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26: Yves Veulliet, Global Disability & Inclusion Leader IBM
Shownotes:
This week on the The Elephant in the Room podcast I spoke with Yves Veulliet, Global Disability & Inclusion Leader at IBM. In this episode he talks about his book ‘Turning Point – The fall and rise’, the psychological consequences of acquiring a disability and its impact on his personal and professional life and strategies to make other people including employers, disability confident.
👉🏾 We also spoke about the biggest challenges facing people with disabilities in the workplace
👉🏾 What businesses can do to tackle underrepresentation
👉🏾 How organisations can build an inclusive culture by taking into consideration the three a's: accessibility, adjustment and attitude;
👉🏾 Not being a hero;
👉🏾 The importance of embracing failure;
👉🏾 His purpose and things he is proud of;
Follow the show on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts
Memorable passages from the podcast
👉🏾 So I live in Belgium and if you have a screen in front of you, if you type, the date of 12th of July 1987 on your favourite search engine, most likely you will not find any major event in the world for the vast majority of people. That day was just another day in their life. But for me, it was a little bit different. I was 21 at that time and I lived in Belgium and for once the weather was great, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. And so I decided to go for a ride with my motorcycle and I really had a great time. And all of a sudden there were gravels on the road and the back wheel of my motorcycle slipped on them. And I fell down into a kind of a gully and I damaged my spinal cord. And as a result of this accident, I became a wheelchair user. As you can imagine, when you acquire a disability as a result of an accident, you lose 90% of your self-confidence because you need to reinvent your identity.
👉🏾 Basically, I would say that accepting your new situation is a journey. You go through a very different set of emotions, like frustration, denial, passivity, depression and after all these negative moments, you can start to look at possibility versus limitations. Some people may get stuck for the rest of their life at that depression stage. In other words, they will remain within their comfort zone, and a wheelchair user will be interacting with other wheelchair users or you will live outside of the normal society I would say. And others like myself took another option, made a different choice, like trying to find a way to be the actor of my own life and trying to find a job and getting married and have kids, you know, all the things that maybe sound normal or basics for the vast majority of people. That are not so easy when you acquire a disability or when you live with a disability.
👉🏾 Actually this book, I wrote this book because it corresponded to me. I mean, when you acquire a disability, you go through a different set of emotions and people around you, your family or friends are kind of lost because one day, especially when you spend a lot of time may be in the hospitals or rehabilitation centre, I spent eight months in these institutions. And when your parents come to visit you and your friends, you know, one day you welcome them with a big smile and the day after you want to cry or you don't want to see them, you know. So they don't understand what's going on, right? So the main purpose when I wrote this book was to more to make people understand the different emotions that we go through and why our emotions may be so different, one day from the other. This kind of book you cannot write it when you're still yourself in this journey, you need to have some experience, need to have a certain level of maturity in your own personal disability inclusion journey, to be able to have enough distance to be able to write this book. So basically the idea of this book was to really explain the different set of emotions, and also make people comfortable saying don't feel guilty or don't feel uncomfortable if the one you love is having all these emotions. It's part of the journey.
👉🏾 There is no other option you must and then only when people have acquired a certain level of self-trust. Then you can start building a new relationship with that person and be able to tangibly help them. Because basically, even if you have the best family around you, the best people. The person living with the disability must make the first step. It's my own decision whether I want to play an active role in the society where I live. Things, may be different for people but for people who acquired a physical disability, I would say that allow them to have a certain level of independence, intellectual autonomy. These decisions must be taken by the persons themselves and then only then, can the people around them can help them.
👉🏾 Basically there are three major obstacles. One is accessibility. The level of accessibility in many countries, not to say in most countries is very low. Now there are different reasons for that. One of the reasons is the lack of awareness that the governments or institutions who make their environmental workplace and the infrastructures in general, the society in general as accessible as possible.
The second reason I would say is more linked to the person themselves, as I said. If you don't feel confident enough to be the actor over your own life. It's extremely difficult to be comfortable enough to get out of your comfort zone and being confronted to accessibility obstacle or attitude obstacles.
