Archives for March 2018

Microsoft Makes Accessibility a High Priority

March 27, 2018

By Joan Leotta

Chief Accessibility Officer for the Microsoft Corporation, Jenny Lay-Flurrie has been working to give the company’s internal accessibility programs a wide reach in the disability community. One of her latest efforts is to create a hiring program that identifies and trains people with autism. Lay-Flurrie, herself deaf, has held many positions within the company. Her own road to corporate success reveals her commitment to success for herself and others with disabilities. She graciously agreed to be interviewed by SMG. The live links in the article will take readers with further interest in Microsoft to more detail about its Autism Hiring Program and other Microsoft Accessibility programs.

SMG: What has your employment journey been like and what advice would you share with others with disabilities who are looking for employment?

Ms. Lay-Flurrie: Well, it’s a bit of a long, winding story, but I have always had a passion for music. Some folks are surprised to learn that I started out by getting a music degree back in the UK. It was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t long before I realized that I needed money to pay rent and music wasn’t cutting it. That led me to start working at a newspaper in London on their IT help desk, which was really the start of my career in the IT industry. At that point in my life, my deafness wasn’t something I wanted to call attention to. After I moved into an IT startup, it became increasingly difficult for me to hide it. I actually got to the point where I tried to resign because I was offered a promotion and I didn’t think I could do it with the state of my hearing being as it was. I had to ask for help. Fortunately, my manager at the time was wonderful and worked with me to get digital hearing aids. It was life-changing!

By the time I got to Microsoft in 2005, my hearing had continued to slide and with so many thick accents and folks talking at the same time, I needed to ask for help again. In short order, I was provided captioning and a sign language interpreter. It was at that time that I also became increasingly involved with employee resource groups at the company, which helped me to really be proud of who I am and open about my disability. My advice to you is this: Learn from my journey, but don’t follow it to the letter. Make it your own. Be honest about everything that makes you who you are, and remember, disability is a strength, so embrace it!

SMG: Do you think society subtly pushes people with disabilities, both visible and invisible, into specific jobs that do not fully tap into that person’s potential?

Ms. Lay-Flurrie: I think sometimes assumptions are made about what people are capable of and oftentimes that simply comes from a place of ignorance. It’s an opportunity to educate as well as recognize the talent that people with disabilities bring to the table. It’s happened in my own life. There was a time when someone told me that I would never achieve much, but I’m happy to say that they were dead wrong! We’re also seeing it in applicants to our Autism Hiring Program. We’ve had candidates with multiple PhDs who held part time jobs at Safeway – clearly an example of an untapped pool of talent that is gold dust for both Microsoft and other companies to latch onto. We’re now working with over a dozen companies on our Autism program, and by sharing our learnings, our thinking is that if we can help more companies hire people with disabilities, then we will be able to impact the unemployment rate, which is our end goal.

SMG: Microsoft has risen as a corporate leader in disability inclusion. What have you done to truly integrate people with disabilities within the company’s culture?

Ms. Lay-Flurrie: At Microsoft, we believe it’s essential to have a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture. With more than one billion people with disabilities in the world, organizations and companies are missing a trick when they don’t think about disability inclusion as part of the diversity conversation. With this in mind, we’re approaching disability inclusion in a number of different ways. Our Disability Employee Resource Group (ERG), has been a key part of this, and is now more than 1,000 strong, representing employees with a number of different conditions such as hearing loss, blindness, and mobility disabilities, to name a few. The Disability ERG champions many of our efforts in the company, including our annual Ability Summit, which provides a forum for innovative thinking related to accessible technology. We have an annual hackathon that includes ‘Ability Hacks’ focused on empowering people with disabilities. This also continues to grow, and this year we had 150 projects. The hackathon really is an incubator for accessibility innovations. Previous Ability Hack winners included the Eye Gaze Wheelchair and Learning Tools for OneNote.

We also host a number of job fairs, as well as offer annual disability scholarships for high school students, and partner with vendors and employment agencies to run a Supported Employment Program. We’ve also created many company-wide trainings, including an Accessibility 101, which is now also available externally. We’ve made a lot of progress in this space, but it’s a journey and we know that there is so much more to be done.

SMG: What are the key elements for disability inclusion to be successful?

