Present: Howard Green and Layne Thome


>> HOWARD GREEN: Good afternoon and welcome to the Nuts and Bolts of Networking 
with Business.  I'm excited to be here today. I know that each one of you got up this 
morning, when you got out of the bed and headed to work, you just couldn't wait to get to 
your office to be able to log onto the webcast to hear Layne and I talk about the nuts and 
bolts of networking with business.  We really appreciate you taking your time.  If you 
weren't excited this morning by the time you leave this afternoon, I'm sure you will be 
excited.  It will be exciting to be here from Layne Thome from Home Depot in Atlanta, 
Georgia.  I think you'll find her quite interesting and have a lot to offer to your programs 
with regard to getting people with disabilities employed.  I'll be talking to you about the 
rehab perspective in this, and why it's important to the community rehab programs and VR. 
Layne will be talking to you about the business side.  She'll be talking to you about why it's 
important to business and what they expect from you.
 
First, before we get started, I wanted to also talk to you why this is important.  Before we 
even start talking about the nuts and bolts, I think we should come to some terms about why 
it's important to programs like yours.

First, let's take the high unemployment rate.  Even though we might disagree with the figure, 
the Harris Poll still says that we have 66 to 70% of people with disabilities unemployed.  If 
you even say it's 40%, it's too high.  When the general population averages between 3 and 
6% depending on the location, and we've got 66%, that's too high. I think we can decide that 
this is one of the  important issues of why we're talking about the nuts and bolts of 
networking with business this afternoon.  Second, that businesses report that they don't 
know how to find rehabilitation programs.  If they can't find us, then it's difficult for them to 
hire people with disabilities.  It makes it real difficult. We want to make sure that people can 
find us, so this is an important issue that we need to address.

Third, businesses have needs which can be filled by rehabilitation.  There's a lot of needs 
that businesses have not only with hiring people with disabilities but the technical assistance 
that you offer to business to help them educate themselves about disability awareness, about 
how to interact with people with disabilities in making modifications on the jobs, and about 
helping them retain workers. That is an important issue.  That's an important reason why we 
should be talking about this.
 
The last point I want to make about why this is important is that there's still a lot of myths 
and fears regarding people with disabilities in the community, especially in business.  Even 
though we've made great strides, people in general still have some concerns.  It's reported to 
us through some of the research we've done that some of the biggest fears and myths that are 
out there are things like costs -  cost of  accommodations, cost of the insurance, cost of 
productivity and loss of productivity.  They all are issues that are a concern to businesses.  
We have to dispel those myths and let them know that costs are not really that big.  There 
are still issues around coworkers. How my coworkers will be treated? We need to let them 
know that most of the time there's not a big deal about that.  The idea is if I hire someone 
can I let them go?  There is the whole fear of ADA.  We need to let them know that we'll be 
there to help them if they even need to let people go.  The last issue is just attitudinal.  
People just concerned about interacting and interviewing people with disabilities. That's our 
job to educate them, to make sure we're providing disability awareness programs so that they 
become better acquainted with people with disabilities.  I think that we see that there are 
four big reasons that we need to be involved with this area. 
     
Now, I'd also like to you to think with me a minute about the purpose of your program.  
Why do we do, what we do?  And the idea, who is your customer?  We have a lot of 
stakeholders in the community, but we have two primary customers. I'd like for you to agree 
with me that the purpose of the rehabilitation program is to serve your customers. The first 
customer is the person with the disability.  Our goal is to assist people with disabilities to 
gain access to work opportunities.  We spend a lot of time doing that.  Often we don't think 
about that second customer. That second customer is business.  For the second customer, we 
need to assist them with the recruiting, hiring, and retaining of workers with disabilities in 
employment.  We'll talk a little bit later about some of the things that we'll need to do about 
this. But, I'd like for you to at least be able to agree that our job every day when we come to 
work in the rehabilitation field is to help people with disabilities to become employed and to 
assist businesses in helping them find, recruit, hire, and maintain people with disabilities in 
the workplace.
     
There's a quote from a representative from UNUM Provident that was shared with us during 
a business summit we had in Atlanta, Georgia a couple years ago. I think it kind of lends 
itself to the point we just made.  It says, "To really market VR services to employers, VR 
first has to determine what employers need, focus on what VR can provide to the company 
and meet the need."  We'll again be talking about the needs of businesses later. There's also 
another quote from UNUM Provident that says, "We have many needs, not always just 
filling positions.  Often we need assistance with job retention for workers who become 
disabled on the job." A minute ago, I talked about the things we need to do with business in 
helping them not only to hire workers but to help them retain the workers on the job, and 
that's things that we can do from the VR perspective and job coaches and the community 
rehab programs.
 
