Bender Consulting Services | SMG - Solutions Marketing Group

Bender Consulting Services—Slaying Employment Dragons

By Joan Leotta

Joyce Bender slays dragons and teaches others to do the same. As founder and CEO of Pittsburgh-based Bender Consulting Services, Inc., she helps people with disabilities "slay" barriers to career employment. Her placement firm employs, trains, and secures jobs for people with disabilities in fifteen US states and two Canadian provinces. Committed as she is to providing jobs that offer worthwhile careers, Bender's consultancy is a far cry from the sheltered workshops of the past for people with disabilities. Bender puts it this way: "My crusade is competitive employment for all with disabilities." Her motivation? "I know that there are many qualified people with disabilities out there," she says, "who like me just need an opportunity."

The company provides technology consulting services to the companies it serves while also providing competitive employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Consultants are trained in information technology, engineering, finance, accounting, human resources, and other general business areas.

Many prominent disability activists, including former Democratic House Majority Whip Tony Coelho, have recognized the positive impact of Bender's work on employment for people with disabilities. Private employers such as Highmark, Inc. and government officials including former Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh have recognized Bender's achievements as well.

How Bender Consulting Creates Opportunities

Even though 16 years have passed since the 1990 passage of the Americans for Disabilities Act, employment gaps between people with disabilities and their peers remain. In a 2004 National Organization on Disability Harris Survey of all working-age (18-64) people with disabilities, only 35 percent reported being employed full or part time, compared with 78 percent of all working age people without disabilities. More startling still, a report from Cornell University indicates that the employment rate for Americans with disabilities actually fell from 40.8 percent to 38.3 percent in the three-year period from 2001 to 2004. These statistics underscore the need for services such as Bender provides.

According to the US Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment policy, two of the biggest barriers to the employment and advancement of people with disabilities are a lack of work experience and a lack of required skills and training. Bender directly attacks these two problems, furnishing job candidates with the tools they need to find employment success.

Bender works with a number of private, public, and government employers to ascertain job needs in areas that her consultancy serves. Bender Consulting then acts as a training ground so that her clients can obtain the target skills that the employer seeks. Bender has placed people with disabilities in jobs at Computer Services Corporation, Bayer Corporation, Highmark, Inc., MGM Mirage, Alcoa, FedEx Ground, Mellon Financial, the US Federal Government, and WellPoint. Forming partnerships with large companies helps insure large numbers of competitive employment opportunities for her employees with disabilities.

Once a person with a disability provides Bender with a resume, the consultancy matches up their qualifications with full-time job openings at Bender's partner firms. After an interview process, Bender hires an appropriate candidate as a consultant, providing him or her with 100-percent–paid health benefits.

The client then goes through Bender's Career Reality Training Program and begins to work for the customer. The training program covers a range of topics including work ethics, assertiveness, and accountability. Bender works with their customers and state agencies to provide all of the necessary accommodations and assistive technology solutions. After six to nine months on the job, and following a positive performance review, the Bender consultant becomes a direct employee of the customer. Bender continues to monitors each consultant's progress to ensure that person's retention and career growth.

The Founding of Bender Consulting Services Inc.

From 1979 until 1985, Joyce Bender worked in the executive search industry. In 1985, she was involved in a life-threatening accident due to a previously-undiagnosed epileptic seizure condition. As a result, Bender sustained an intra-cranial brain hemorrhage that required brain surgery and left her with a 60-percent hearing loss in one ear.

In 1995 Bender, already a successful entrepreneur, incorporated Bender Consulting Services, Inc. to help others overcome challenges just as she had. Blending her past job experience, which gave her an understanding of the private marketplace, and her new perspective and insights on the employment needs of people with disabilities, Bender developed what became the consultancy's specialty.

Since its founding, the company has expanded into fifteen states. More than 200 people with disabilities have been employed in a range of professional fields including computer programming, project office support, technical writing, network support, help-desk administration, accounting/finance and human resources.