👉🏾 And this is really linking to the last obstacle that we mentioned accessibility, personal issues and other people's attitudes. The way people look at you may be difficult to bear. And so basically I would say that depending on where you are in your personal journey, these obstacles would be major or minor. Like for instance, when you start acquiring a certain confidence in your ability to play an active role in your own life, you will be able to deal with accessibility issues.
You will rely on your friends and the institutions, the family, the world of education to help you getting those skills you need to be able to find a job, et cetera. But psychologically speaking, you need to be confident and you need to understand that you cannot control everything. You can control what you do, what you say, but you cannot control what people think of you. And this is important because some people can waste their whole lifetime trying to please others you must be yourself regardless of what others think.
👉🏾 Definitely. Absolutely as I say, when you acquire a disability, you lose much of your self-confidence. And so it's quite tempting to expect everything from others. You will expect the institution, the government to provide you with some financial support, you would expect the world of education to provide you with the skills you need. You will expect your family to be able to help you, and this is important. But this is not enough you also have to make your own choice. You also have to get out of your comfort zone. Take challenges, accept failures. When I started to find a job, I cannot tell you how many CV's I sent and how many few answers I received right? And this is where I begin. You must accept that all coins have two sides. And one is success, one is failure and you'll learn much more from failures than from success. Right? So every time I was said politely, when I was said something, I'm sorry but your skills are not valued, et cetera. I knew that it was not so much my skills it's more my disability.
👉🏾 And that comes to the debate about mentioning your disability on a resume or not. It's strongly pushing for making things visible, making my disability visible on my resume is something that conveys a message. It conveys the message that I'm confident with my status. Because if you don't do so, people who will welcome you either virtually, or physically would be surprised to see you using a wheelchair. So it will kind of make a bad start for the conversation because the nature of the conversation will be polluted by this bad surprise for the person welcoming you. Whereas if you mentioned the disability I would say that 18 doors out of 20, maybe closed, but the two doors that remain open are true opportunities, true chances because the person knows why. Having said that you must, and I insist you must mention your disability in your resume, but you must do it in a smart way. I mean, do not put it on top of your CV in red. You know, this is not smart. This is not efficient. What I did on my CV is just, I mentioned it as a fact. As the result of a motorcycle accident occurring in 1987, I became a wheelchair user, Period. That's enough. You don't need to say anything else. That's a fact, you know, I'm a man, I am white and I am using a wheelchair, It’s part my identity. It's not my entire identity. I don't relate only to the fact that I use a wheelchair, but I also use a wheelchair it's part of who I am, whether I like it or not. And so it's part of who I am so there is no reason to hide.
👉🏾 This is absolutely true. And this is key really because there's not only a lack of awareness. It's also a cultural issue. What I mean by that, you may be familiar with the three traditional models around disability that are a social model, charity model, as well as a medical model right? But this is not enough, this is not enough from a corporate perspective to be better at including people with disabilities in your workforce. What I mean by that is that, there is one major shift, that must be addressed from a personal and business perspective.
👉🏾 Disability, regardless of what type of disability you refer to, whether invisible disability, physical conditions, cognitive condition, whatever. Stop looking at it from an individual perspective and look at it from an environmental perspective. What I mean by that is if I am a manager or an employer, the only question I should ask myself is, what can I do to make my environment accessible for that person to be as productive as anybody else in the workplace? If I think about it from an environmental perspective, I will succeed in my disability inclusion policy because I will have the right mindset.
👉🏾 I will not think, Hmm I'm not going to hire that person who's using the wheelchair because I don't have accessible restroom because I don't have elevators, I don't have enough space for that person for more around, this is not true. The only question I should ask myself as an employer is what can I do to make my restroom accessible, to make my workplace accessible, to make sure that that person will have enough freedom room to move around in the office.That's as simple as that.
And you know, people will object saying it might cost money, et cetera, which is true. But the vast majority of people with disabilities would not need major investment in terms of accommodation or adjustment.
