Manpower, Inc., Millie Hewett
With Manpower hiring people with disabilities is a wonderful labor pool that is untapped.  
It also gives us highly motivated workers that bring essential skills to the job and the time 
and attendance issues we've found with workers with disabilities are not an issue.

I think one of the impacts for hiring people with disabilities and it's the primary area is to 
be considered a disability friendly business.  I think that makes a big difference in the 
community as well as it's a wonderful opportunity to give back to the community by 
hiring people that typically are an untapped resource with the numbers out there that are 
unemployed or underemployed.

One thing on the advancement of people with disabilities is it has to be a corporate 
initiative or a corporate value.  It's one thing to employ people with disabilities but we see 
a lot of underemployment and no advancement and I think some of the things Manpower 
has done that's unique is for example our global learning center where people can do at 
home study over the internet whether it be for soft skill enhancement, Microsoft suite 
product enhancement or certification and giving people additional skills that will make 
them more marketable.  The more marketable they are the more compensation they will 
make.

Recruiting candidates with disabilities, you have to network and you have to network 
with organizations that actually are in the community with people with disabilities, such 
as your department of rehabilitative services, VCU's RRTC program.  You have to 
network and you have to network in the communities because those are the resources 
where the candidates will come from.

One of the things when you are dealing with people with disabilities, I think we spend a 
lot of time talking about "it's the right thing to do" and one of the things that I think we 
need to realize is we need to move beyond the right thing to do. As a private corporation, 
as a fortune 500 company,  it's a good return on your investment.  The average 
accommodation is less than $200 and when you look at that for getting some body 
qualified, time and attendance isn't an issue that is a pretty good recruiting factor and 
pretty good return on your investment and I think that is how most private companies 
look at the hiring, what is the return on investment.