Walgreens: A Prescription for Opportunity

By Joan Leotta

Image of Walgreens' Anderson, SC, distribution center.

Anderson is Walgreens 12th full-service DC. By 2010, this DC will be shipping approximately 80,000 cases daily to more than 700 stores in South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and portions of the Florida panhandle.

When parents find out that their young son or daughter has autism, many of them are focused on the immediate concerns of how the child will function in school and what services will be available to him or her. But when those children are ready to graduate high school and enter the workforce, they often have no good options available to them. As a result, many adults with autism or other cognitive disabilities either receive state disability pay or are lifelong dependants on their parents.

Thanks to an innovative program at the drugstore chain Walgreens, that scenario is not the case for a growing number employees nationwide. Hired as equals to their non-disabled peers, these individuals work at jobs that, by their nature, fit easily into the capabilities of a person with autism or cognitive disabilities. Unlike “sheltered workshop” situations, where people with disabilities work at lesser jobs for lesser pay, in Walgreens' new distribution centers, employees with disabilities work side by side with non-disabled workers and enjoy opportunities for advancement and job mobility.

The first of these new centers opened in Anderson, South Carolina earlier this year.

At that center, 42 percent of the Anderson Center's almost 275 employees have a disclosed disability of some sort including cognitive disabilities and autism. Expectations are that this facility will eventually employ 800 people.

Development of the Walgreens program

Image of workers in the Anderson distribution center.

Anderson's flexible, easy-to-use workstations were designed to make the job easier for all employees, with or without disabilities.

Like many innovations that have led to success for people with disabilities, the new model for Walgreens' distribution centers began with a family story. J. Randolph Lewis, Walgreens Senior Vice President for Distribution and Logistics, has a son with autism. Lewis watched his son's difficult transition from school to workplace, aware of the high unemployment rate and the lack of challenging jobs available for people with disabilities. Because his company was in the midst of reforming the technology used to operate their distribution centers, Lewis suggested to the management team that they redesign jobs as well.

Deb Russell, Manager of Outreach and Employee Services, notes that “Walgreens has always employed people with disabilities—throughout the corporation. But,” she adds, “this is the first time that we have approached a division holistically—redesigning jobs from top to bottom. We are using this experience to provide other divisions with information that we expect will result in even more opportunity for other divisions to hire people with disabilities.”

Russell describes the disability-friendly component of the center redesign this way: “The Walgreens team worked to ensure that the new jobs were not more complex than currently existing jobs.

“The concept of having up to one third of the Center's workforce filled by people with disabilities was presented to Walgreens' board of directors, along with the findings that it would not cost more to do it this way,” Russell continues. “Even the most cost conscious manager could support the effort, and so a new way of working inside the new facility became reality.” Not only does the new approach make work easier for all employees, it also makes the centers able to operate at a projected 20 percent higher rate of efficiency.

“In designing this facility, we believed we could employ a large number of people with disabilities while holding them to the same performance standards as all team members,” says Lewis. “This is a business, not a charity, and our employees with disabilities earn the same pay and benefits as other employees for the same work.”

Community cooperation and training

Walgreens senior vice president of distribution and logistics Randy Lewis greets a team member during the DC’s grand opening event last summer.

Though not a charity, Walgreens nonetheless does approach its business concerns with a generous amount of goodwill. Russell notes that each of the distribution centers connects with state and vocational rehabilitation agencies, with community-based disability organizations, and with schools to offer work-study programs to help young people transitioning into the workforce. The company uses peer sharing as the primary training method for everyone who works in the distribution centers. Says Russell, “We don't have trainers per se in the centers. It is part of the organization that everybody helps train the new staff.”

Other training is provided through TEACCH, a University of North Carolina program that helps those new to the teaching profession develop strategies that address the needs of various learners. As an unintentional benefit of this training, managers have developed more skills in how to approach all workers with diverse learning styles.

Finally, in her role as outreach and employee services manager, Russell herself provides technical assistance to managers who call or email requesting such assistance. She adds, “We are starting to develop some Internet resources for individual stores to access ... information on hiring and training individuals with disabilities.”

Fitting into the fabric of employment in America

Future Walgreens Distribution Centers, including one opening in Windsor, Connecticut in 2009, will launch disability initiatives similar to those at the Anderson Distribution Center, with the goal of filling at least one-third of the jobs with people with disabilities. A Web site, Walgreensoutreach.com, provides information to help potential employees understand what work is like at Anderson.

Because of its extensive hiring of employees with disabilities, Walgreens applied to be an EN (Employment Network) with the Social Security Administration's Ticket to Work program. TTW helps SSI and SSDI beneficiaries aged 18-64 receive employment support services including vocational rehabilitation, training, referrals, job coaching, and counseling. The SSA pays each of its Employment Networks a stipend in return for providing job placement options to people with disabilities. Walgreens uses the TTW payments to invest in other resources that will assist its workforce with disabilities, for example, to invest in better training methods and tools.

Explains Russell, “While TTW presents an opportunity for us to achieve our goals [of hiring employees with disabilities] in a less expensive way. The changes we are making—training and other things we have initiated at Anderson—were programs we would have done anyway and the path of creating a broadly inclusive workforce at Walgreens actually began four or five years ago.”

Sharing lessons learned

Walgreens has put together several “lessons learned” talking points to help other organizations wishing to improve their efforts at hiring people with disabilities. The company maintains that people with disabilities can be integrated into the workforce without a loss of standards, and that coworker fears can be overcome through education.

The experience redesigning the distribution centers has taught the company many more lessons as well. All in all, Russell concludes that “this is the best thing we at Walgreens have ever done.”

Edited by Mary-Louise Piner.