👉🏾 And managers or employees would overthink that a universal design perspective where wheelchair will go, anyone can go. And a really concrete example, automatic door openers are very useful for people using the wheelchair, right? Because especially when you have a very heavy door to push, it's not easy when you use a wheelchair to do so. Or people having a temporary physical limitation, or if a woman is pregnant, it would be also very useful to have this kind of facility in the workplace. When you feel for beyond disability and, if you think authentic inclusion. That will be much more impactful. So my recommendation to the business is, think about disability from an environmental issue. Stop thinking about it from a personal perspective.
👉🏾 And second, if you think about preparing your workplace to be disability inclusive, always think about the three A's. The three A's standing for accessibility, adjustment or accommodation and attitude. The first two ones accessibility and accommodation is really about, as I said, what can I do to make my workplace both physically and digitally accessible to most people in my team. So the first two ones are maybe complex to put in place because they requires some logistics, and financial investment, but basically, these are possible. Whereas the attitude, the third is the attitude, it's much more difficult to tackle and will require much more patience, much more strategy to really change the mindset of people. It may take decades honestly and frankly, some people will never change. Some people would always be uncomfortable with differences in general, including disability. And so you will not change that. But this is a very small portion of people. The vast majority of people will not feel comfortable because they are afraid of the unknown, and this is perfectly natural.
👉🏾 So we need to confront that, we need to get people out of their comfort zone and when I speak externally and face-to-face of course, people see my wheelchair. And what I hope is that, when the first time they look at me, they meet me, they will look at wheelchair and a guy's sitting on this wheelchair and I hope that the next time we meet, they will see me, they will see Yves. And that would be an immediate difference in terms of relationship. And I could tell you that based on my own personal and professional experience you must be clear about yourself. If you live with a disability, you need to be more the ambassador of yourself, you need to make the other person comfortable. Right? Explain what you can do and what you cannot do. And this is true in your personal life and this is true in your professional life as well. You always be clear about your possibilities as well as your limitation, and you must communicate them and you must communicate them smartly and effectively.
👉🏾 I for instance, in my role, I have a global role. So I spent much of my time prior to COVID in planes, taxis, hotels. Whereas I'm labelled as a mobility impaired person. So it's kind of breaking the stereotypes, but I made clear to my employer at that time through my manager that yes, I will be able to travel, but not everywhere.
I'm will not be able to be productive in a country where the level of accessibility is not good enough for me to be effective. I had to be honest. I had to say that. I didn't have to say "yes, I can go everywhere, you will see I'm the best I can". No, that's not true. There are things you can control and there are things you cannot control. You cannot control the level of accessibility of a society in which you are, or the country in which you're supposed to go. But you can control what you know about these countries. You can control whether you're going to be effective or not. And so being clear about what your possible environments and limits are and how to communicate them clearly and smartly to your employers is key.
👉🏾 Absolutely, the third thing I would say to employers and recruiters, in general, is before, starting hiring people with diversabilities or disability, depending on which terminology you use. You should always prepare your workplace and your workforce. As I said, making sure that your workplace would be as accessible as possible, both physically and digitally. Prior to hiring people or to even thinking of hiring people with disabilities. Because, you know, if you don't prepare your workplace and if you don't train your employees on how to interact in a confident manner with people with disabilities, the experience will be bad. Educating people is key prior to hiring people.
👉🏾 Then when your workplace is ready both in terms of infrastructure and mindset then you can start working with external NGOs locally in your country. They will be able to identify people with disability, for the market. And it might be challenging, more challenging for different sectors, for instance, if you work in the IT sector, because of the nature of our business, the skills we would need in this space will be very specific around hybrid cloud for instance, around AI. And so the level of education may be difficult to attain for people with disabilities in many countries where the access to a higher level of education even upper levels of education is difficult. Because of accessibility issues, cultural issues, et cetera. So you may need to work with external NGOs who do have the expertise. And then we can put in place I would say effective recruitment strategy. And my last recommendation to employers is start small. Try to be successful with two or three profiles, regardless of the type of disability, and then once you're successful in the inclusion of two or three people. You will be able to be more ambitious and to establish your documented hiring strategy based on success. That would be my key recommendation.
