Human Resources Committee on April 18th, 2013

[Jeannette Leigh]

I had a coffee. We're supporting....

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Yes, at Tim's they do that to you.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jeannette Leigh]

Not only did the assistance of the agency make the entire hiring process very easy and incredibly time and cost effective for us compared to our other hiring processes, but they even offered on-the-job training after we chose our candidate. We decided to hire Norman because he showed he really wanted the position, plus his people skills, along with his background, were a perfect fit for our environment. This is important, since we're having him perform the job during open business hours instead of after hours, which is more customary.

Norman is an incredibly hard worker who loves to come in every day. He takes pride in his work and doing well. He is punctual, reliable, and in three years has literally only been absent for three days, one due to illness, the other due to a death in the family. This far surpasses the attendance and the consistent punctuality of any other employee at our company, probably including ourselves, if the truth is known.

As with any other employee, there are times when I have to give him guidance. The big difference with Norman is that there's no attitude. In fact, he actually welcomes correction and sees it as an opportunity to learn and grow. He's even thanked me for pointing something out.

Norman is very much a part of our family. Our company culture is very fun and friendly, and it has been absolutely wonderful to see how much Norman has embraced that and fit right in. Many of our customers even know him by name now.

It's fair to say that hiring Norman was easily one of the very best business decisions we've made in our eight years of ownership. From a personal standpoint, we would all agree that Norman has enriched our lives and taught us so much about the ability side of persons with disabilities.

Since working for us, Norman has gained independence in his own life, which is so rewarding to see. It's beyond words. He now has his own vehicle, instead of relying on the Operation Lift bus, as he did when he started. He now speaks of going out for dinners with friends, to the casino, and so on. He's actually really enjoying life.

Norman has been trying to gain additional employment on his days off from our company, it being only three days a week. Besides a short-term evening cleaning position, where he was somewhat taken advantage of by having to pick up the slack of a lazy employee—who, for the record, was a non-disabled employee—he has not had any luck. It really totally broke my heart to see that situation as it progressed, so I was happy when he left there. When he goes on interviews without the assistance of his agency, he feels that as soon as they meet him and realize he has a disability, they write him off right away. This is also heart-breaking. They simply don't know what they're missing out on, that they might be passing up one of the best employees they could ever hire.

Norman and I always have chats when he's in and he always shares with me how his job search is going. One day, when he was telling me he realized that one job he was applying for might interfere with the hours here at our dealership, I said, “Normie, don't get me wrong, we would miss you like crazy, but if the day comes when another employer makes you a great offer and wants to steal you away, I will be so thrilled for you.” He looked at me and immediately said, “No way, J., I will never leave here. I love my job and you guys are my family.” I almost started to cry, because that is sincere loyalty. I managed to say. “Wow, Normie, we totally feel the same way, but we understand you need to do what's best for you and your career.” He just smiled and said “No, J., I'm never gonna leave you guys.” Wow.

I feel it's really a matter of awareness for employers, that not only does this employment option exist, but it will also save them time and money, plus the added bonus of enriching their lives and the lives of their staff. The big question is how to truly get the message heard, even if it's delivered to other employers.

The factual and statistical information, for all the reasons it makes sense from a business perspective that employers should consider this hiring process, is simply staggering. I was not at the original presentation that Gregg went to through Rotary, where he saw Mark speak. I was not aware of the reasons proven by statistics, and at a recent Access Employment Day meeting we attended, I was completely floored to realize that we have personally experienced every one of those reasons exactly as it is stated. We are living proof that all that sounds too good to be true is really not. It is what it is.

We learned about so many misconceptions at the Access Employment meeting, and one of them that stood out for me, as an employer, was the fear of incurring expense to accommodate an employee with a disability. In our case, we didn't experience that. But I can't help but think that even if there were an expense, if we take into account the saved time and cost in the hiring process, plus begin to add up the cost and time saved with Norman's perfect attendance, great job done, and, most of all, lack of turnover, which of course is very costly, with rehiring, retraining, etc.—his position would typically be relatively transient, so three years has been wonderful—those savings would probably exceed any cost of set-up anywhere. That's not taking into account all of the other positives that come with Norman that can't be monetarily quantified.

Somehow these real experiences need to be shared and really heard by employers. Perhaps the message coming from other employers who have lived it, as we have, will help it be heard.

