solutions. We as employers also need to take into consideration the invisible barriers that employees may come across. Accenture put forward a recent study called Getting to Equal the Disability Inclusion Advantage. And in that report, they showed that companies who offer an inclusive working environment for people with disability have on average 28% higher revenues and 30% higher profit. So again, this isn't just the cost by having to accommodate someone. And I'm using these words and emphasizing them as harsh because I've heard them from business leaders, that they rather take an easy route. They rather not have to support accommodating one employee over the other, and they don't see past that. So I want to make sure that those business leaders who may be listening today also see that there is that revenue and profitability to this. When we talk about users and consumer bases, I know that myself, I've become more aware since working at Vispero when I make purchases online or visit websites to see if they're accessible. And I know that if they're not accessible, sometimes I also will stop looking at that website and perhaps find another vendor that I can use that is accessible. From a community perspective, my city council is looking at putting forward digital billboards throughout the city. And I came on there and said, are they accessible? Is our site even accessible? So I'm putting what I'm learning from my professional career into play in my personal life and my community life also. I guess if I had to say overall, building a brand that promotes inclusivity doesn't go unnoticed. You're going to show up stronger, increase your customer base and be known as a true inclusive employer, not just one that says you are. So as we move on for some final thoughts and offer up some more questions that you can bring to us through here, I want to give some final thoughts. So again, I've been personally humbled and I've said this to many people, working at Vispero, disabilities are often overlooked. My focus in E, D and I and B, so I didn't even put the A in the materials I developed, was on mainstream society, as I said before, race, religion, gender identification, but never disability. And I want to thank all the employees at Vispero who helped me and are helping me on this journey so that I'm comfortable to ask certain questions, so that I'm comfortable using certain language. When I interviewed for the position, I was very cautious of the words I chose. And when speaking with someone, I said, with the low vision. And they said, "You could say blind Dallas. You could be comfortable using that word. There are some of us who are blind and we're comfortable with you using it." So again, a space that was very uncomfortable for me. They welcomed me in, allowed me to ask questions, broadened my understanding without ability to be a better advocate for them, again, not just about compliance, but being an advocate for accessibility and help influence decisions at the executive level. So business leaders, leaving you with the last statement, if you increase the diversity of your workforce by hiring people with disabilities, it's not challenging as you think. There's not all these barriers. And trust me, there's going to be a level of organizational growth that is going to be greater than you could think possible. - [Brad] All right, thank you, Alice. We do have a couple of questions that we can run through. We may not have time to get through everything, but we'll certainly try to make some progress here. So the first question I have is, and it was actually posted from a couple of different people in a couple of different ways, but for disabled people, is there a location? If so, for looking for employment, what are some of those locations to these job boards, and do the presenters have any tips on how disabled individuals should be looking for a job? - [Alice] So I don't have those URLs right now, Brad, but I'll get them to you, so you could post them here for the participants. And the second part of the question, what are some tips? - [Brad] Yeah, so what are some- Oh, go ahead. - [Alice] Yeah, no, so besides searching those out, when you look at job boards, the mainstream ones out there, and then you further look at the employer itself that you are interested in applying for, digging deeper to see truly, do they have diversity inclusion statements on their website? And do they cover the accessibility piece or again, are they talking about mainstream things? A lot of companies in the past couple of years have put forward very strong diversity statements, but don't share statistics of what their hiring population like. And when you look at the leadership team, do they look like you? And when I say that, I'm not just saying as a woman, do they have females in leadership roles or as a person of color, do they have that represented, but do they have other people with disabilities there? And for those that have hidden disabilities, do they call that out? They often share stories about their employee population, why it's great to work at a certain company, has that company chose to highlight an employee who does have barriers and challenges? That would be a tip that I would put forward for candidates. - [Brad] All right, thank you for that. Next question is, it used to be Walmart was the largest employer of people with disabilities in the US. Do you know currently who is the largest employer of disabled people today? - [Alice] I don't. Is it curious though? Because when I was at Accenture, I worked with Jacqui who was the former CHRO at Walmart, and I didn't know that myself. So thank you for sharing that piece of information with me, but I don't know, but it's certainly something that I'm going to look up. - [Brad] All right, thank you for that. And if we find that information, we can include that in the follow-up email as well. Thank you. All right, I have a comment from somebody that I think is interesting is why is it your approach to hiring and retaining talent just assuming everyone was disabled, so that everything you do is more accessible? I