Ms. Lay-Flurrie: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, disability is a strength! When you recognize that people with disabilities are the experts, having them in your workforce simply makes products better. Creating this type of culture involves many factors, but I think it comes down to a few key things:

First and foremost, hire talent with disabilities. Ensure that recruiters have undergone disability etiquette training and understand how to post jobs in an accessible manner. Conduct inclusive interviews that allow all candidates to bring their A game. Once again, our Autism Hiring Program is a great example of this. We have designed a non-traditional interview process that involves a 5-day academy to really highlight skills that a traditional interview process might miss.
Accommodations are another key piece. Once you get folks on board, make sure to have a defined and easy process in place for providing reasonable accommodations to ensure that all employees are as productive in their jobs as possible to ensure career advancement.
Lastly, I’ve really seen how the disability community can come together in a grassroots way and make things happen. Create opportunities for employees with disabilities to connect and feel empowered, and there is no limit to what they can accomplish.

SMG: What advice would you give other corporate leaders who want to advance disability inclusion? How can they start?

Ms. Lay-Flurrie: I get this question a lot, and it’s a good one. First of all, you don’t have to do this alone and there are TONS of resources out there to help you get started. One resource that we’ve found particularly helpful is the Disability Equality Index (DEI), which was created to help businesses advance their disability inclusion policies. The DEI provides a confidential opportunity to evaluate disability inclusion policies and a benchmark to identify areas of improvement. It’s a great tool that’s used by 80+ companies, including Microsoft. Once you understand where you need to focus, consider taking the approach of ‘crawl, walk, and then run.’ Start slowly, identify the right roles and opportunities for people, and then build on that. We’ve also started to document our learnings, so have a look at our Disability Inclusion Sway to learn more about what we’ve been up to and to access resources that can help you get started.

Journey Mapping for Customers with Disabilities

March 26, 2018

Ideally, the journey people with disabilities take to become loyal customers would be a straight, short route: See the product. Check for Accessibility Features. Buy your product. Use your product. Tell Friends. Repeat.

The reality is that this journey is filled with tire kicking and sightseeing with stops, peer endorsements, checking pricing, and confirming that the product or service lives up to its reputation. In all these moments, people with disabilities and their friends need to be convinced to select your brand over one of your competitors.

There is very little data on the disability market, but that should not impede the ability of brands to map the customer with a disability’s journey. Understanding how customers interact with your brand will reveal how your products and services fit into their lives, schedules, goals, and aspirations.

Here are five steps your team can take to start journey mapping:

1. Find out how what you provide aligns with what your customer needs

During this step, it’s really important to identify your business goals. This approach requires discipline, cross-functional support, commitment from C-Suite executives and senior leaders, staff and a budget. This moves disability inclusion from compliance to journey mapping. Any marketing and communication you deliver during the customer journey should focus on helping your brand reach those goals while also providing a solution for the consumer.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that your customers’ goals might be different from yours. For example, you’re a health insurance provider and your priority is to provide members with disabilities accessible transportation for medical appointments. While transportation is provided, a 30-minute trip can take up to 3 hours due to frequent stops and picking up other passengers. That’s too long for a person with chronic pain to be seated and their top priority is getting to the appointment as quickly as possible. Consider how your marketing and communication strategies can help your customers reach their goals while also getting you closer to yours.

2. Identify all of the communication touchpoints in your customer’s journey

When do you traditionally communicate or engage with customers with disabilities? If your company does not make a list of these moments and group them based on when they can potentially happen during the journey: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase. Now find communication touchpoints you may have missed. Track what actions and interactions between your brand and customers with disabilities, and track what happens just before and after each of the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages.

For example, you might decide that a major moment in your purchase stage is when your brand has an exhibition booth at a conference or consumer expo. Not only do you want to provide communication before the event to create anticipation, but also when consumers with disabilities and their family come to the booth and interact with your team. Ensure that when they arrive you have information in alternate formats (i.e. large print), and that all activities within the booth are accessible.

Looking for all these touchpoints can quickly bog your team down in a lot of details and micro-interactions. To avoid that, prioritize these micro-moments that help you achieve your business goals.

3. Recognize pain points and moments of delight

How might your customers feel at the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages as they attempt to achieve their goals? For example, could your customers be happy that your website is 508 compliant, but frustrated if they call customer service and they have a sub-par experience.

Find the moments where your customers with disabilities might have negative experiences. Who on your team is involved in those touchpoints? Your web designers? Your marketing team? Your customer service team? Which team members can you enlist to collaborate and improve the situation?

Say a customer with a disability likes how your online ad describes the accessible features of a product. But when they go to your store, salespeople are completely clueless about how the product would be used by someone with a specific disability. That’s an opportunity for your copywriters and customer-facing staff to better align their understanding, language and presentation.

4. Experience the customer journey with a person with a disability

Imagining how your customers with disabilities might feel during their journey is valuable, and experiencing it alongside them can uncover much-needed insights. Usability testing or mystery shopping are extremely effective ways to understand what customers with disabilities experience. You may opt to sit with a consumer as they experience your website, or tag along with them in a brick and mortar store. Afterwards, share what you observed after they share about the touchpoints and their experience. What worked well? Did customer service staff help you complete your journey? What was missing? Do this exercise with your competitors as well, and experience the journey they’ve created. Then ask all of the same questions.