Now, some areas that I think that you need to consider as part of your program when we talk 
about networking with business.  First is identify business needs.  If  we had a group of 
businesses here today, and we do have one who will be talking to you, I am sure that what 
they would say first is that what you need to do is you need to identify what the needs of 
businesses are.  Find out what it is.  We need to do more focus groups. We need to do more 
surveys. We need to do more informational interviews. We need to find out what businesses 
want and what their needs are so we can meet them. 
Also, we need to talk about and consider things about learning the business culture.  What is 
the culture of Home Depot?  What is the culture of any organization that we're dealing with?  
You know, that drives them, that makes them work.  What are the jobs like?  What are the 
people like?  What do they want?  Again, it goes back to the needs, but also understanding 
that the business culture. It's a big difference from the rehabilitation culture. We need to find 
out what the business culture is. 
     
Businesses will tell you that you need to talk the business language and not the rehabilitation 
language.  Businesses do not care about OJT, DOE, IEP, IPE.  What they care about is just 
people getting jobs and helping them to find good people that are qualified who are willing 
to work.  We need to drop the jargon and just talk pure business language.
     
Another area that you need to be concerned with, that businesses report to us, is to develop a 
sense of urgency.  Businesses see government. They see that the wheels of government turn 
slow.  They don't see us being really concerned about helping them quickly and being 
speedy in getting services to them.  We have to understand that businesses are busy people 
and that when they need something, they need it fairly quick. We cannot wait weeks before 
we interact with them.  The idea is that we need to develop a sense of urgency, show that we 
have a passion for this, show that we are concerned about their needs, and we want to meet 
their needs.
 
And last, we need to make sure we are concerned about establishing a business value.  
What is your value to business?  Why would they want to work with you, as compared to 
other organizations?  You have to come up with a sense that you have something of value to 
them and that you can provide that to them and that they really respect what you do.  Ideally, 
they would be able to share that with other organizations and say, "Working with your 
program has helped me with my bottom line and we appreciate that."  But, you have to have 
some value.  If you don't have value, businesses will not work with you.  When you start 
networking, you need to really look at the value of your program and how it's seen by 
business.  I want to talk a little bit about changing our way.  You know, go back to the 
unemployment rate that we talked about earlier, and some of the reasons this is important.  If 
we have a 66 to 70% unemployment rate, we're doing something wrong.  Traditionally we 
have tried to get people placed one-to-one.  We need to change that mentality. Even though 
we might have to do some prescription-type job matching with people, we need to build on 
bigger networks and try to have many, many different friends in our business community  
who are helping us with the employment arena.
We need to stop social service mentality, and we need to start thinking business.  We need to 
focus on being business-friendly.  We go back to being responsive to business, identifying 
their needs, and being quick to help them understand what they can do to hire more people 
with disabilities.  We need to make sure that our services are convenient to them, that we 
can easily access ourselves to them, and make sure that we are available.

Focus on business as a primary customer.  I talked a minute ago about the idea that we have 
two  customers. We don't see ourselves as having but one customer, but we have two.  We 
have to get to the point where businesses are just as important to us as the clients that we 
serve or the consumers we serve.  We have two equal customers.  Sometimes we don't 
behave that way.  We have set ourselves up where we can provide a lot of services to people 
with disabilities, whether it be training or job coaching services.  We do transportation, we 
do a lot of things, and we have large files on consumers. One way to measure whether you 
really are seeing business as a primary customer is take the files that you have on clients and 
then take the files you have on business. Are they the same size?  Do you have just as many 
files?  What do you have in them?  Do you really see business as a primary customer? 
If you don't see them as a primary customer, we're not going to be able to get too far.  We 
have to change our ways. We have to start thinking of business as one of the two primary 
customers that we're serving day-to-day.
     
We need to identify strategies that meet the business needs.  If you see business as your 
customer, you are finding out what the needs are, and you're identifying what the culture is, 
the next thing you have to do is not only identify those, but you need to look at what 
strategies you can put in place to help meet those needs. 

This is very important that we do that.  A lot of times we will ask businesses, "What do you 
want?"  But we don't go back and look at our organizations and determine whether we have 
the capacity to fill those needs.  Do we have the staff ready to help businesses to overcome 
some of the things they need and to give them the services that they are asking for?  It's not 
only just building the needs, but we also have to meet the needs.  We have to have strategies 
to do that. 
     
We also need to build your networks and relationships.  The more relationships you have, 
means that you're going to have more people with disabilities employed.  You need to  look 
at the networks and look at your relationships. Are they positive? Build as many as you can.  
Are we talking about one-to-one?  It's not good enough to have one business and continue to 
go back to them to try to get people placed.  We need to have lots of businesses and lots of 
business friends in the community so we can call on them and they need to be calling on us.  

The more relationships we have, the more opportunity that businesses will be calling you 
requesting to hire people with disabilities. Several years ago, we did have a summit in 
Atlanta, Georgia, that we brought together about 35 businesses.  We brought together VR 
personnel from the southeast region, a lot of the rehab agencies. We were asking them:  
What is involved with a public/private partnership and what are some of the things that 
businesses want? 

You heard a minute ago that we talked about some of the things you need to be concerned 
about as far as the idea of learning the business need and learning the culture. But, these are 
the things that businesses have said that we need to be concerned about.  The first is very 
important.  We hear it all the time.  It's the single point of contact.  I know if you live in the 
community and you have 50 or 60 different programs out there, you have your objectives 
you need to meet, you have your different mission statements, and things like that.  