👉🏾 I would say two things here. First, we do not have to hire a person with disabilities, yes you heard me right , you do not have to hire person with a disability. You have to hire a person that has the skills, or like I said, the potential, to help your business thrive and if by the way that person happens to live with disability, so be it. The responsibility of the employer is to provide me with a workplace where I will be able to be as productive as anybody else. And this is my responsibility as an individual, living with a disability, to show, to demonstrate that I can be as effective as possible. As I said already the roles are distributed. It's not the employers that have the total responsibility, it's not the employee or candidates having total responsibility. Both of them have a role to play. And this is really key. So this would be my first recommendation.
👉🏾 Well, my own employer maybe, I have been working for IBM for 29 years. And so when I joined IBM in 1992 disability inclusion was even lower on the corporation radar than it is today. But still regardless of the fact that I was using a wheelchair and regardless of the fact that my resume was as thick as a razor blade in terms of qualifications, they decided to trust my ability to do the job that I was supposed to do at that time. And they did provide me with some opportunities to grow my career, to acquire new skills, et cetera. And so basically it's a question of culture. It's not so much a question of money or level of awareness. It's really about the culture of the corporation. And that's really important. It's really about how you think holistically about people's value, regardless of whether I'm black, whether i'm LGBT. One of the main issue with diversity and inclusion policies in general, that its quite something to put people in boxes. Yeah. LGBT groups, the people with disability group, the Hispanic, black, you name it, but I could be black no? I couldn't live using a wheelchair, but I could be black. I could be gay.
👉🏾 I could be everything so which box that you got to put me in. You know, of course corporations need to measure things. To measure their population to make sure that, you know, they are inclusive in their ability to do so but at the end of the day, we are all human beings. And I believe that if you really look at the person first and the skill that that person can bring, regardless of any other aspects, you, you can be successful in inclusion policy. This is true for people who are disability, even this is true for anybody.
👉🏾 Hmm, I I'm so exceptional. So I'm so proud of so many things. Seriously
You know, I'm proud I would say to have a normal life. I could get married, I could have kids. I could have a job. So it might be as I said quite normal for many people, but me, especially regardless of my wheelchair, et cetera, I could live a normal life I would say, almost...
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By Sudha Singh
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Shownotes:
This week on the The Elephant in the Room podcast I spoke with Yves Veulliet, Global Disability & Inclusion Leader at IBM. In this episode he talks about his book ‘Turning Point – The fall and rise’, the psychological consequences of acquiring a disability and its impact on his personal and professional life and strategies to make other people including employers, disability confident.
👉🏾 We also spoke about the biggest challenges facing people with disabilities in the workplace
👉🏾 What businesses can do to tackle underrepresentation
👉🏾 How organisations can build an inclusive culture by taking into consideration the three a's: accessibility, adjustment and attitude;
👉🏾 Not being a hero;
👉🏾 The importance of embracing failure;
👉🏾 His purpose and things he is proud of;
Follow the show on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts
Memorable passages from the podcast
👉🏾 So I live in Belgium and if you have a screen in front of you, if you type, the date of 12th of July 1987 on your favourite search engine, most likely you will not find any major event in the world for the vast majority of people. That day was just another day in their life. But for me, it was a little bit different. I was 21 at that time and I lived in Belgium and for once the weather was great, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. And so I decided to go for a ride with my motorcycle and I really had a great time. And all of a sudden there were gravels on the road and the back wheel of my motorcycle slipped on them. And I fell down into a kind of a gully and I damaged my spinal cord. And as a result of this accident, I became a wheelchair user. As you can imagine, when you acquire a disability as a result of an accident, you lose 90% of your self-confidence because you need to reinvent your identity.
👉🏾 Basically, I would say that accepting your new situation is a journey. You go through a very different set of emotions, like frustration, denial, passivity, depression and after all these negative moments, you can start to look at possibility versus limitations. Some people may get stuck for the rest of their life at that depression stage. In other words, they will remain within their comfort zone, and a wheelchair user will be interacting with other wheelchair users or you will live outside of the normal society I would say. And others like myself took another option, made a different choice, like trying to find a way to be the actor of my own life and trying to find a job and getting married and have kids, you know, all the things that maybe sound normal or basics for the vast majority of people. That are not so easy when you acquire a disability or when you live with a disability.