think that's a great tip or recommendation. I don't know, Alice, if you have any comments. - [Alice] Yeah, no, I like that. Like I said, I'm six months into this journey here of accessibility, and I think that's a great point that we come forward with so that we use, as Jen called out and we saw one of the participants in this meeting call out, that level playing field. So thank you. I appreciate when people help put me on point for things like that. I think that's great, Brad. - [Brad] All right, thank you. All right, another question, do the ERGs have representation and say at the C level? - [Alice] So currently at Vispero, we do not have employee resource groups. I've shared with employees that as part of my 2022 Strategic Plan, we're going to put forward a strong diversity program. And that doesn't just mean throwing out some training and checking off a box that we've done this, but actually putting forward a strategic plan and with the ERGs that I've seen, and that I've led of prior employers, we have had that representation and we've made sure that whoever it was that sat on the C-suite didn't just do this to add to their resume, didn't just do this to help them with their bonuses or to look good but they were truly the right representative for that. They needed to believe in that and they had to interview for it. So it wasn't us just assigning someone as a placeholder, but we needed to see that they were truly involved. - [Brad] All right, fantastic. Thank you for that response. A couple more comments. Somebody mentioned a really wonderful book they recommend is "Demystifying Disability" by Emily Landau. So if anybody is interested, it looks like a good recommendation there. I do have a question here. How do we include those with learning disabilities? So maybe you could expand on, are those treated differently than other people with disabilities? Is there any sort of variances in how we operate or do things with specificity to learning disabilities? - [Alice] I think we need to account for that also. I think I would categorize that under one of those hidden disabilities. An example or some recommendations I'd give to my HR colleagues is to provide those who we know with that disability with advanced copy of materials that we're going to walk through. If a team learning session, that we make sure that they feel comfortable asking us to pause or again, giving them advanced copies so that they can work through and taking that extra time that they may need to get through this. So it's being aware. It's making sure that we're open to include it and not just feel as many of us do in corporate roles that we just need to keep being agile, move fast and get it done. So I think there's a lot of other ways besides the couple here that I've listed to support our colleagues who have learning disabilities. - [Brad] Fantastic, thank you for that response. We have a question from Mark. He says, as a rehabilitation technician or technologist for over 30 years, how do we get better information out to employers about resources like myself to assist with not just creative options for accessibility accommodations, but with disability awareness? - [Alice] I think we need to have the conversation, right? So as I said at the start of today's presentation, I have almost 30 years of experience. And it hasn't been until this past six months where I've been embedded in a situation where I've been able to become, I'm certainly not a champion yet, but I'm trying to be there to make people aware of this, of what we can provide each of us to help move forward on this journey. I've come across over the years, the few examples I've given you of the colorblind executive I worked with and the gentleman in the wheelchair, but those were random situations throughout my career that I had to reflect hard on to recall. What I've been going through today, I think, or rather these past six months has brought me greater attention. And I think the only way we'll be able to address it is keep talking about it. I've noticed on some LinkedIn posts other companies recently now having presentations similar to what TPGi has organized with Jen and myself for today. And I think as we start on this, we need to just keep pushing this through so that people are more aware. - [Brad] Thank you for that. And I think you hit the nail on the head. It's the conversations, it's these presentations, it's things like this that help to create that awareness that will help solve some of these problems. So thank you for that. All right, another question is, do you find bigger or smaller companies are more willing to do reasonable accommodations? Big companies are more likely to have resourcing, ASL interpreter, for example, but small businesses are probably more nimble and agile. So can you give any sort of perspective in terms of reasonable accommodations in relation to a company size? - [Alice] Yeah, absolutely. So again, my most recent employer, large company, almost 100,000 employees globally. I was in the HR Business Partner role there, but did still have contact with our recruiting team. When the recruiters that I worked with were presented with issues where they needed to provide for an accommodation, it was like they were staring at a deer in headlights. They didn't know how to handle it because they didn't have the experience. So while we would think that in a large organization, we'd be able to allow for these accommodations more so because we have the funding, we have the support, we can have the teams, don't believe that to be the case all the time. I didn't see it as much as I would've liked to see it there. And here at Vispero with TPGi, Freedom Scientific, and Enhanced Vision, I see it more. Can we do better? Absolutely, every day we can look at what we've done and see how we could do it better. So I don't think it just is dependent on the size of the organization. It comes from the leadership, and the leadership understanding and valuing the talent, the employees, and what they can bring to the company and their behaviors that then allow for more accommodations. And this