However, we need to do a good job of trying to find out the single point of contact.  There's 
several programs around the country. One I'm familiar with is in Richmond, Virginia. There 
are others in other states, what they call having network meetings.  It's where once a month 
all the different service providers, whether it be a Goodwill Industries, the VR programs, the 
veteran programs, they all come together.  Schools, community service providers, they come 
together to hear from business what the needs are. And, also to try to make sure that when 
businesses want to recruit, they are sending their jobs through one contact, which is 
disseminated through the whole network of community rehab programs.
This definitely makes it easier for businesses to access you. And, it stops having 40 or 50 
people knocking on Layne's door, every day or at least once a week.
     
We need to have a single point of contact, and get as close to that as possible.  I know it's 
probably not feasible in every area, but we need to try to make sure that we're networking 
and having that single point of contact.

Next, businesses said we need to have a simplified process of helping them with their tax 
credits.  You hear the idea that there's a lot of paperwork involved with hiring people. They 
see it may be cumbersome. What do we have to do?  Your job is to really make it easy for 
business.  For example, if companies are interested in tax credits, you should have the tax 
credit forms readily available to help them fill it out.  Don't ask them to fill it out.  You do it 
yourself.  

We need to break down the understanding that this is a complicated process, whether it's 
helping with on-the-job training, working with job coaches,  or helping with tax credits.  We 
need to make this as simple as possible, and make it easy for businesses to access. 
Another big issue they discussed and one of the things that they really wanted from the 
community rehab provider was service after the replacement - retention.  

We often do a good job of getting the placement or getting the job, but then are we there to 
maintain and help that business to retain that worker?  I've heard of businesses say, when 
they got a good job coach, it's been invaluable to them to be able to help with those support 
needs, to interact with the family, and to make things work smoothly.  It doesn't require the 
business, then, to take their time to iron out some of those problems.  They can count on the 
VR counselor or the job coach from the community program to really work with them.  
What do we need to help with the retention?  We've seen in study after study that we do a 
good job of placement, but how many people are really retaining their jobs?  The more 
communication we can develop between the job coach and the VR counselor with the 
business is going to help that.  We need to make sure that we are providing the services to 
help retain people.
     
Businesses also want to be able to hear what they're doing right.  I know Tom Donohue, the 
President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has said on a number of occasions 
the way we'll get more people hired with disabilities and the way we're going to reduce the 
unemployment rate is to tell more success stories.  Have business talk to business about their 
successes, but also have the rehabilitation programs identify what successes you're having 
and publicize those.  We need to get those in writing, we need to have examples that we can 
share in the newspaper and articles written in magazines.  We need to promote the 
successful best practices.
     
There's a lot of things going on within businesses that are great. You'll hear from one today 
with Home Depot.  Home Depot's done a wonderful job of recruiting lots of different people 
around this country. They've done an excellent job of trying to recruit people with 
disabilities and maintain relationships.  There are lots of companies that are doing this, and 
we need to promote those. 
     
Last is, do they want involvement from rehabilitation?  I hear from rehab counselors and job 
coaches that businesses really don't want to be involved with rehab. That's just not true. I 
don't think.  I think what you find is that businesses are busy. Businesses maybe don't know 
how to access rehabilitation people, but they do want your involvement.  They're willing to 
invest their time if they see that the things you're doing have some value to them. It's a 50/50 
partnership, and they're willing to do that.  They do want involvement from you.  They are  
in a strange new arena of really trying to understand this whole disability movement and 
understanding people with disabilities. The more you can help and the more you can be 
involved with them, it's going to enhance your chances of really creating networks and 
partnerships. 

So don't shy away.  Get involved with business.  I think you'll find it beneficial. 
Just a quote from another business customer that was at our summit in Atlanta.  It was a 
representative from Lockheed Martin, and it says, "A simple point of contact makes it easy, 
so easy to develop partnerships with VR, and so easy to communicate what we need.  Too 
many agencies asking me about job information creates confusion and misunderstanding."
I think you can see here that it's important to business.  They were saying that a single point 
of contact makes a difference, and it cuts down on the confusion of having a lot of people 
come to you.  Please give that some thought. 
     
Now, I have listed the five P's of networking that I like to talk a little bit about. As you can 
see, it's called prepare, proactive, participate, persistence, and priority. I think if we're going 
to talk about the nut and bolts of networking, we need to look at these five P's, so I'd like to 
start with prepare. 
     
You need to research the business community.  How else are you going to find out who's out 
there without having some type of filing system or some type of system to be able to 
maintain the list of the businesses who are in your area?  Do you know the number of 
businesses who are in your locale?  Do you know the ones who have just -- who are getting 
ready to move into your locale?  The ones who are getting ready to leave?  How many 
people do they employ?  But we have to do research whether we get it from organizations 
like the Chamber, whether we go to SHRM meetings, whether we get it from the library, or 
off the Internet. We need to find out who's out there. 

