Micheal C. Whitehill
McCrone, Inc.

Top three reasons for hiring persons with disabilities are a relatively unlimited job pool, a 
resource that is largely untapped particularly in our Maryland area.   A second reason is 
that the desire to work and the job skills are generally compatible with our needs.  And 
the third reason would be that to hire someone with disabilities would be that the types of 
jobs that we are seeing in the future are more likely to be suited to training and retrofits 
we'll see coming through division of rehabilitative services.

Hiring persons with disabilities is the very reason we got into telecommuting in the first 
place.  We have a very, very qualified employee who was trained by a division of 
rehabilitative services in computer aided drafting.  This individual was a paraplegic and 
came to our work every single day on time, rain or shine in his own vehicle, however, it 
became inconvenient over the course of time because of some progressive issues with his 
vehicle and his health that he spent more time at home. We therefore developed a 
mechanism within the corporation to permit him to do the majority of his work off 
premises.  Basically, that experience with that employee set up in our entire corporation a 
methodology to establish what we now call virtual  team where employees with or 
without disabilities had access to telework and that's doing several things for us 
immediately.  It reduced our physical plant need because we don't have to provide 
physical space for those employees on premises and it gave us a work pool that we never 
would have got had we not started telework for this disabled individual. That additional 
services comes from the fact that the majority of the well trained people we were 
recruiting did not want to leave their existing employers for money or signing bonuses 
they did want to move for a change in their lifestyle and telework is a significant lifestyle 
change for those people with appropriate behaviors.

The same issues that arose for us in hiring persons with disabilities virtually followed 
along with the development of an off premise or virtual design teams.  The person with a 
disability was at first had to integrate himself immediately into our workforce 
community, the fact was that he was diligent and in some cases too diligent, which made 
him the object of some concern for employees who weren't performing as well.  Needless 
to say we have subsequently been able to chortle against this one individual using him as 
a benchmark.  The second thing with telecommuting, the hardship we found there was if 
your going to do it for him because he has a disability why not do it for me and I don't 
have a disability and I've been working with you for a longer period of time.  Sort of a 
why me type of behavior. We simply developed a corporate strategy that indicated that 
this is a much likely privilege, to drive in Maryland, it's a privilege to work in a 
telecommuting environment and it's not a right and we therefore established a series of 
guidelines and a series of behaviors so that individuals who were selected to work either 
remotely or who are hired to work remotely had adequate behaviors and relatively low 
social needs so that they didn't need the office environment constantly to survive.

The difficulty of convincing supervisors to accept applicants with disabilities is a 
somewhat easier issue than it was perhaps four or five years ago because there aren't that 
many candidates out there and what we find is that the variety of mechanisms where by 
we come in contact with people with appropriate skill sets produces a very limited worker 
pool and therefore the more common complaint is why can't you find me somebody to 
help rather than this person isn't qualified or I don't like this person because I am 
assuming that the disability will cost us something in the end.  So working that issue full 
circle, the employer when I look at my project manager I ask them very simply when 
they start to look at potential employees where else are you going to find them? and they 
are beginning to realize that employees that want to work aren't growing on any trees 
they grow in our company.

We generally cross train all employees in all of our aspects of business, civil engineering, 
surveying and so forth so that any one individual has no ceiling and no immediate 
supervisor that he has to necessarily find away around or through in order to work 
himself up.  So by knocking the corporate structure ladder on it's side so to speak all 
employees are allowed to percolate upward if that can happen in such a way that their 
merits as employees can be measured not against the bias or the longevity of some 
supervisor.  So really the best way we found was simply to lay the structure on its side 
and let individuals proceed on the basis of performance.  A second thing particularly with 
the employment of persons with disabilities the opportunities to grow and receive the 
same educational benefits, for us to guarantee the same opportunities for training, the 
same opportunities for varied work so they are not pigeon holed into sort of sub 
automation jobs allows them to proceed at the same level as everyone else.  The second 
thing is to show no preference for the person with disability over the person with ability 
of the same job ability simply because that is a reverse preference if you will is 
debilitating to their worker relationship in house.