Business to Business Interview : K. Bradly (McDonalds)

Vicki Brooke: What are some of the business reasons for hiring people with disabilities?

K. Bradley: Some of the major business reasons for hiring people with disabilities I guess 
makes perfect business sense, we're talking about a population of 40 to 56 million people, 
these are all consumers.  And beyond them as consumers there is the ripple effect.  You 
have friends, you have their voc rehab counselors, their teachers, and their relatives and 
these are all consumers.  Why in the world would any corporation want to leave any of 
those dollars on the table?  So not only do we market to people with disabilities but we 
feel that it is important to hire people with disabilities because our consumers can come 
and see the people like them, or people like someone they know working for us and they 
view us as a good corporate neighbor and thus a good place to come and eat.

Vicki Brooke: What impacts have hiring people with disabilities had on your business?

K. Bradley: Well I believe the impact on our business in hiring people with disabilities 
has been nothing but positive.  Again we wouldn't want to leave any of the dollars on the 
table; we wouldn't want to ignore any part of the population when we're looking to hire 
good people.  The quick service restaurant industry is somewhat notorious for having a 
lot of turnover, so for us to ignore any part of the population as we are recruiting people 
to work as crew at out McDonalds restaurants would not make good business sense.

Vicki Brooke: What are some of the challenges you have face in terms of hiring people 
with disabilities?

K. Bradley: The challenges that we have perhaps faced in terms of hiring people with 
disabilities, actually happened so long ago it's almost hard to know what they were 
because this is something McDonalds has done long before there was an ADA, long 
before there was a Rehab act.  It's just part of the McDonald's culture and part of the 
thinking and way of operation of our founder Ray Crocks to reach out to the community 
and to hire people from the community.  Some initial challenges may have been the view 
that the buying public may have had if they see someone who is differently abled 
working at the restaurant but quite frankly that hasn't been a major concern for us and has 
actually turned into a very positive for us.  There's still going to be challenges out there.  
It's a human business.  There may be some of our crew that may be uncomfortable 
working with a disability.  There may be customers that are uncomfortable seeing a 
person with a disability either serving them or working at the restaurant.  But we try to 
provide training for our crew and for our managers to work with people who are different 
from them and again for the most part our customers have been very happy with our track 
record.

Vicki Brooke:  What advise would you give to a company that was having trouble getting 
their front line supervisors and managers to hire people with disabilities?

K. Bradley: I think the main piece of advise I could give a company that had a supervisor 
or a hiring manager that was a little reticent in terms of hiring a person with a disability 
first of all is, just try it.  My experience has been and the experience of many people that 
I've spoken to have been if you try it chances are you'll meet great successes and it's 
something that you'll return to and do it again.  It's not painful; it's not difficult as a 
matter of fact there are times when there are added benefits to hiring a person with a 
disability.  At some of our restaurants we have had people who come with job coaches 
and the job coaches work side by side with the client until they can wean off of the job 
and the client can do the job on their own.  We've actually had some folks that have said I 
wish I could get a job coach for other members of my crew.  I had a situation where we 
had some high school kids with disabilities working in a summer program and the school 
district actually gave them transportation to the work site.  So again you now have an 
employee that has a good way to get to work, a reliable source of transportation, so that 
issue goes away for you.  So again my piece of advice would be just simply try it.  You'll 
be pleasantly surprised and in many cases there are some side benefits.

Vicki Brooke: What type of career advancement opportunities does McDonalds have for 
people with disabilities? 

K. Bradley: McDonalds provides career advancement opportunities for all of our 
employees pretty equally.  We don't have separate programs for advancement for our 
employees with disabilities.  It goes back to our culture of treating all of our employees 
with dignity and respect.  We have a saying at McDonalds "we value you, your growth 
and your contributions" and we mean that across the board whether it's a 16-year-old 
crew person or a 30-year employee.  So advancement opportunities are the same for 
everyone at the company who's willing to put in the time, put in the effort, take advantage 
of the training, and really just grow with us.

Vicki Brooke: How do you recruit people with disabilities?

K. Bradley: Recruitment of people with disabilities is sometimes more challenging than it 
really should be.  McDonalds and a lot of companies are more than willing to hire people 
with disabilities and I think what's happened in the past is our recruiters would go out and 
interact with voc rehab agencies and community based organizations that worked with 
this population.  Unfortunately as the economy has slowed down a little bit and 
companies have redirected their resources to really operating the business we're relying 
more on the disability population and the folks that serve people with disabilities to come 
to us.  We have jobs but we need for the disability community and the agencies to meet 
us half way.  So recruitment has changed a little bit.  We just have to meet half way, 
businesses willing to hire and to retain and to promote but we need the disability 
community to be a little more active in terms of coming to us.