Once we know who's there, the second thing we need to do is really sit down and schedule 
the interviews.  We've got to take that next step.  Often we are a little hesitant about going to 
corporate offices and talking to businesses about this issue.  We need to feel good, again 
going back to the value, that we have something to offer business. We need to not only find 
out who they are, but we need to schedule time to talk to them about who we are and how 
we can benefit them in this whole process of hiring people.  Research and then schedule the 
interviews. 

We also need, I talked about this earlier,  to maintain business files.  If you do nothing else, 
you need to at least start maintaining some filing system on businesses, so we can know who 
the contacts are.  This should be easily accessible to everybody in your office.  It should be 
easily accessible to those network meetings that you have.  So, we know who they are, who 
to contact, what type of services they are providing, what type of people they're hiring, what 
type of needs they have, and have we met those needs.
Also, in those files, you should keep information about what they say about you.  You need 
to maintain files.

And last, you need to make sure that you have some attractive and pertinent marketing 
material for business.  It doesn't have to be expensive. Now we have a lot of color printers 
that will do an excellent job. It should be something nice, and it should be crafted for 
business.  We make a mistake sometimes in that we prepare a general flyer or a brochure 
that talks about us, meaning the community rehab program or the provider, but it really 
doesn't say much about what the businesses want.  I would suggest if you're doing this, let a 
few businesses look at your brochure and see if it is business-driven and business-friendly, 
before you get it published or completed.I think you need to prepare.  You need to get 
yourself ready and start researching, developing your brochures, and maintaining a filing
system of businesses in your community.  Prepare. 

Proactive.  By proactive, I mean really get out and access business.  We need to seek out the 
businesses and find out the needs.  We can sit back and say businesses don't want to hire and 
that they're not coming to the table, but what efforts have we made to get them to the table?  
It's our responsibility. I think to really to drive it home talk to businesses about what their 
needs are and then to take the first step.  Educate the businesses of your value.  We need to 
make sure that we are providing those educational opportunities for business.  Be proactive 
in getting information.  I know on our web site at VCU, we have our on-line Disability 
Awareness seminar.  We try to use that to educate businesses.  If you have a Web site for 
your business, make sure you're putting things that businesses might want to come to and 
look at.  Going back to that businesses can't find you, once they do find you, what does it 
look like?  Make sure you have information that's readily available to business so that they 
can find out what you offer, what your value is to them, and if they want to work with you.
     
Provide quality customer responsive services.  I spoke about this earlier. If we're going to 
build the networks and be successful, we've got to provide quality services.  We've got to be 
customer responsive.  It's not good enough to wait two weeks to get in touch with a business 
if they're calling you.  I know a lot of businesses will call us through finding us on the web 
site and ask for information. They want an immediate response.  They don't want to wait for 
two weeks before they find out the answer.  You need to be sure that you can provide that.  
And if you can't figure out why, then how can you do that better?  Again, being proactive by 
doing quick responsive services is going to help you.  Seek feedback from business.  Ask 
them, how am I doing?  If you've got job coaches interacting with businesses and they're on 
the site, don't wait for something to come up as a trouble spot.  Be proactive and find out and 
solicit information about what your services. How are they doing in the business? How  your 
staff is working with the business? And, what do they think of you and your program?  Then 
you can  modify and make changes as needed.  So you're helping businesses.  Businesses see 
that as a way of being responsive, that you're concerned about what you're doing in the 
business, you're concerned about helping them, and that you want to be a good business. 
Seek the feedback and figure out what's happening.
 
Participate.  I've heard too many people say, "I don't have time to participate, and it's really 
no good.  I don't get anything out of it."
I would suggest to you that you need to get involved with business groups.  I'm sure a lot of 
you out there are members of the local Chamber.  Hopefully you're members of your local 
Society of Human Resource Management.  If not, you ought to think about joining.  These 
folks, both Chambers and SHRMs have monthly meetings that you can attend. However,  
you should think about joining the committees and offer to serve.  I tell people if you're 
paying your money to join organizations like the Chamber and SHRM, if you're just going 
to a hospitality meeting or a meet-and-greet and you're handing out business cards, it's not 
good enough.  You need to get involved and let that organization know you're concerned 
about other things than being involved with that group.  You're learning from them. They're 
learning from you.
 
Join their ambassadors club for the Chamber, so you have the opportunity to go out and visit 
new businesses who are joining the Chamber.  Get involved with the SHRM program 
committee so you have an opportunity to suggest different program sessions and topics, so 
you can get disability introduced to some of the monthly meetings.  Take part and let them 
know you're interested in this, not just to go and have a drink or eat their snacks and just 
hand out a card, but really get involved with the organization.  You need to offer to speak at 
events.  There are a number of events in the community that you can talk to, and get your 
message out, and you should offer to host meetings.  Invite businesses over for an activity to 
help people with disabilities there.  In England, they do a great job of just trying to get 
people with disabilities and businesses together in a social activity, so people it's not a thing 
of hiring people, it's just getting people more comfortable being around people with 
disabilities.  Host meetings, whether it be at night, on the weekends, a luncheon or a 
breakfast. Invite businesses there just to let them know you appreciate what they do and 
thank them for their activities and also to be have an informal type of information session, so 
you can share things about what's going on in your office. 

