How Disability Charities Are Working To Solve The U.S. Labor Shortage

The United States currently finds itself in the grips of a labor shortage in key areas like retail and manufacturing as the after-effects of the Covid-inspired “Great Resignation” continue to be felt.

With yesterday’s Thanksgiving celebrations marking the start of the holiday season which continues today with one of the busiest shopping days of the year in the shape of Black Friday – those sectors most impacted by the national labor shortage already have plans in place for seasonal hiring.

Major brands like Amazon and Target announced several weeks ago their intention to hire an extra 150,000 and 100,000 seasonal workers respectively but seasonal hiring isn’t always as straightforward as it seems.

Many Americans simply don’t feel the need to take on extra work right now, whilst the long unsociable hours and tiring physical work often associated with seasonal roles can be unappealing.

In a recent commentary on the country’s current labor shortage, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged employers to “increase their hiring pools by removing barriers to entering the workforce.”

People with disabilities represent perhaps the largest minority group facing such barriers – with America’s current disability employment gap hovering at a disappointing 44.6%.

So, while the opportunity to address a sizable portion of the ongoing labor shortage is intuitively crystal clear – questions remain around how best to meaningfully galvanize and upskill people with disabilities into gainful employment.

On the job

Here, the charity sector plays a far more direct role than one might imagine.

More often than not, people associate the work non-profits perform around disability employment as solely revolving around advice and training on topics like interview preparation and assistive technology.

Where direct employment is concerned, thoughts can be drawn towards the unsavory, segregating and discriminatory practices of “sheltered workshops” where people with disabilities get paid sub-minimum wage to carry out menial tasks.

Fortunately, sheltered workshops are rapidly being phased out across the country but the reality is that the non-profit sector has been supplying the disability community with meaningful employment for many decades.

The AbilityOne program dates back to the 1930s and uses the purchasing power of the federal government to buy products and services directly from community-based participating agencies for which people with disabilities and veterans comprise a large portion of the workforce.

The Austin Lighthouse for the Blind, is one such participant, supplying integrated warehousing and logistics solutions for the U.S. Department of Defense and employs over 400 people – more than half of whom are legally blind.

Sadly, the unemployment rate for the visually impaired in the U.S. stands at around 70%. This is due, in part, to a combination of negative attitudes amongst employers and a dearth of assistive technology that can cover entire workflows from start to finish.

Tech levels up

The Austin Lighthouse is determined to turn this on its head and demonstrate that by diligently choosing state-of-the art highly accessible technology – tech can be the great leveler and transform a predominantly disabled workforce into a well-oiled competitive machine.

Some of these core technologies include Vocollect voice-picking devices and RF guns with TalkBack screen reading and magnification capabilities.

Since 2020, the Lighthouse has been routinely deploying specialist robots to cart products between the warehouse’s receiving and shipping areas.

Much of the warehouse’s technology is anchored and integrated through software from Manhattan Associates known as Manhattan SCALE which has capabilities across warehousing, logistics, retail, labor, trading partner, transportation, yard management and supply chain analytics.

Another game-changer for the Lighthouse has been a recent switch over away from an on-premise deployment to a cloud-based version of SCALE – thereby rendering it accessible to key assistive technology software for the visually impaired such as the JAWS screen reader and ZoomText.

Though many of the visually impaired workers stay om at the Lighthouse for several years – the ultimate aim is to upskill them through real-world on-the -job experience and software accreditation ranging from mainstream products like Microsoft Office to more advanced technologies like Manhattan SCALE – allowing them to develop their careers and explore opportunities at other organizations.

“We've had 15 employees in the last year get hired at companies outside of the Lighthouse based on the training they’ve received here, says Raelene Gomes, an IT Service Delivery Manager, for OKIN Process the Lighthouse’s IT partner.

She continues, “What we have here is an untapped talent pool and workforce that people aren't focusing on or thinking about, whether that's out of fear, or just a lack of understanding. These days, there’s so much in the news about organizations trying to find workers and there’s this whole group of people wanting to work who just need someone to train them and take a chance on them.”

Envision is the largest service provider of employment for individuals with sight loss in the U.S. – manufacturing safety vests and Award Certificate Binders for the U.S. military, as well as maintaining call center and retail operations.

Envision, which has been assisting visually impaired Americans since 1933, is a huge advocate for using in-house business operations as a means of revenue generation for the charity and to upskill the population it serves.

So much so, that the non-profit acquired the Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind in 2018 in a merger intended to ramp up the charitable concern’s commercial potential.

Aside from plugging labor shortages, there is another important aspect of having a predominantly disabled workforce that is not spoken about anywhere near as much as it should be.

Many major organizations possess merely a handful of disabled employees with different conditions across disparate geographical locations. Meaningful, joined-up and consistent feedback related to accessibility can be difficult to gain.

By partnering with an organization like the Austin Lighthouse – the likes of Manhattan Associates can rapidly accrue large-scale accessibility insights, update issues and roll these learnings into future products via an element of co-design.

Just as importantly, understanding a diversity of working styles and needs is vital for the workforce overall, not just disabled people.

Logistics and manufacturing are ideal testing grounds for this as they are already sectors inextricably tied to new and emerging technologies like robotics, automation and machine learning.

It’s often stated that, if you can solve problems for disabled people as the most extreme use case, you’ve instantly solved problems for everybody else too.

With innovative, life-changing work efficiency tools currently bursting onto the scene at breakneck speed – that’s something to be welcomed now and in the future.