5. Visualize your customer journey map

Beyond just writing down the customer journey and communications touchpoints of customers with disabilities and their family members, actually create a visual map of them. Simply write each of your touchpoints down on individual sticky notes or papers, then pin them in order to a wall.

By doing this exercise, you’re helping your team take a bird’s eye view of the entire customer journey for people with disabilities. Once you’ve organized your key learnings, share these observations with your Employee Resource Group (ERG) for people with disabilities, market research or a Disability Advisory Council. With their lived experience, and the input of your team, organize their thoughts and collaboratively brainstorm new ideas for changing or adding to your communication at each of these touchpoints.

Determine how the new communication touchpoints will improve the customer journey, then implement and test them. If you’re wrong, go back to your journey map, reassess and improve.

While journey mapping can be laborious, it is a worthwhile investment to impact your business. People with disabilities are often viewed through the lens of compliance, and journey mapping for this segment elevates understanding and creates communication touchpoints that can be integrated into your brand’s overall strategy.

Zappos is Getting Disability Inclusion Right

March 20, 2018

My new favorite brand is Zappos. Not only because they’re a client of SMG (which I’m very proud of), but because their culture is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The company not only builds connections and camaraderie among employees, but they are very intentional about connecting and providing an over-the-top experience for customers.

Prior to my first visit, I read Delivering Happiness, by CEO Tony Hseih (pronounced “shay”). This isn’t a typical corporate handbook, laden with business jargon, but Tony’s life story tracking his journey from Northern California, to Harvard, to starting/selling a company to Microsoft, to investing in and leading Zappos. He wanted to create a culture where people actually enjoyed coming to work, and customers were WOWed by their experience. In fact, in the lobby you’ll see these words mounted to the wall: “Zappos is a service company that just happens to sell _____________.” Since they’re constantly evolving and expanding product categories, they don’t just sell shoes.

As the daughter of a former IBMer, hired in the 60s through the early 90s, I saw my Dad wear the uniform – blue suits and white shirts. At Zappos, you won’t see the formality of a cookie-cutter corporate environment. In fact, at the recent all-hands meeting I attended, Tony rocked jeans, a hoodie, and a Mohawk. We swayed and sang as a few employees kicked off the meeting with hip hop dance and Bruno Mars. Yes, this is the norm for a Zappos meeting.

During the all-hands an update was given on Zappos Adaptive, the new category of products that provides independence and function, without compromising style for people with disabilities. This project is amazing for a number of reasons, and at its essence Zappos saw a need and created a solution. Compliance wasn’t the driver and they didn’t merely create a campaign around the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act or National Disability Employment Awareness Month. They genuinely and authentically have provided a platform of disability inclusion throughout the company. This creates a win-win for customers, vendors and Zappos.
I’ve observed a few things about Zappos approach to disability inclusion which can be replicated within your organization.

Sell the Problem Your Brand Solves, Not the Product
Zappos Adaptive was hatched after a grandmother with an autistic grandson called the customer service center looking for shoes that would provide him with ease and independence when dressing. By focusing on the solution, assessing existing vendors, and developing vendor engagements with new ones, like Billy Footwear, Zappos is positioned to make a real impact in the lives of customers with disabilities, and that make products for them.
Customer Service is the Difference
Zappos is a customer service company that happens to sell apparel. They’ve integrated disability inclusion within customer service, which is important because the company has built its brand on service and the customer experience. I’ve long said that the business will take care of itself if the people with disabilities interact with staff that understand their needs.
Yes, And…
The culture within Zappos is one of ‘yes, and…’ instead of a ‘yes, but…’. When internal barriers surface, the team determines how to overcome them, rather than let them impede progress. What I’ve observed is that the team determines how it can advance a market growth opportunity, rather than become entangled by a litany of reasons why they can’t move forward. Not only does Zappos Adaptive have executive support, but it also has a dedicated team to ensure business goals are met.
Enlist Support
I’ve participated in meetings with team leads from various functions to address how their department can be engaged with the Zappos Adaptive team. Without the support and engagement of leaders throughout the enterprise, it would be impossible for Zappos Adaptive to have a chance within the company

Your organization can implement any of these observations by adopting a ‘yes, and’ mindset. If you’d like to learn how to move your organization from knowing they should target, serve and employ people with disabilities, to actually doing it, contact us to schedule a discovery call.

Here’s to your success!

Carmen Daniels Jones
President and CEO of Solutions Marketing Group