Persistence.  We need to be patient.  Don't expect success overnight.  Often we do.  
We think we want a quick fix.  But be persistent and be patient, and find alternative ways to 
educate business.  If you're hitting a roadblock and you got some of those roadblocks, find 
another way.  Is it having another business talk to that business?  Is it coming up with a  
webcast or is it coming up with some other type of communication that you can talk to 
business?  Find ways.  Don't give up.  Don't give up too easy.  Often we'll say, "Well, this 
person didn't call me back," or "they don't want to hire" and we just stop.  That's not true.  If 
we're going to network, we need to go further. 
     
Understand that businesses are busy people.  They're busy just like you and me. If they don't 
call you back right away, it doesn't mean they don't want to work with you.

And the last thing is ask for business participation.  We can talk all day and talk about what 
we do and who we are, but if we don't ask the representative from the business, "We want a 
relationship. We want to network with you. We want to be able to partner with you." We 
need to ask for the business, so be persistent and don't give up.  It's important.  Often we do 
that too quickly sometimes. 
Priority.  The last is priority.  I want to go back and talk about seeing the employer as the 
customer.  That is definitely a priority.  If we cannot agree that there are two primary 
customers, the consumer with the disability and the businesses, we have a problem.  So our 
priority is really setting up this two-customer idea that we are serving both of them equally.  
Make sure you always look to help the business with their bottom line.  There's more than 
one bottom line.  We need to help them with maintaining a good profit, help them with good 
quality staff, help them with training, so help them with their bottom line and not trying to 
hinder things.
 
Commitment to spend time necessary to build the partnership.  I ask people, why don't you 
go to meetings, like the SHRM?  Why don't you get more involved with businesses?  And 
they'll say, "I don't have time.  I have to serve the consumer.  I have meetings to go to with 
the consumer."  I'm saying that you need to  see there's two customers. We need to also take 
the priority and dedicate the time that we need to do that.  I don't say you need to make a 
50/50 split, but some weeks you might have to do 50% and sometimes less.  But you've got 
to spend time interacting with businesses if you want to build your networks.  You can't 
expect it to happen and give it no time. 

Keep a resource room which has lots of business material.  It's going to help you with your  
staff. You need to be business-friendly and make sure your office looks like a business area.  
Keep business magazines available, and that's going to benefit you.  I want to go back to the 
priority and devote the time to this if you're going to be successful. Networking is 
everybody's responsibility.  It's not just one person.  It's everybody. You need to make sure 
that everybody in your organization is working to network with businesses, to partner with 
businesses, and so don't let it be just one person.  Not just a job coach, it's not just the 
manager's job, it's everybody's job.
 
Here are just some tips for networking.  You need to prepare a speech and practice.  We 
often are afraid to go out and talk to businesses, but I would suggest if you write it down and 
practice it over and over you'll get more comfortable with it.  Use your existing contacts.  
Use your friends, your neighbors, other work contacts, to make the connections.  That 
always helps.  Target specific groups.  Select one or two groups to devote your time and 
energy.  Maybe it's the retail merchants.  Maybe it's the manufacturing association in your 
area?  Maybe it is the SHRM group.  But target those out.  If it's several businesses, target 
out several large businesses and maybe some small businesses to spend your time.  But set a 
plan and target certain groups so you  save your time and energy so you're meeting your 
needs there.
 
Build relationships.  And again it goes back to the value.  You have to develop the trust with 
businesses.  Going back to also saying it takes some time and when we give up too easy, 
businesses have to learn to trust you, that you provide good quality services and are 
somebody they want to deal with.  So develop the trust.  Share information.  Don't hide your 
contacts, and share job possibilities.  I think those network meetings are a great opportunity 
to do that.  Often we find people who want to have a relationship with a business and 
maintain that and not share that.  If we're going to get more people hired, we have to share 
information about what's out there, what jobs are available.  Even though we don't have 
anybody on our caseload or in our office, there's got to be someone in the community who is 
qualified to do that job, and we need to share those leads.
     
Follow through and send thank you messages.  Again, if we're going to be successful and 
have a good quality program, we got to thank businesses for what they do.  Make sure you're 
sending a note.  And always continue networking.  It's an ongoing process.  Don't give up.  
Always network. 
     
One other quote from a business partner, CVS pharmacy.  It looks likes this:  "Look to help 
our bottom line?  Can you focus on our sales and expenses.  Will you help us increase the 
former and decrease the latter."  I think it speaks for itself.  If we are out there trying to help 
businesses with their bottom line and help them decrease some of the costs, we're going to 
be successful. 

And lastly, it doesn't matter how well we think we're doing, but it really matters as to how 
well our business customers think we're doing.  That's important to us.  I want to thank you 
for your time. I think you will find that if you do some of these tips that you'll have some 
nice relationships with businesses in your community. You'll be able to network, build your 
networks, and be more successful.  Thank you very much. 


