Lessons From the Trenches – A Follow up conversation with Brewability Labs
Autism Advantage
Brewability Lab has been open for just over a year. Tiffany’s employees have experienced incredible growth since then, thanks in large part to the systems she has set up to facilitate the process. For example, there are braille labels on the bar taps so that a bartender who is blind can function at his best.
info_outline
Diversifying Impact – A Follow up conversation with the Chocolate Spectrum
Autism Advantage
Since our last conversation, there has been a huge change in the training side of things. Valerie Herskowitz explains that she has mostly just gone with the flow with the business, following the opportunities that presented themselves, instead of having a huge long-term master plan. She explains in this conversation that it occurred to her that they should see if the coffee industry could possibly be something that would work for individuals with autism.
info_outline
Growing Smart – A Follow up conversation with Katie’s Snack Cart
Autism Advantage
Tom D. sits back down with Wendy Kohman, the founder of Katie’s Snack Cart. Wendy talks about how she’s taken what started out as a side business for her daughter Katie, to a business that has grown to employing 6 total staff, across 9 clients.
info_outline
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
Autism Advantage
One important thing we’ve noticed that we’re lacking is continually engaging with our community and customers, and telling our story. We realized that, while many of our customers understand exactly what our company does, there are quite a few who had no idea. This was our fault for not being clear and outgoing enough with communicating our story. We decided to do this through digital marketing instead of opting for standard car wash marketing techniques, such as door hangers or printouts.
info_outline
Typical Staffing Needs – Recruiting Training Deploying
Autism Advantage
Now, moving into the second half of the season, we’re ready to talk about the other 20% of our staff -- the employees who don’t have autism. These employees are incredibly important to the overall structure of the organization. They navigate the communication, explain the service, and set expectations. While they’re vital to our organization, it can be challenging to find typical people who want to work at a car wash and see the work as an opportunity to grow and have impact.
info_outline
2nd Store Open – Frontlines from 1st week
Autism Advantage
Now that we’ve finished up the first week of operations with both stores running, we’re ready to talk about how things went! Instead of putting all the new employees in the new location, we knew it was vital to have a mix of experience levels. We moved about half of our experienced employees to the new location, so each of the two locations is now staffed by half experienced employees and half new employees.
info_outline
Hired! - Integrating Candidates into Live Shifts
Autism Advantage
So far this season, we’ve talked about some of our plans for the second location, our big day full of dozens of interviews, and our pre-training process. In that process, as we discussed in the last episode, candidates needed to successfully complete a specific task three times in a row with a time limit. Those who were successful moved onto the next step: being offered a job!
info_outline
Almost Employed - Passing Pre-Training
Autism Advantage
We recently hosted our big day of interviews. We had close to a hundred candidates show up. Twenty of these didn’t have autism, and four were unsuccessful in the interview process for various reasons, but we ended up with over 50 qualified candidates who moved onto the next step, our pre-training process.
info_outline
Goal 80% Employees with Autism - Post Interview Results
Autism Advantage
We are preparing for a big event: a day of hosting around a hundred candidates in the search for the perfect people to increase our staff and allow us to open our new location. In this episode, we’ll talk about how that interview process went.
info_outline
Doubling in Size – The Pre-Recruiting Plan
Autism Advantage
We run Rising Tide Car Wash, which employs several dozen fantastic people with autism. This isn’t a charity, though; we encourage independence and growth by expecting everyone who applies to be able to pull their weight, and we’ve seen great success already.
info_outlineWelcome to the Autism Advantage podcast! I’m your host, Tom D’Eri, the COO and co-founder of Rising Tide Car Wash. In case you’re not familiar with what we do, we employ a fantastic team of individuals with autism, allowing us to empower our staff while offering a fantastic experience to customers. We believe that individuals with autism are an incredible untapped resource for many business, and this show is dedicated to proving that employing these people can create real competitive advantages.
I’m honored to introduce today’s guest, Randy Lewis, who is a true legend in the autism employment world. Randy is the visionary behind the Walgreens Disability Employment Program, which is one of the most well-established disability employment programs in the corporate world. He’s also the father of a young man with autism.
Unlike every previous guest on the show, Randy didn’t create a new organization to employ people with autism. Instead, he created change within an existing company. Doing so involved navigating the systems in place that weren’t designed for people with autism and other disabilities. In our conversation, he’ll explain how he did this and offer recommendations for others who might be in a similar position.
Randy points out that parents have all had the same experience of having been taught by their children. One of the things Randy’s son taught him was to confront his unknown biases and look past disabilities to see the person. He also learned how easy it is to underestimate people, which he applied to the concept of employment. This was his inspiration to hire people with autism at Walgreens.
One of the differences between managing neurotypical employees and employees with autism is that in the latter case, managers need to actually manage. This means that managers need to treat everyone as individuals, understand them, and figure out what motivates them. This practice ends up making these managers stronger in managing typically abled employees as well. Randy digs into this in depth, and we talk about how many ways it benefits managers to have employees with autism.
In our conversation today, we’ll also cover lots of other topics including what talent is (hint: it’s not just about going to an Ivy League school and landing a high-powered job), what advantages Randy has seen from hiring people with autism, and how things have progressed for his son, for whom Walgreens wasn’t the perfect fit. Tune in to hear all this and much more!
In This Episode:
[01:35] - Randy talks about his inspiration for trying to hire people with autism at Walgreens.
[03:57] - At Walgreens, there were established processes in hiring new employees. Randy knew that hiring people with autism would involve changing those processes, and reveals the secret magic word that makes people get past their block of resisting change.
[06:03] - Tom reiterates what Randy has been saying: instead of challenging the establishment, you create a side door.
[06:26] - What was the reaction of the typical employees who were working at the pilot site? After the first reaction of fear, there was complete acceptance, Randy explains.
[08:20] - Randy points out that working with people with autism requires that managers manage. This ends up making them better managers all around.
[09:51] - Tom has found something similar at his car wash, where it’s clear that the need to treating all of your employees as individuals creates managers who are better listeners and clear communicators.
[11:22] - Randy talks about a study that explored the culture at Walgreens, and mentions his website, which you can find at this link!
[12:34] - Many of the people who are affected by autism hold a huge variety of roles, Tom points out, explaining that one of the beautiful things about autism is that it’s completely indiscriminate in terms of who it affects.
[13:36] - What would Randy say to someone at a relatively high position in an existing company who is interested in hiring people with autism?
[15:17] - Tom digs into the topic of what, exactly, talent is.
[17:14] - We hear about what business Randy has seen by employing people with autism at Walgreens.
[19:00] - Randy addresses the topic of the impact he has been describing on his son specifically, and explains that his son worked at Walgreens for several years.
[20:52] - Has Randy seen any changes in his son? In his answer, he shares an entertaining way that his son has been making money.
[23:14] - Randy discusses whether Meijer has other employees with disabilities, and whether his son has made any relationships with the people he’s working with.
[25:06] - Randy talks about his vision for the future and what his plan is now that he has moved on from Walgreens.
[27:53] - How can listeners get involved with Randy’s organization, or find out more about his speaking engagements or workshops?
Links and Resources:
No Greatness Without Goodness by Randy Lewis
University of Miami-Nova Southeastern University Center for Autism & Related Disabilities