👉🏾 Actually this book, I wrote this book because it corresponded to me. I mean, when you acquire a disability, you go through a different set of emotions and people around you, your family or friends are kind of lost because one day, especially when you spend a lot of time may be in the hospitals or rehabilitation centre, I spent eight months in these institutions. And when your parents come to visit you and your friends, you know, one day you welcome them with a big smile and the day after you want to cry or you don't want to see them, you know. So they don't understand what's going on, right? So the main purpose when I wrote this book was to more to make people understand the different emotions that we go through and why our emotions may be so different, one day from the other. This kind of book you cannot write it when you're still yourself in this journey, you need to have some experience, need to have a certain level of maturity in your own personal disability inclusion journey, to be able to have enough distance to be able to write this book. So basically the idea of this book was to really explain the different set of emotions, and also make people comfortable saying don't feel guilty or don't feel uncomfortable if the one you love is having all these emotions. It's part of the journey.
👉🏾 There is no other option you must and then only when people have acquired a certain level of self-trust. Then you can start building a new relationship with that person and be able to tangibly help them. Because basically, even if you have the best family around you, the best people. The person living with the disability must make the first step. It's my own decision whether I want to play an active role in the society where I live. Things, may be different for people but for people who acquired a physical disability, I would say that allow them to have a certain level of independence, intellectual autonomy. These decisions must be taken by the persons themselves and then only then, can the people around them can help them.
👉🏾 Basically there are three major obstacles. One is accessibility. The level of accessibility in many countries, not to say in most countries is very low. Now there are different reasons for that. One of the reasons is the lack of awareness that the governments or institutions who make their environmental workplace and the infrastructures in general, the society in general as accessible as possible.
The second reason I would say is more linked to the person themselves, as I said. If you don't feel confident enough to be the actor over your own life. It's extremely difficult to be comfortable enough to get out of your comfort zone and being confronted to accessibility obstacle or attitude obstacles.
👉🏾 And this is really linking to the last obstacle that we mentioned accessibility, personal issues and other people's attitudes. The way people look at you may be difficult to bear. And so basically I would say that depending on where you are in your personal journey, these obstacles would be major or minor. Like for instance, when you start acquiring a certain confidence in your ability to play an active role in your own life, you will be able to deal with accessibility issues.
You will rely on your friends and the institutions, the family, the world of education to help you getting those skills you need to be able to find a job, et cetera. But psychologically speaking, you need to be confident and you need to understand that you cannot control everything. You can control what you do, what you say, but you cannot control what people think of you. And this is important because some people can waste their whole lifetime trying to please others you must be yourself regardless of what others think.
👉🏾 Definitely. Absolutely as I say, when you acquire a disability, you lose much of your self-confidence. And so it's quite tempting to expect everything from others. You will expect the institution, the government to provide you with some financial support, you would expect the world of education to provide you with the skills you need. You will expect your family to be able to help you, and this is important. But this is not enough you also have to make your own choice. You also have to get out of your comfort zone. Take challenges, accept failures. When I started to find a job, I cannot tell you how many CV's I sent and how many few answers I received right? And this is where I begin. You must accept that all coins have two sides. And one is success, one is failure and you'll learn much more from failures than from success. Right? So every time I was said politely, when I was said something, I'm sorry but your skills are not valued, et cetera. I knew that it was not so much my skills it's more my disability.
👉🏾 And that comes to the debate about mentioning your disability on a resume or not. It's strongly pushing for making things visible, making my disability visible on my resume is something that conveys a message. It conveys the message that I'm confident with my status. Because if you don't do so, people who will welcome you either virtually, or physically would be surprised to see you using a wheelchair. So it will kind of make a bad start for the conversation because the nature of the conversation will be polluted by this bad surprise for the person welcoming you. Whereas if you mentioned the disability I would say that 18 doors out of 20, maybe closed, but the two doors that remain open are true opportunities, true chances because the person knows why. Having said that you must, and I insist you must mention your disability in your resume, but you must do it in a smart way. I mean, do not put it on top of your CV in red. You know, this is not smart. This is not efficient. What I did on my CV is just, I mentioned it as a fact. As the result of a motorcycle accident occurring in 1987, I became a wheelchair user, Period. That's enough. You don't need to say anything else. That's a fact, you know, I'm a man, I am white and I am using a wheelchair, It’s part my identity. It's not my entire identity. I don't relate only to the fact that I use a wheelchair, but I also use a wheelchair it's part of who I am, whether I like it or not. And so it's part of who I am so there is no reason to hide.
