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, and my co-host for this season is Tom Sena. Throughout season 2, we’ll be chronicling the process of opening a second location of Rising Tide Car Wash, where we employ people with autism.
If you’ve been tuning in this season, you know that 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.
That’s what we’re here to talk about today! Pre-training involves asking our recruits to be able to do our most basic production process, which involves 39 steps, three times in a row in under six minutes each time. This pre-training process allows us to bring in people who we aren’t quite sure will be up to the task of working here, and gives them a fair shot at doing the job. It also sets our employees up for success.
For this process, we divided our candidates into groups based on their scores on the initial assessment during the first interview. We then subdivided those groups to ensure all of our candidates were working in small enough groups to be able to fully participate in the pre-training. In these small groups, the candidates were taught to do the aforementioned basic production process and then asked to do it. Those who were successful will now move onto the next step, which is live training shifts.
In this episode, we’ll also talk about how we figured out how many people we’ll need to hire in each position, how we calculated when we needed to start the hiring process to ensure our recruits are fully trained and ready by the time we open the next location, and the costs involved in completing this pre-training process. Tune in to learn more!
In This Episode:
[00:25] - Tom D. starts off the episode by describing what pre-training is and explaining the role it plays in their employment process.
[01:57] - We learn why management being on the same page was so important as Tom S. describes the first thing they did in the pre-training process.
[02:51] - Tom S. goes into more detail about exactly how the pre-training process worked, including how they divided the candidates into groups and how they worked with each small group.
[05:40] - People with similar scores were matched up in groups, Tom D. clarifies. He then points out that throughout the process, it’s important to reinforce good behaviours with specific praise.
[08:47] - Prior to designing the recruiting process, they created a mock schedule to figure out how many people they would need to fill for each position. They then assessed how many shifts new employees were likely to need before being able to work on their own, and worked backward from there to put their dates together.
[11:53] - Tom S. points out that the way they initially came up with the mock schedule was based on their current figures.
[13:41] - We hear about the costs associated with this pre-training process. For group 1, the pre-training took place over the course of three days.
[14:37] - Through the pre-training, they’re clear with the candidates that passing the pre-training means they’ll be offered employment.
[15:47] - Tom D. talks about the differences between the employment process this time compared to the first time they did it.
[17:44] - Does Tom D. notice anything different as far as support staff and people overseeing the process?
[19:27] - One challenging part of the pre-training process was collecting reliable contact information for all of the candidates.
[20:48] - Even more challenging than that is telling some people that they aren’t suitable for the job. Tom D. offers a specific example of a gentleman who was too physically strained by the work.
[22:38] - Tom S. talks about what he found to be the bright spots in the training. He then discusses the next step, which is scheduling the successful candidates for live training shifts.
Links and Resources: