Cultivator Profile: A Story of Personal Inspiration Sparking Professional Innovation
Introducing Randy Lewis
Today, we know Randy Lewis as an award-winning author, a disability employment advocate, the founder of the ‘No Greatness Without Goodness’ Disability Initiative, and a TEDx speaker. But before these distinctions, Randy was a concerned father to a son with autism and a courageous Cultivator at America’s largest drugstore chain willing to bet his career on the creation of a workplace that did not sacrifice productivity for inclusivity.
In 1992, Randy Lewis was promoted to divisional Vice President in the Logistics and Planning division of Walgreens and tasked with orchestrating its growth as its retail presence quadrupled. While his corporate team was growing, his own family grew up - including Austin, his son with severe autism.
Meet Austin
Austin, now 30, spoke his first words at age 10. Experts told Randy his son may never function independently. As with many disabled people, society, and occasionally his father, underestimated Austin and relegated him to a life of “otherhood.”
Yet, Randy watched as his son continually demonstrated that his disability did not equate to incapability. Now, Austin drives himself each morning to his full-time job. He employs a mostly wordless communication style based on reading facial expressions and detecting voice tonal changes to understand others’ emotions. Time spent with Austin reveals a compassionate, charming, capable young man who sometimes laughs while others cry and cries while others laugh.
Still, Randy spent sleepless nights troubled by what the future might hold for Austin and other people with disabilities. Employment opens the doors for financial independence, security, and relationships, Randy thought, so for people with disabilities who face hiring biases, do those doors stay perpetually closed?
The Idea
Randy witnessed the barriers people with disabilities face during the employment process from application completion to process learning. The largest obstacle, Randy observed, is the fallacy that disabled people cannot perform the job to the same standards, therefore, making employing people with disabilities a good idea - only if you can afford it. However, these accepted truths seemed incongruous with the capabilities and skills Austin exhibited. Randy’s personal inspiration sparked professional innovation.
The first iteration of Randy’s now globally-supported hiring initiative involved utilizing outside contractors to employ disabled workers for custodial work in a Walgreens distribution center. The ostensible success of this plan was exposed during an on-site visit when non-disabled employees were quick to identify as “not one of them”. Their integration was superficial and their work was ancillary. Randy contemplated, is true assimilation of disabled people into the workforce possible without changing expectations? The answer lied in a new hire at Walgreens, Chuck.
Changing the Systems
Chuck, a man born with Aspergers, was hired in a Pennsylvania distribution center as an assembly line worker. He demonstrated timeliness, perfect attendance, and a positive demeanor. He also had unmatchable dance skills. Every time a purple tote (Chuck’s favorite color) passed by the conveyor belt, Chuck would squeal with glee and break out into dance. His coworkers stood loyally behind him and occasionally danced alongside him. Management knew that Chuck’s behavior did more good for morale than harm for productivity. Spurred by Austin and Chuck’s success stories, Randy cultivated a plan.
Instead of changing expectations, change the systems. Randy sought to design a hiring program to integrate people with disabilities into the workforce. He was clear - this was not charity, this was an opportunity to do the same work, to the same standards for the same pay. If successful, Walgreens would be the first company in the world to execute a large-scale diversity initiative at a mission-critical site.
The new, diverse workforce would need a new, dynamic distribution center. In 2007, Randy and his team unveiled a first-of-its-kind center in Anderson, South Carolina. The building was outfitted with mechanisms and technology designed to enable a large population of people with disabilities to do the job to company standards. In addition to the brick and mortar, Walgreens laid down a strict target - ⅓ of the new center’s workforce must be individuals with physical or cognitive disabilities. In June, Walgreens opened applications and by July thousands of disabled individuals from all over the country applied for the opportunity to be seen for their capabilities.
Findings That Speak for Themselves
In a task that most assumed would involve lowering the bar, Walgreens raised industry standards. To this day, the Anderson center is the most productive center in Walgreens history. In conjunction with Anderson University, Walgreens published the results of a study conducted across their distribution centers showing that employees with and without disabilities were equally productive. Furthermore, individuals who identified as disabled showed a stricter adherence to safety standards, less absenteeism, and better retention rates. But perhaps the largest impact of the hiring initiative was the cultural transformation. The Anderson center was characterized by teamwork, dedication, motivation, active listening, and empathy. Employees, who were treated as individuals, were aligned in their mission to support one another’s success to achieve their shared goals. As Randy refers to it, they captured lightning in a bottle.
But that lightning did not stay bottled for long. Randy and his team rolled out the hiring program across all 20 Walgreen distribution centers and eventually to Walgreen’s enormous retail network. By 2009, the Anderson distribution center blueprint was replicated in centers across the country. In believing the work was too crucial to keep in-house, Randy invited competitors from all industries to learn the Anderson inclusivity model, deemed the ‘gold standard of disability employment’ by the National Governors’ Association.
A cornerstone of the model is what Randy calls ATP or ‘Ask The Person’. Under ATP, instead of assuming people’s abilities, or lack thereof, hiring managers now ask the person directly how they would handle various circumstances. Disabled individuals spend a lifetime navigating the challenges their disabilities present with creativity and tenacity. Often, these adaptations translate to the workplace but seldom are disabled people given the chance.
Justice for All
Randy began with a goal of diversifying a workforce but found that he was the one who was most changed. In breaking down the invisible hiring walls built around corporations, Randy has found himself standing on even ground where people are united by their strengths and weaknesses not divided by their abilities. Following Randy’s lead, corporations on several continents have implemented a version of the Anderson model of inclusive hiring.
For Randy, being an advocate for disabled people was never about charity, it was about justice. Justice for Austin, Chuck, and every individual who has faced hiring discrimination based on physical or cognitive disabilities. That’s a Cultivator worth sharing.
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