In 1999, while Bender was in New York speaking at an event, she met Diana Burke, Senior VP Information Security Systems and Technology for RBC Financial Group in Montreal. Burke, a Tony Coelho Award winner, wanted to offer the same sort of opportunities Bender was providing in her hometown. Bender worked with Burke and incorporated Bender Consulting Services of Canada, Inc. in 2002 to create the same types of competitive employment opportunities for Canadians with disabilities. Bender now works in Both Ontario and Quebec provinces.

Praise and Success

Dick Thornburgh, a proponent of employment opportunities for people with disabilities, praised efforts such as Bender's at The Third Annual Tony Coelho Lecture in Disability Employment Law and Policy. In his October 19, 2005 speech, Thornburgh stated: "Progress in disability recruitment demonstrates the importance of partnerships between employers seeking qualified employees and community organizations that can assist in recruiting prospective employees with disabilities."

Thornburgh highlighted Bender's work in particular as an antidote to the poor employment statistics that continue to haunt the disability community. "Bender has created an innovative and dramatically successful employment network that has had a 92-percent success rate in placing its job candidates," he said. "Bender finds that most of our candidates stay more than three years with the original employer. In addition, due to their good experience with Bender, many of the firms she works with have now made long term commitments to hiring people with disabilities. "

The positive effects of Bender's work extend beyond the individual experience of each employee. Her efforts have led to improved attitudes throughout the work sites where her clients are placed, not just toward hiring people with disabilities but, Bender says, to diversity employment overall. "The disability culture is different from others, and the company's positive experience makes it open to dealing with other cultures as well," Bender maintains.

In addition, Bender notes, companies benefit from bringing in people from the disability community because of the positive impact it has on creativity within their firm. "People with disabilities think outside of the box every day—even for simple things like how to find an accessible entrance," she states. "This practice in creative thinking brings a new perspective to the table for the hiring firm."

Bender notes that many companies have seen productivity boosts as a direct result of hiring her clients with disabilities. This is due in part to the fact that many of her workers have not taken sick leave in several years. Even many of Bender's own management team have not used a sick day in eight or nine years.

Bender tells of one software developer who uses a wheelchair. The employee went to a doctor's appointment, but his wheelchair broke at the doctor's office and could not be immediately repaired. Instead of going home or waiting at the doctor's, the employee contacted the city's emergency services and soon arrived at work with sirens blaring. He did not want to miss an entire day of work!

Says Bender, "My employees frequently value work so much that their attitude overall impacts productivity in the office. They impress others with their desire to work and intensify the work ethic of their fellow workers."

Attacking Attitude Head-On

According to the US Department of Labor, attitude of employers is the third largest barrier to employment of people with disabilities (July 2001). In that same report, the Department of Labor notes that the "attitudinal barrier must be broken to achieve full integration of people with disabilities into the employment area." [View report]

Addressing this issue in his Coelho Lecture speech, Thornburgh stated, "I'd like to see more relationships between public and private employers. Research shows that the most effective mechanism for changing corporate culture is initiative from top level management."

While the good example of each of Bender's placements presents a potent attack on this large "dragon," this challenge is in some ways one of the most difficult to address. Bender continues to use her contacts with major industries to help expand her client list. In other ways as well, she works to get managers to change their focus from pity to positivity.

In an article entitled "Paychecks not Pity," Bender states that employers need to realize that people with disabilities want a chance to compete on equal footing. She says, "The attitude of pity causes the bar to be lowered for performance and this can never be helpful. It leads to underemployment." Bender explains her strategy to combat this problem, stating, "I learned from the Civil Rights leaders the need to talk about an issue all the time in order to effect change." A tireless speaker for disability employment, she is active in the disability community and volunteers with many civic groups.

To get the word out even further, Bender has begun a weekly Internet radio broadcast. Her show, one of the first international talk radio shows with real-time captioning, focuses on empowerment for people with disabilities. Guests have included Tony Coelho, Dick Thornburgh, Andy Imparato, Carmen Jones, and senior executives from the private sector. The show can be heard at www.voice.voiceamerica.com every Tuesday from 2:00–3:00 pm Eastern Time. The toll free caller/listener number is 1-866-472-5788.

One person at a time, city by city, and even county by county, Joyce Bender proves the value of people with disabilities in the workplace and campaigns for full employment for her constituency in all that she does.

Edited by Mary-Louise Piner.