👉🏾 This is absolutely true. And this is key really because there's not only a lack of awareness. It's also a cultural issue. What I mean by that, you may be familiar with the three traditional models around disability that are a social model, charity model, as well as a medical model right? But this is not enough, this is not enough from a corporate perspective to be better at including people with disabilities in your workforce. What I mean by that is that, there is one major shift, that must be addressed from a personal and business perspective.
👉🏾 Disability, regardless of what type of disability you refer to, whether invisible disability, physical conditions, cognitive condition, whatever. Stop looking at it from an individual perspective and look at it from an environmental perspective. What I mean by that is if I am a manager or an employer, the only question I should ask myself is, what can I do to make my environment accessible for that person to be as productive as anybody else in the workplace? If I think about it from an environmental perspective, I will succeed in my disability inclusion policy because I will have the right mindset.
👉🏾 I will not think, Hmm I'm not going to hire that person who's using the wheelchair because I don't have accessible restroom because I don't have elevators, I don't have enough space for that person for more around, this is not true. The only question I should ask myself as an employer is what can I do to make my restroom accessible, to make my workplace accessible, to make sure that that person will have enough freedom room to move around in the office.That's as simple as that.
And you know, people will object saying it might cost money, et cetera, which is true. But the vast majority of people with disabilities would not need major investment in terms of accommodation or adjustment.
👉🏾 And managers or employees would overthink that a universal design perspective where wheelchair will go, anyone can go. And a really concrete example, automatic door openers are very useful for people using the wheelchair, right? Because especially when you have a very heavy door to push, it's not easy when you use a wheelchair to do so. Or people having a temporary physical limitation, or if a woman is pregnant, it would be also very useful to have this kind of facility in the workplace. When you feel for beyond disability and, if you think authentic inclusion. That will be much more impactful. So my recommendation to the business is, think about disability from an environmental issue. Stop thinking about it from a personal perspective.
👉🏾 And second, if you think about preparing your workplace to be disability inclusive, always think about the three A's. The three A's standing for accessibility, adjustment or accommodation and attitude. The first two ones accessibility and accommodation is really about, as I said, what can I do to make my workplace both physically and digitally accessible to most people in my team. So the first two ones are maybe complex to put in place because they requires some logistics, and financial investment, but basically, these are possible. Whereas the attitude, the third is the attitude, it's much more difficult to tackle and will require much more patience, much more strategy to really change the mindset of people. It may take decades honestly and frankly, some people will never change. Some people would always be uncomfortable with differences in general, including disability. And so you will not change that. But this is a very small portion of people. The vast majority of people will not feel comfortable because they are afraid of the unknown, and this is perfectly natural.
👉🏾 So we need to confront that, we need to get people out of their comfort zone and when I speak externally and face-to-face of course, people see my wheelchair. And what I hope is that, when the first time they look at me, they meet me, they will look at wheelchair and a guy's sitting on this wheelchair and I hope that the next time we meet, they will see me, they will see Yves. And that would be an immediate difference in terms of relationship. And I could tell you that based on my own personal and professional experience you must be clear about yourself. If you live with a disability, you need to be more the ambassador of yourself, you need to make the other person comfortable. Right? Explain what you can do and what you cannot do. And this is true in your personal life and this is true in your professional life as well. You always be clear about your possibilities as well as your limitation, and you must communicate them and you must communicate them smartly and effectively.
👉🏾 I for instance, in my role, I have a global role. So I spent much of my time prior to COVID in planes, taxis, hotels. Whereas I'm labelled as a mobility impaired person. So it's kind of breaking the stereotypes, but I made clear to my employer at that time through my manager that yes, I will be able to travel, but not everywhere.