>> LAYNE THOME: Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.  I want to 
thank Howard for giving me such a great segue into talking about the strategies for working 
and hiring individuals with disabilities. I'd like to say that, first of all, Home Depot's culture 
has always supported the employment of individuals with disabilities, but it's been our 
experience with those individuals that has driven our continued commitment. 
There are truly business reasons as to why companies should be involved in hiring 
individuals with disabilities. I want to highlight a few of those for you right now.

The first is that it increases our recruitment pool in areas where we have a tight labor 
market.  This is essential. It's important for us to realize that we can expand our recruitment 
pool by bringing individuals with disabilities into that.

Second is our experience has shown that individuals with disabilities tend to be long-term, 
committed associates with good attendance records.
     
Third is that it tends to motivate other associates.  When they have a disabled associate 
who's working side by side with them, we find that the productivity of those groups 
increased.
     
Lastly, it provides our disabled shoppers with someone who better understands their needs. 
You might say, "Why is it important for Home Depot to be in the disability marketing, or be 
in the disability business?"  And I think that the statistics from the University of Georgia's 
Selig Center for Economic Growth clearly points out why it's a good business venture for us.  
If you'll refer to the list, you'll see that disabled consumers represent $796 billion in buying 
power, and believe me, that's buying power that we want to tap into. 
     
As many of you may be aware, Home Depot's been operating for 25 years, and for us to 
continue to evolve over the next 25 years, there are certain key things that we have to stay 
focused on.  The main thing is staying focused on our customer relations and how well we 
relate to our customers.  We know that in order to do this, there are certain things that we 
have to do.  One is to be able to speak their language, so when we have a customer who 
comes in who speaks Spanish or a customer who comes in who speaks ASL, we need to 
make sure that we have associates who can communicate with those customers. 

Second is creating an environment that's complementary to their lifestyle.  That means do 
we have the right product, at the right price, at the right time.  So are we providing the right 
things for our customers for their lifestyles. 
Next is that we have to understand that the  diversity of our communities is changing, and 
that with that diversity and with that change in diversity, that we have to be able to offer a 
wide array of products and services so that we can continue to be the leader in our industry. 

And last, but most important, the core to our business has always been providing 
outstanding customer service, and we know that the key to providing outstanding customer 
service is our people. 
In order for us to continue to evolve over the next 25 years, the focus has to be on attracting 
and retaining good quality associates.  We have to be a talent magnet for those associates.  
We have to be able to engage associates so that we can retain their employment on the job.  
We have to be able to champion the values of each individual's contribution and understand 
what each individual brings to the table and capitalize on that. 
And last is that we have to be able to create a sense of belonging, so that those associates 
who are on the job want to stay with Home Depot. 

We understand that problems can happen, and in order to retain that good associate base, we 
have to be able to address those problems quickly and efficiently in order to keep from 
detracting from an inclusive environment. And last is that we have to be able to encourage 
that positive, open dialogue about differences in opinion and perspective.  

We know that we want our associates to feel that Home Depot is the only place that they 
want to work.  In order for us to maintain being an employer of choice, we have to create a 
workforce that is committed and dependable, so that we can continue to serve our 
customers. 
     
We know that the key to attracting and retaining the best associates is in building strong 
community partnerships. And, those community partnerships begin with you.  In order for 
us to have strong relationships with our partners, we have to be able to build those ties with 
organizations like vocational rehabilitation centers and other agencies who serve the 
disabled, so that we can have big, strong business ties that lead back to helping us meet our 
business goals.  Howard spoke clearly that this is a business, and when you walk into the 
doors of a Home Depot, you are selling a service, and that service is reliable, dependable, 
skilled associates.  And the first thing that you have to do in order to run a business is to 
understand what your customer is looking for. In this respect, we are your customer.
So what exactly are we looking for?  What are our job openings?  What are the skill sets that 
we're looking for?  Are we even interested in looking and working with individuals with 
disabilities?  These are all key to starting off on a successful relationship.
     
In order to drive that relationship, the first thing is to come in and introduce yourself to the 
business, and that means prior to bringing in a candidate for us to look at.  That means 
starting off with coming in and introducing yourself, introducing your organization, talking 
about the value that you can bring to our organization, as Howard so eloquently pointed out 
that this is a two-way street.  The other side of that is understanding that as a business, our 
bottom line is to one, be profitable, but number two is to have employees who are 
well-skilled and engaged in our workforce.  Make sure that you understand what our 
business needs are.
     
Understanding the business needs comes from understanding the skill sets that we're looking 
at, the experience and education that we're looking for, and being able to match your clients 
with an opening that we currently have available.

It's a two-way street of being able to match your quality labor with our open positions.
The next thing is to involve business leaders.  Howard also spoke to this.  To involve 
business leaders when designing your training programs.  When you're looking at ways to 
educate your clients as to what is business looking for, involve business in that decision.  
Involve business in those trainings.  Because until business is represented at the table, what 
we find is that there's a skill gap between the clients that you're presenting us and the work 
that we have to get done.  I'll give you an example.