Although we've had Norman for over three years now, I just had a mind shift from our recent meeting. After hearing the statistics and stories from a guest speaker who owns Tim Hortons franchises, with many disabled persons employed, it's like a new switch went off in my head. In the following few days we were in need of an employee. My mind immediately shifted to contact the agency through which we first hired Norman, before exploring our usual hiring process, as I normally would. As it turned out, due to the specific qualifications, it didn't work out this time, but as business owners we all agreed moving forward we will now consider hiring a disabled person first whenever possible.

It's amazing that even for me, with an open mind and having the wonderful real-life experience of having Norman on staff for over three years, it took hearing Mark from Tim Hortons speak to really, finally, change my thinking pattern, which tells me this may be the most powerful way to spread the awareness.

Before closing, I just want to share with you a few truly fun and heartwarming experiences we have enjoyed with Norman. This story highlights some of the superhuman abilities Norman possesses.

It's a common occurrence to not know who has keys for what cars in the dealership at the moment you need them. Our manager was running around in circles, looking for the keys, when Norman, who was mopping away, doing his own thing, asked, “Are you looking for the keys for the blue Jetta that just came in?”, to which Ron answered, “Yes.” Norman said, “Well, Mike just parked it on the front line, gave the keys to Sue, who stocked it in already and gave the keys to Terry in service.” Everyone within hearing distance just looked up in amazement. There are many other similar situations.

Norman is so keenly aware of what's going on around him that it's remarkable. Now when anyone's unsure of anything, we say, “Just ask Norman”, because he always has the answer—he actually does.

My last quick story is to share that since we hired Norman, our dealership has won a Volkswagen excellence award every year. One of the criteria is the cleanliness of our facility. Norman openly shares that we win that award because he keeps our dealership so clean. Funnily enough, we do get compliments on a regular basis about how clean our dealership is, so we always share that with Norman.

Thanks to Norman's great job, Gregg refers to him as our vice-president of first impressions.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for sharing that heartwarming story regarding Norman. It certainly shows that pride, punctuality, reliability, loyalty, and all of those are wrapped into hiring. I think the switch does go on when an employer starts to understand that, so it's important to get that awareness out. Thank you for coming and sharing that story with us.

We're going to have some committee business at 12:45 p.m., so we're going to have to somewhat abridge the questions and answers. We'll go with three questioners.

We'll start with Ms. Charlton. Go ahead.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you very much. I'm from Hamilton. It's the home of the first Tim Hortons.

I'll be really quick in my questions, because I can talk this fast all the time and get through all of them.

First of all, to all three of you, thank you so much for talking about the inclusion of disabled Canadians, not as an act of charity, not as a pool of cheap labour, but rather as a talent pool that really helps us address the skills shortage in our country. I think that alone is a really critical commentary that not nearly enough Canadians are hearing. I want to thank each of you for making that point.

Of course, as you've also each said, a diverse workforce is of self-interest to you because it's critical to your own business success. Again, I think those are sentiments that need to be heard much more broadly and that we should be echoing in our communities.

Mr. Wilson, my first question is to you. I know you've challenged other companies to hire 10% of the new entrants into their workforces from the talent pool of disabled Canadians by the year 2020, I think. I assume that while you feel strongly about the goal, it's a voluntary objective.

I wonder how you would feel about it if that became a mandatory or government-set objective.

[Mathew Wilson]

It's a good question, one I expected to get.

I'm going to borrow from what Jill was saying about how, if you set targets and try to force people into certain holes, they're probably not going to be good fits. I think in all these cases it is much better to leave companies to hire the people, to fit them into the right spots, so the chances of success and growth and the opportunities are there.

I think if you start trying to mandate those types of things, it's going to lead to problems, from both a company's perspective as well as an employee's perspective. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear we would prefer a much more voluntary approach.

It's also something, on the voluntary side, that CME and others in government and labour need to work together to promote even more. Not many people are aware of those types of targets we put out there in challenging our members to do that. We don't do a good enough job of promoting that either. It's certainly something we need to promote and be more active in trying to pursue.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I think the fear is always that if you actually were to have government set targets, there'd be some kind of punitive consequence, whereas I think a lot of the challenge is that people don't think the labour pool is big enough for them to be able to meet those targets.

I think that is a mistaken impression. Again, the awareness piece is just so important.

I want to follow up with respect to subsidies. I don't expect any of you to say, “Oh, no, we would turn our back on subsidies, and really we wouldn't want any money if the government were giving it to us”, because I'm sure you'd all gladly accept it.

