Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Hannah Yardley On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have a Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Measure the employee experience regularly to calibrate working conditions and ensure everyone can adapt in an agile manner.
As we all know, over the past several years there has been a great deal of discussion about inclusion and diversity in the workplace. One aspect of inclusion that is not discussed enough, is how businesses can be inclusive of people with disabilities. We know that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. What exactly does this look like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about the “How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Are Disabled “.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Hannah Yardley.
Yardley will lead continued company growth through people and culture, client consultancy and product development.
TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Achievers, the progressive choice for employee voice and recognition solutions, announced the appointment of Hannah Yardley as Chief People & Culture Officer.
Joining a company that is deeply focused on employee belonging, engagement and recognition, Yardley will focus on empowering employees and creating a culture of performance through her work with sales, product and people development. Yardley has spent the early days at Achievers launching a return to workplace strategy as well as launching the Achievers Employee Experience Platform™. She will be based out of Achievers’ headquarters in Toronto, Canada.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
Hannah is a Talent Leader with over 20 years of experience consulting to a variety of global organizations in the areas of talent strategy, operational excellence, and cultural transformations. As the CHRO at Achievers her focus is to empower employee success through all facets, employee engagement, organizational effectiveness, organization development, and talent strategy. She is keen to make the world a better place through irresistible employee experiences and leading edge people and product development.
Coming from a family that has roots in the medical profession, it was inevitable that health and wellness would be top of mind for me. But after realizing that I couldn’t handle the sight of blood, I knew I wasn’t cut out for a medical role and sought out other avenues. When I came across the profession of employee experience and engagement (i.e. the corporate version of health and wellness!) it was a perfect fit, and I haven’t looked back since.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Trust — We so often talk about the trust that leaders need to garner from their employees, and less often on the trust that leaders need to give to their teams. My goal as a leader is to create a trustworthy environment in which independence, safe learning opportunities, and open communication are all critical elements
Listening — So often we have preconceived notions of what we expect for employees on their career journey. It’s so hard to coach and guide when someone has a different professional and personal direction than you. To get through this you need to ask questions, deeply listen, and be able to support even if that wouldn’t be your first choice
Fun — There must be opportunities for building connection and rapport with teams. Sometimes this can be done through work tasks, but I believe that if you don’t leave space and time for getting to know your team you can’t possibly unlock the true potential of your relationship.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
One of my greatest struggles was over-coming the unconscious bias I faced when going through a life-stage change in the middle of my career. After coming back from parental leave I faced several unconscious bias moments where others made assumptions about my choices because of the life-stage that I was going through. There were assumptions about my abilities to travel, there were assumptions about my capacity to take on tough roles or assignments. For a while I thought these leaders were being protective of me, that they were looking at my best interests because of my life-stage. But what I quickly realized was that my choice was being stripped from me, because others were making assumptions about me because of this life-stage, rather than providing me equal access to opportunities and letting me make those choices for myself.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I am really excited about the future projects that we have going on right now. We haven’t faced the intersection of so many future of work concepts all at once, global workforce, multi-generational, virtual and hybrid workforce, hyperconnected society, etc. And there is a huge opportunity for inclusion and diversity to become both an enabler and differentiator for our businesses as new types of workers become available to your organization. For example, there is emerging research that individuals with disabilities now have greater access to workplaces because of the virtual and hybrid environments.
Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to promote Diversity and Inclusion? Can you share a story with us?
One of my favorite initiatives around Diversity and Inclusion is working directly with employees to identify the initiatives and programs that are most meaningful to them. Sometimes HR can work in silos, so having a direct line to the employee voice through ERGs (employee resource groups) is an incredible way to help make an impact. At Achievers, we not only fund our ERGs with real dollars they can spend on initiatives to create belonging and community amongst our employees, but we empower our them to self-lead and independently direct their own work. In fact, these ERGs are so important to our business that they have created an ERG alliance, an open network for ERGs across our customer base to connect and share best practices around the topics most top of mind for employees.
Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have an inclusive work culture?
There are far too many to list! But generally, I think there is a misnomer that inclusion is solely about impacting the employee experience. While this is critical, and should be one of the primary factors in setting inclusion objectives, there are real business outcomes that can also be achieved. Belonging in particular, drives better engagement, as those that have a strong sense of belonging are 3–4X more engaged (https://www.achievers.com/resources/white-papers/workforce-institute-culture-of-belonging/). Additionally, these same employees who feel this strong sense of belonging are also 2–3X more likely to be their most productive self at work, more likely to feel competent in their role, and less likely to be looking for a job elsewhere. For the organizations that struggle to make a business case around the employee experience, these can be directly tied to dollars and cents.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what this looks like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Can you please share a few examples?