I'm will not be able to be productive in a country where the level of accessibility is not good enough for me to be effective. I had to be honest. I had to say that. I didn't have to say "yes, I can go everywhere, you will see I'm the best I can". No, that's not true. There are things you can control and there are things you cannot control. You cannot control the level of accessibility of a society in which you are, or the country in which you're supposed to go. But you can control what you know about these countries. You can control whether you're going to be effective or not. And so being clear about what your possible environments and limits are and how to communicate them clearly and smartly to your employers is key.
👉🏾 Absolutely, the third thing I would say to employers and recruiters, in general, is before, starting hiring people with diversabilities or disability, depending on which terminology you use. You should always prepare your workplace and your workforce. As I said, making sure that your workplace would be as accessible as possible, both physically and digitally. Prior to hiring people or to even thinking of hiring people with disabilities. Because, you know, if you don't prepare your workplace and if you don't train your employees on how to interact in a confident manner with people with disabilities, the experience will be bad. Educating people is key prior to hiring people.
👉🏾 Then when your workplace is ready both in terms of infrastructure and mindset then you can start working with external NGOs locally in your country. They will be able to identify people with disability, for the market. And it might be challenging, more challenging for different sectors, for instance, if you work in the IT sector, because of the nature of our business, the skills we would need in this space will be very specific around hybrid cloud for instance, around AI. And so the level of education may be difficult to attain for people with disabilities in many countries where the access to a higher level of education even upper levels of education is difficult. Because of accessibility issues, cultural issues, et cetera. So you may need to work with external NGOs who do have the expertise. And then we can put in place I would say effective recruitment strategy. And my last recommendation to employers is start small. Try to be successful with two or three profiles, regardless of the type of disability, and then once you're successful in the inclusion of two or three people. You will be able to be more ambitious and to establish your documented hiring strategy based on success. That would be my key recommendation.
👉🏾 I would say two things here. First, we do not have to hire a person with disabilities, yes you heard me right , you do not have to hire person with a disability. You have to hire a person that has the skills, or like I said, the potential, to help your business thrive and if by the way that person happens to live with disability, so be it. The responsibility of the employer is to provide me with a workplace where I will be able to be as productive as anybody else. And this is my responsibility as an individual, living with a disability, to show, to demonstrate that I can be as effective as possible. As I said already the roles are distributed. It's not the employers that have the total responsibility, it's not the employee or candidates having total responsibility. Both of them have a role to play. And this is really key. So this would be my first recommendation.
👉🏾 Well, my own employer maybe, I have been working for IBM for 29 years. And so when I joined IBM in 1992 disability inclusion was even lower on the corporation radar than it is today. But still regardless of the fact that I was using a wheelchair and regardless of the fact that my resume was as thick as a razor blade in terms of qualifications, they decided to trust my ability to do the job that I was supposed to do at that time. And they did provide me with some opportunities to grow my career, to acquire new skills, et cetera. And so basically it's a question of culture. It's not so much a question of money or level of awareness. It's really about the culture of the corporation. And that's really important. It's really about how you think holistically about people's value, regardless of whether I'm black, whether i'm LGBT. One of the main issue with diversity and inclusion policies in general, that its quite something to put people in boxes. Yeah. LGBT groups, the people with disability group, the Hispanic, black, you name it, but I could be black no? I couldn't live using a wheelchair, but I could be black. I could be gay.
👉🏾 I could be everything so which box that you got to put me in. You know, of course corporations need to measure things. To measure their population to make sure that, you know, they are inclusive in their ability to do so but at the end of the day, we are all human beings. And I believe that if you really look at the person first and the skill that that person can bring, regardless of any other aspects, you, you can be successful in inclusion policy. This is true for people who are disability, even this is true for anybody.
👉🏾 Hmm, I I'm so exceptional. So I'm so proud of so many things. Seriously
You know, I'm proud I would say to have a normal life. I could get married, I could have kids. I could have a job. So it might be as I said quite normal for many people, but me, especially regardless of my wheelchair, et cetera, I could live a normal life I would say, almost...