Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Laura Goodridge Of eSSENTIAL Accessibility On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have a Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Failure is needed to grow and learn and create. Don’t be afraid of failure. Real leaders shine through failure.
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 Laura Goodridge.
Laura Goodridge is the Head of People Experience at eSSENTIAL Accessibility, the leading digital accessibility platform enabling brands to ensure people of all abilities have equal access to their websites and digital experiences. Laura spent her formative years with the HR team at McLaren Automotive, building a culture of trust during a time of change, and has influenced corporate culture at organizations like Clear Channel, where she helped embed humility and agility as foundational values driving a 750+ employee community. Laura is committed to challenging conventional HR. Her current focus is building cross-functional micro-communities to foster inclusion and enable employee growth. Laura is based in Toronto, where she enjoys spending as much time outdoors as possible with her dog, Billie, who has become an icon among eA’s staff.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! 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?
Openness. Nobody’s story is the same, including people’s experiences, successes and failures. By being open and sharing my own experiences, I can invite others to share more about themselves and build a foundation for us to grow together.
Honesty. Being consistently honest with someone builds trust. When people trust, they can deal with what they need to in the way they need to do it.
(Appropriate) goofiness. Life is too short to be someone you’re not. We should be seen as humans while at work; we spend more time with work colleagues than family. And while everyone isn’t comfortable bringing their “whole self” to work, it’s important to figure out how much of yourself you’re willing to share, and bring that to work. For instance, I’ll usually break the silence when someone is late to a meeting by talking about my favorite topic — my dog, Billy. Everyone gets a good laugh from these little Billy updates, and I can share this side of my life with my coworkers.
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 work-related struggles has been developing confidence in knowing what I know and feeling okay to talk about it. HR leaders are usually fighting to get into the room, then to get a seat at the table, then to be heard, and then finally to be listened to. That constant struggle can shake your confidence and make you doubt your intuition.
Getting past that struggle meant putting myself out there and speaking up past the doubt and nerves. In people roles, you’re playing the part of someone’s conscience, so giving voice to that conscience is what puts people leaders at the table. And it takes a leader to voice a thought that 99 percent of the room is having but afraid to say. You won’t be the only one thinking something, but you may be the only one saying it.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
We’ve been focusing significant time and effort on manager training, especially with middle management. These leaders are a vital part of a company. According to Ceridian’s 2022 Executive Survey, while leaders recognize the value of middle managers, they aren’t always great at supporting them — only half (51%) said their organizations offer management training programs. If you neglect the needs of people at this level and expect them to be coaching and leading, you’ll get variance in how your business operates. On the other hand, when we have a coordinated training and empowerment program, we’re arming them with the skills they need to inspire and lead employees, with everyone moving in the same direction.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to our discussion about inclusion. 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?
As one example of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we program a series of all-staff lunch and learns specifically related to accessibility. We aim to promote inclusion, but to promote it, you have to share knowledge. And to share knowledge, you must include people experiencing the world in their own way, so our employees run these sessions. We recently had a lunch and learn session about the struggle people with disabilities face with technology and accessibility at work and in daily life, and several team members were brave enough to share their own experiences and lead the discussion. That was an illuminating session for many of us, as we were able to learn from their first-hand experiences. So, inclusion is about widening the options that someone has to be part of something, to share and absorb information, and perhaps bring a different part of themselves to an experience and be further welcomed for who they are.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. 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?
Most humans want to feel included, to be a part of something — a mission, a team, a project. When you feel included, you’re more committed. You vibe off each other’s energy and push each other to reach higher. And when the chips are down, people who feel included will pull together and share the burdens and the rewards.
Teams are more successful when they have the perspective of everyone’s lived experiences. It’s on leaders to help their people bring those perspectives to work by giving them the choice and space to do so.
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?
The ADA serves to support opportunities and options for fairness within the workplace. At eSSENTIAL Accessibility, we try to create the type of relationships that ensure our employees feel comfortable requesting whatever they need to be successful.
For example, a wheelchair user may find the most physical accommodation by working from home because their home is set up to be more functional for them. The business is still getting the same — if not more — value because that person feels included and valued and can work more comfortably.
Or a parent who has a child with a disability may need to take longer in the morning for additional care needs. We can adjust work start times to accommodate for this.
At the core of any accommodation is building trust with the individual. By giving them the freedom to make decisions to manage their work and trusting them to accomplish the outcomes the business needs, you’ll create a work environment where your employees feel included and better set up for success.
Additionally, at eSSENTIAL Accessibility, we help companies meet WCAG standards and ADA compliance by making their websites accessible, and this includes their internal, employee-facing assets — to ensure the people with disabilities community has equal access and opportunity in the online world.
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.
Consider everyone’s unique needs and how they might manifest in daily work. For example, be mindful of how you present a meeting on Zoom. Make being on video a choice, include closed captioning for audio, and give a heads-up if you’re playing music, which can be challenging for people with certain sensory sensitivities. You should extend this thoughtfulness to how accessible you make software systems, meetings, onboarding and training.
Overall, it’s important to create an environment of trust. Trust is a gift. Give your people the gift of trust, and they’ll flourish in ways that benefit them and your business.
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?
Along with the lunch and learns and inclusive meeting practices I mentioned earlier, we’ve established an internal community to ask, learn, and share about this topic. For example, we have an accessibility slack channel, an intentional safe space for people who want to join with others and be able to ask vulnerable questions.
The crux of what we do is talk about things that have previously been very difficult to talk about. We say, instead of feeling like we’re walking on eggshells, let’s view it as paving the way and leading the discussion.
This is our signature question that we ask in many of our interviews. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started My Career”?
- Failure is needed to grow and learn and create. Don’t be afraid of failure. Real leaders shine through failure.
- The people you are most different from are the ones who will push you the furthest.
- Being “heard” takes time.
- If you don’t stick up for yourself, no one will. If you don’t say what you believe, nobody will hear it.
- Wisdom is learned and earned. You don’t become a CEO overnight. Have patience with yourself.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” — Henry Ford.
This quote was shared with me by my high school drama teacher. He would always want us to push ourselves to bring raw emotions to our performances and he said it to me when I was struggling to bring myself out in a character I was playing. I was overthinking the script, forgetting lines, and freezing instead of trusting myself to just let it flow. I knew the character, so why was I following the same pattern that stressed me out? We are taught to follow scripts throughout life, and to me, this was pivotal moment in embracing my natural drive to challenge the status quo and to ‘find other ways’ or ‘push different boundaries’ to impact change in myself and the world around me. Thanks Mr. Dolton!
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. 🙂
Collectively increase self-awareness. How can we manage people if we don’t know who we are? How can we build a team if we don’t know our strengths? Know yourself and then you can build a functional team around you.
I’ve done this in my work. I know I’m a visionary — I start quickly and jump to the big picture without as much focus on the operational side of things in the beginning. I start at the vision and work backwards to the beginning steps. So I have a team that is incredible operationally. They have my permission to call me out if I’m venturing away from the process. Their strengths marry with my areas of opportunity. If you know “this” about yourself, you can get out of your way and then hire to compliment your strengths. But you first have to cultivate self-awareness.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
They’re welcome to follow me on my LinkedIn profile!
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: Laura Goodridge Of eSSENTIAL Accessibility On How Businesses… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.