Reasonable accommodations need to always include the employee voice. It is absolutely critical as an employer to include the employee directly in the conversations you’re having. Making decisions around accommodations can’t be done without the employee involved to share the impact of their experiences in the workplace and adjustments that need to be made. Organizations should remember that every workplace policy doesn’t work for every employee, so employers must be prepared to be flexible and find solutions that work. For example, research shows that remote work is a fantastic way to improve accessibility for all — it broadens the talent pool and diversifies employees.
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities — so legally, companies must provide inclusive solutions. However, I caution business leaders to avoid just doing the bare minimum to get by legally. Utilize the opportunity to lean into what employees are seeking and identify the plethora of opportunities to provide employees more inclusive. Some examples include requiring captions for remote meetings, encouraging accessibility in the work area, providing reserved parking, when available, and most importantly, encouraging a flexible work schedule.
Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? If you can, please share a few examples.
Employee belonging plays a key role in the culture of a company and the outcome of employee work. With one in five employees reporting that they have a disability, it’s crucial for leaders to find effective ways to support this subset of the workforce. Here are a few ways Achievers increases disability inclusion in the workplace:
Put the person first. When writing about persons with a disability, always refer to the person first, upholding the person as paramount. Using “person-centered” language refers to putting the person first. Use “a person with vision difference (such as red/green color blindness)” or “a person with vision loss”
Prioritize the voice of employees (VoE) to maintain and encourage effective communication. Developing a culture of listening enables organizations to be proactive in addressing problems, meeting employee needs, and designing people-centered policies. A well designed VoE program empowers leaders to:
· Give employees ample opportunity to declare opinions and have their ideas heard.
· Measure the employee experience regularly to calibrate working conditions and ensure everyone can adapt in an agile manner.
· Capture sentiment on everything — from feelings about a project to the simplification of processes — to evolve the organization’s strategy continually.
Achievers Workforce Institute found that 47% of employees feel a strong sense of belonging when they were warmly welcomed and invited to be part of the community. The inclusion of all employees is crucial for company success, especially those with disabilities. The more your employees feel included and heard, the better sense of belonging they will have at the workplace. This in turn creates stronger company outcomes and overall company success.
Related to our work at Achievers here are a few specific ways that we have made our programs and policies more inclusive.
- Consider recognitions and awards that can be personalized to the individual. So often we see reward recognitions that aren’t inclusive, e.g., gift cards for alcohol or physical experiences. Instead think about offering a variety of choices for your employees to earn a reward that reflects their individualized needs. For example, in our rewards marketplace we offer employees who have earned recognitions an array of digital gift cards and large merchandize catalogue for employees to choose what is personally meaningful.
- Often charitable events are based around physical forms of activity, which for some with disabilities can create a barrier to participation. Therefore, we have partnered with an organization Benevity, which allows employees to leverage their reward value to donate them to a charity of their choice. This is an inclusive charitable experience that allows employees to contribute to the communities and organizations that reflect their own values
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help promote disability inclusion? Can you share with us how the work culture was impacted as a result?
We have prepared a DEI style guide. It is aimed at ensuring that we have a guide to creating inclusive communications and approaches to the work that we do at Achievers. What makes it so impactful is that this guide doesn’t just share standards, but educates our teams along the way. The DEI style guide provides the much-needed context as to why the words, structure, and approaches that we use are so important to supporting a better inclusive environment.
Our product is WCAG compliant. Ensuring that people with vision differences are able to read and access our recognition tool. This includes ensuring that particular colors are not used. At first there were concerns amongst our customers that this was limiting their user experiences, but with a little education and explanation it became another amazing way of how our program can enable their own inclusion goals.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
As an adult, please read ANY Dr. Seuss book for important life lessons and guidance. But in particular, I love the quote from Oh the Places You’ll Go, “Today is your day. Your mountain is waiting. So….get on your way!” In our personal and professional life there are real and metaphorical mountains in front of us, until we take a first step forward our journey will never be able to start.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I believe in the power of the HR teams in enabling employees and organizations to come closer together in a mutual journey of success. This is partially why at Achievers we call our HR department Employee Success. When there is a mutual goal of success between organizations and employees, we are going to unleash the full potential of our people and organizations. This can only be achieved through trust, listening, and mutual reciprocity.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Happy to connect via LinkedIn any time — https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahyardley/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Hannah Yardley On How Businesses Make Accommodations For… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.