A group of Fortune 500s, along with local disability organizations, met today in Windsor, Conn., for a leadership boot camp to examine ways to employ more people with disabilities. The backdrop: Walgreens distribution center in Windsor, which is designed to employ 30% people with disabilities.
Companies attending the boot camp included Walgreens, Ernst & Young, Proctor & Gamble, Clarks Corporation, ESPN, Aetna and Traveler’s Insurance. They shared best practices around training and employing people with disabilities in order to get ready for the next-generation workforce, and also toured the Walgreens campus.
Walgreens is a leader in hiring people across the spectrum of disabilities. Its distribution centers – where goods are packaged and then shipped out to retail stores – employ many people with disabilities. Windsor is one of the discount chain’s highest producing distribution centers in the U.S. (The top ranking goes to its Anderson, S.C., center, where 40 percent of workers have a disability such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism and traumatic brain injury.
Randy Lewis, senior vice president of distribution and logistics for Walgreens, has a son with autism, and he says having a child with a disability has changed his perspective on the employment landscape for people with disabilities. “If my son is like 95 percent of the other kids out there with autism, he’ll never be offered a job,” he says.
Walgreens goal is to hire 1,000 people with disabilities at its centers by 2010 (there are nearly 700 in Anderson) and 2,000 by 2018.
The companies were also joined by several organizations including the Connecticut Bureau of Rehabilitation Services and the U.S. Business Leadership Network.