We have customer service as a key component of Home Depot's business.  You know that if 
you walk into a Home Depot store, that you will be serviced by a knowledgeable, educated 
associate.  Well, what we find is that when vocational rehabilitation centers come and 
approach us about clients, that they say, "These folks have been trained in customer 
service."  Our definition of "customer service" may be a little bit different than your 
definition of "customer service."  It goes beyond a friendly smile.
So make sure that as you're working on programs to develop your clients to be job-ready, 
that those skills that you're training them with truly are what will benefit a business.  That 
they match with our core criteria, and that they match with our definition of what we would 
consider "ready to hire." 

The next thing is to use out-of-the-box thinking to incite companies to want to partner with 
you.  There have to be more creative techniques used by organizations that serve the 
disabled to want to incite companies to want to participate.  You know, we all know that we 
can take advantage of the WOTC tax credit.  We all know that a job coach is part of helping 
somebody acclimate to the job but are there other things that you can do to incite a company 
to take a risk to say, "You know what? We will go ahead and partnership with you, because 
there's a business advantage and there's an incentive for us to do this."  I know that it's hard 
to think of employing people with disabilities as being incentives, but it's one of those things 
that using out-of-the-box thinking to helping employers see the reasons why they should be 
involved. Is it just good community relations?  Is it the opportunity to hire quality 
employees?  We have to change from the mind-set of that this is a charitable thing to do to. 
This is the business-driven reason to hire individuals with disabilities.  There isn't charity.  
These are people who are well-skilled, ready and able to work, that will provide a benefit 
back to that business. 

The next thing is to make sure that your client has the basic job readiness skills.  When they 
show up to work at a Home Depot, we want to make sure that they have all the basic job 
skills necessary.  That means to know to show up to work on time.  That means to know 
what type of clothing to wear when they come in, so that they make a good appearance.  
That means knowing that if they're going to be out, that they should be call their supervisor.  
These are basic job readiness skills.  We can help teach them the job, but we don't have the 
time to spend in investing to teach them the job skills that they need to be successful. 

Howard also touched on this point, but I'm going to reiterate it, and that is to consider job 
retention rather than just job placement.  And I always say, "Live to fight another day."
And what do I mean by that?  Well, a lot of times we're so interested in having people 
placed that we're not paying attention as to whether that person is a right fit for the job.  And 
believe me, you're building a relationship with that business, and if this venture fails, it's a 
reflection on you.  So we want to make sure that anybody that's placed in one of our stores 
or in one of our facilities, is a good match for the job.  And if that match isn't working, that 
we quickly and effectively respond.  If that means removing that person from that particular 
job, we have to make those decisions together so that, one, we don't damage that 
relationship, and number two, that the individual doesn't become so frustrated that they have 
a hard time seeking employment elsewhere. 
     
The last thing is to ensure that the business understands the role of the job coach.  This is 
one of those things that's a key driver between the success of the candidate on the job and 
how Home Depot relates to that candidate. What we have found is that many of our 
managers have no idea of what their role is in dealing with the job coach. There's very little 
education that's done from the job coach to the business on what their role is on working 
together.  If this is truly the key driver that helps that relationship be successful, then we 
should be placing more focus on making sure that our managers understand that. 
I can't speak enough to this, but as much as it is the philosophy of Home Depot that we 
never lose a sale, we also have to remember that there's service after the sale. What I mean 
by that is that make sure that you're checking back in regularly with our business.  Make 
sure if we have somebody placed there, that even when they're successful, they're 
performing adequately, or they're performing well, that you're checking in with them, that 
you're coming back into the business, and that you're reintroducing yourself.  Our 
management team changes often. What we find is that we could have an employee that's 
worked for us for several years that may start developing problems on the job, and we have 
no idea that there's ever a job coach that's been involved with them.  Make sure that you're 
staying up-to-date with your clients, make sure that you're checking in with business 
routinely, and make sure that you're driving that relationship. It's more about what we're 
doing from this point forward than just the job placement.  Remember, job retention, not just 
job placement. 
     
I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about some successful case studies. I think even 
more important is getting back to that role of the job coach for just for a second. We've 
placed a handout on the web site so that you can access some information that we've put 
together on working with a job coach.
     
I was really disappointed to find that there was very little literature on what the employer's 
role is with working with the job coach. As a result, we had problems with our managers not 
understanding what their roles should be.  The job coach is not a replacement for 
management, so it's not a replacement for having supervisors who are engaged with that 
associate and who are actively working with that associate. What we have found from our 
experience is that when the job coach is present, our management team disappears.  And 
what we need to do is to let them know that this is a partnership, and that their partnership is 
essential into having that associate be successful on the job. So making sure that they 
understand their roles. For your convenience, you're welcome to reproduce the document that
we placed on the web site. It's what we give our managers, so that they understand what 
their role is.
     
Now, I'd like to highlight a couple of successful case studies that we've had.  We've had 
partnerships with several organizations around the country, and I'd like to say that our 
relationship with those organizations has improved tenfold through the years.  I want to 
commend the rehab centers and voc rehab for the effort that you've made in really 
establishing business connections and improving the relationships with business, but I do 
want to say that I think we have a long way to go. 
     
In 1998, Home Depot partnered with an organization called Ken's Kids, which is a private 
nonprofit corporation that provides vocational rehabilitation training to young adults who 
are mildly mentally challenged.  Over the past 7 years, we've placed 102 associates through 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware. Of the 102 associates who were 
placed, remarkably 84 of them are still employed today.

There are a lot of reasons why I think that this program has been so successful.  This is 
definitely a program that has been geared around retention rather than just job placement. I 
want to highlight a couple of the things that I feel have made this program so successful.  
The first thing is that prior to placement, the Ken's Kids agency and the job coach are in our 
store spending time with managers, before we ever meet one of their clients.  They come in 
and they meet with our management team. They talk to them about strategies for working 
with individuals with disabilities. They prepare them for having somebody with a disability 
in their store so that they remove that fear and possibly those negative perceptions ahead of 
time. As we have the candidate there, our associate, in the store, and that we know how to 
effectively deal with that associate.  That time with our managers is key to the success of 
this program.  The other thing that has been really helpful is that all of their job coaches 
attend our orientation class. They do this independent of their client, so each of their job 
coaches are required to attend our orientation sessions.  This way, they have a good flavor 
for the company culture. They understand our history. They understand where we're going 
for the future, and so that they have a better understanding of what our business needs are 
before their client is ever placed on the sales floor in our stores. 
     
The other thing that helps make their program so successful is just the commitment that 
they've made to our associate, their client, while they're on the job.  There's a commitment 
that there's a 3-month training class or training where there's frequent follow-up. The job 
coaches are on-site every day for three months regardless of the needs of that client.  In 
some cases, this could be a little bit difficult for the client to be able to engage with us, but 
what we have found is that the retention rate of those associates, once the job coach leaves, 
has been better.  

They continue to frequently follow up, once the placement has been made.  The other thing 
that I like about their program is that if an employee is having trouble on the job, that we 
have a three attempts rule, that we will attempt to retrain, come up with strategies to address 
the performance concerns or the issues that we're having with the associate. If we're 
unsuccessful after three attempts, that associate is removed.
     
We understand that the value of maintaining that relationship is key to the continued 
relationship with Ken's Kids. This is an incredible program that we know a couple of 
negative experiences can sour the way a business feels about partnering with an 
organization. They understand the value of maintaining that relationship and building the 
trust, and we understand the value that they are looking out for the best interests of our 
company. 

I want to highlight another case study.  This is a program that we started back in April of 
2000.  It's a paid work adjustment program that we've called Deaf2Work.  This program is 
currently just in the Georgia market, but it has been in place since 2000. The idea behind this 
was to create a work adjustment program for individuals who are hard to hire, deaf or hard 
of hearing individuals. These are individuals who have been involved in the voc rehab 
system. Our intent is to get them real on-the-job training and work exposure to help them 
gain those critical work skills that they might not get otherwise.

During the program, the associates have extensive training, both before they start working in 
our buildings, and after they're in our buildings.  They go through an intensive orientation. 
They go through all of our safety classes.  All of this occurs before they ever step on the 
sales floor.

The next thing is that they have extensive job coaching and interpreting services for 90 days.  
So during that 90-day period, the job coach and the interpreter is teaching our management 
team to work with those associates; to communicate with those associates; and to avoid the 
common communication barriers that occur between deaf and hard-of-hearing and the 
hearing population. What we have found is that during this 90 days, where we're having the 
intensive job coaching and training, our management team and other associates are thrilled, 
one, to learn how to communicate. But, two, it removes that fear and anxiety that they have 
of working with somebody who communicates in a different way. 

After the 90 days with the job coaching, if the person has performed well and they're 
interested in working for Home Depot, they're offered a full-time or part-time position with 
us.  So it's up to the individual as to whether they want to continue to work for Home Depot. 
If they've performed well, it gives them that opportunity to be hired. 
During that 90-day period, it is a paid work adjustment program. They're paid a competitive 
wage. To date, we have held 14 training programs.  Through that, we've put 42 associates 
through the training program, and to date, 28 of them are still employed.  I think that's a 
remarkable retention rate, considering that one, there's so many barriers to overcome, and 
number two, these are individuals who may never have worked in a competitive work 
arrangement before, who are given the opportunities to be successful. 

Lastly, what I'd like to do is end with a quote from our CEO and chairman, Bob Nardelli.  I 
think this really summarizes Home Depot's commitment to not only diversity but also the 
employing of individuals with disabilities.  Bob said celebrating diversity and practicing 
inclusion are tied to our success and to our bottom line.  They are as fundamental to our 
operations as staying in stock, selling innovative and distinctive merchandise, or providing 
product know-how and excellent customer service.  I don't think that there's a better key to 
our success than knowing that people drive our business and that in order for us to be 
prepared for business in the future, that our associates hold that key to our success.
I want to thank you for your time today.