Hiring People with disabilities fosters creativity and community at Michaels
Michaels is a source for art supplies, crafts and framing. It’s a home for creativity, but that isn’t strictly limited to knitting, scrapbooking or decoupage.
Daniel Johnson, manager of the Michaels on 17 St. in Edmonton, is committed to hiring people with disabilities, something he sees as promoting creative thinking and adaptability within the company. This means looking beyond traditional assumptions of people with disabilities, thinking outside standard employee roles and seeing value in all people, regardless of ability.
Not only are they challenged to be more creative in their managerial approach, but they also are bolstered by the enthusiasm for arts and crafts: “We had a team member who worked in our classrooms and helped with the various Saturday clubs and classes that we had for children and other members. They were part and parcel of it. It created quite a bit of a buzz,” says Johnson.
When asked more broadly about his own philosophies around diversity and inclusion, he shared his mission statement for hiring at Michaels: “We like to include many diverse ranges of people. We take people from all walks of life. We work with everybody, as they’re all individual in their skills and abilities. Everybody has their place in the workforce and everybody has their place within a business, and that’s what we aim to achieve: to keep that diversity going.”
Johnson applies approaches similar to universal design in his hiring and training policies, which leads to an employment process that is accessible by nature and tailored to each person individually. “We do it exactly the same way as any other team member,” Johnson says.
Both disabled and nondisabled employees are hired based on aptitude and sensibility. Every employee is trained the same way and given the resources and all the tools to do the job based on their abilities, “and then we integrate certain skills into that and allow them to grow,” Johnson says.
One of the often-overlooked positive aspects of hiring people with disabilities, especially those in client-facing positions, is that it creates visibility. This is important not only in terms of challenging assumptions around people with disabilities in the workplace, but also in making all people with disabilities feel welcome and valued in the store.
“We like to show the community that we hire team members with disabilities. That allows the freedom of the shopping customer to feel comfortable when they come in if they do have a disability,” Johnson says. “They understand that we actually care about them instead of just being a customer or a number. We do care for them and we want to try and project that.”
Despite contending with myths around hiring people with disabilities, Johnson was emphatic when asked what he’d say to other managers considering it.
“Do it. One hundred per cent. It’s a complete win for the business, complete win for the person, complete win for the community and a complete win for the team. There’s no negative, there are only positives.”