starts from the recruitment process through to the employee being happy and feeling that they belong in an organization. - [Brad] Fantastic, thank you for that response. Let's see what the next question is. All right, so we have a question. This may hit close to home for HR. Question is, do you think there is a place for more blind individuals in the HR field currently in school? I'm wondering if it will be a struggle to find job in this field. - [Alice] So I'm hoping that my HR colleagues will welcome more. I think the question, Brad, was this individual's blind? - [brad] Yes, correct. - [Alice] Yeah, I think that they can help us bring perspective and help old practitioners like myself realize things differently. So I welcome it. If I have an internship position open or a position open soon, reach out to me. I can also put you in touch with my HR colleagues that I've worked with over the past, but I think it would be beneficial for us to have someone with any disability, right now, speaking about blind associates, to help us. I'll give you an example. Most recently, I mentioned to our CEO that as Jen, myself and Christianne have been going through our HR documents and information we send out from open enrollment to different policy changes, whatever that is, we've had to put in the forefront of our minds, is this accessible? And I even raised to the CEO, should I hire an intern to help me focus more on this and to go through things that have been created in the past that weren't accessible? So there absolutely is a need for this. And I think that when I say we need to show up this way and we need to stand behind what we're talking about, having someone in HR would show up strong, that everything that I'm saying here is true and that we would value that on our team. - [Alice] Fantastic, thank you for that response. Another question is from a wellness standpoint, are there any good enough up and coming wellness perks or trends in relation to diversity and inclusion? - [Alice] Is this question specific to different vendors, different providers, insurance carriers or something that we're doing here at Vispero? If you could just give me a little bit of a lead on that. - [Brad] I don't know off the top of my head. Based on the question, I would suggest maybe more broadly, not specifically for Vispero. - [Alice] Okay, I think that there are a lot of programs out there that can be better tailored towards that. So I'll pick on Jen here for a moment. She is working with one of our insurers on a mindfulness training, and I think or distress type of topics, whatever they happen to be, I think if we start leading with accessibility in front of mind versus assuming the audience that we're sharing this with, we can put that in place. So in terms of the mindfulness, we absolutely can tailor that information to benefit those disabled, who are challenged again with transportation, with sight, et cetera, coming into the office so that they can better handle that experience. But there's always opportunity to increase that. So I also appreciate that call out. - [Brad] All right, thank you. We're coming up on time. So I think we have time for maybe one more question here. I'll sort of group these two questions together 'cause I think they're similar. So one of the questions is do you see a lot of barriers for people to request accommodation in the workplace? And how it sort of relates to the next question is, what if I'm an employee has verbally mentioned they have a disability, but they have chosen not to fill out paperwork to arrange for accommodation? However, they're routinely not meeting projects or deadlines and you want to accommodate, how can you do so if they don't actually fill out a request or if there's barriers for them to actually even make those requests for accommodations? - [Alice] Yeah, so I think to answer both questions, it's going to come to having a trusted environment where you feel you could belong, where you feel you could talk to your manager or someone in HR to help provide those accommodations for you. Jen gave the example of the one employee when she was filling out paperwork with that needed support. I've worked with a lot of HR professionals in my career who have not taken that extra step to help people and have said, "Here it is, get it done, and good luck to you." I think Jen leans in very well in offering that, I would say, to assume positive intent. A lot of us don't know we have an employee population here at Vispero of low vision, blind, employees with other neurodiverse disabilities, et cetera, that we're not even aware of because they haven't disclosed it. And what I'm trying to better understand is, why not? So in the same way I answered the question with, we need to understand why not and find a trusted resource I want to become that here, and I know Jen has made her way of doing that also. If you're getting resistance to that, I think we need to work with the business to find better advocates in those roles. I'd like to assume that the HR person isn't aware of what they can do because they've never experienced it before, but that once they are aware and continue to learn, that they will be supportive. - [Brad] All right, fantastic. Thank you for that response. We are at time here. So we'd like to thank everybody for their participation. We will be sending a follow-up email with the recording here, the presentation deck, and some of the follow-ups that we had mentioned previously around some of the federal laws, the state laws, and some lists of good disability job boards, as well as a couple of other items. If you do have any questions that we might be able to help you with later, I dropped their meeting schedule or link in the Chat window, and also feel free to email us directly or to follow up on one of the email follow-ups that we have. But again, thank you everybody so much. Thank you to the presenters, both Jennifer and Alice. It was a wonderful presentation and very helpful for a lot of individuals. So thank you, guys. - [Alice] Thank you. - [Jen] Thank you. - [Brad] That will conclude our presentation.