There are challenges sometimes with subsidies. As I heard from people in my riding, there was a subsidy from the provincial government to hire people with disabilities. It was a subsidy for one year on the assumption that someone would be fully trained up after one year, and therefore the subsidy would no longer be needed.

What happened is that the office became a revolving door. They would hire somebody with a disability for a year, turf them out, and then get a new subsidy for the new hire.

So in thinking about subsidies, I think it's really important that it be about not just getting somebody into the job. We need to talk about retention, not just recruitment.

I wonder whether particularly you, Ms. Ramseyer, have any thoughts on what kind of subsidy you were envisioning when you raised the topic.

[Jill Ramseyer]

I agree with your comments in terms of the revolving door. We've even seen it happen at some of our franchise locations.

I'm speaking about the head office location primarily. We're kind of unique, because we're a large business but we also have small businesses at the restaurant level.

There was a program where restaurant owners could bring someone in on a subsidy, and that's exactly what happened: it became a revolving door. They didn't end up keeping them—even though they had, by their own admission, fantastic talent—because they could get someone else for free. It became an issue, which was addressed.

In terms of what we foresee, I think with respect to applying subsidies to education and training for on-boarding people with disabilities, we haven't thought it through in terms of the long term but just as opposed to having a subsidy for wages. We just wanted to say very clearly that we don't think that's the right way to go. We don't have the answers in terms of what we would like to see exactly, but it would be putting it towards those types of efforts instead.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you.

I'll just add the comment that with respect to the training needs you were referencing, I think generally we don't do a good enough job with respect to training programs now, on a broad base, not necessarily job-specific, but in terms of skills training generally, to be inclusive of people with disabilities. I think there are things we could do with respect to federal government support for training programs, long before somebody walks in your door, to help people access jobs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Your time is almost up, if you have a short question.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I have a very short question.

I think you talked about hiring through an agency. With respect to recruiting people with disabilities, I think there may also be challenges with respect to barriers just in terms of accessing that labour pool, because we think about advertising jobs in very traditional ways.

I wonder if you could comment on the creative things you might have done, apart from going to an agency, to overcome those barriers.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Would anyone care to answer that?

Go ahead.

[Jill Ramseyer]

This is the area that we require help with. We have not done a lot because we just haven't known what to do.

We have actually had some employees.... I mean, Mark Wafer, from a store owner perspective, and our restaurant owners have actually been more successful at this than we have as a head office. It's kind of ironic, because we have the human resources people, the professionals there, who just don't know. It's pure ignorance on our part, as a large employer, even. And there's fear. I think it's fear more than anything in terms of the points I made about asking the wrong question. It's easier to just not deal with it.

We have hired people with disabilities, and we do have success stories, absolutely. I don't want to give you the impression that we haven't done that. We've done a decent job of that. However, we haven't gone out of our way to be able to understand where to go and how to do it. It's very, very overwhelming.

This is an area that just within the last probably two years we've become involved in, largely due to Mark Wafer, who's had great success in this. He even said that's how he started. He himself has a disability. It's no different from anyone else in that position as the employer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much.

I think you maybe identified one of the things there in terms of employers talking to employers, especially those who have experienced disabilities and are able to work with persons with disabilities.

Go ahead, Mr. McColeman.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I was making a note for myself because I didn't know the exact name of what was announced in our budget, but we did announce the Canadian Employers Disability Forum. I believe that's what it's called, although I may be corrected on the exact wording. That was announced specifically to address some of the issues that have been discussed here, and I want to put that on the table as a very exciting initiative that's going forward as a result of that being proposed in our 2013 action plan.

Where to start is the difficulty here for me. I want to talk so much about this with you. In the case of Brantford Volkswagen, you talk about the resource that was there for you, which was L.Tara Hooper and Associates. Obviously it was important, but there was training; they prepared Norman for you in terms of being able to come and do the interview and such. Would you talk a bit about that in the equation of someone who has a disability?

Many of these people such as Norman—and I don't know if this is Norman's case—are isolated. They're isolated in their communities. They're sitting at home in their basements watching movies all day because they don't have a buddy they can call up and ask to go out and play catch on the front lawn. Parents are asking how they take this 20-year-old or this 18-year-old once high school is done. How do we integrate them?

What is the vehicle that L.Tara Hooper and Associates provided? Can you think about that and a little beyond it, about how we might be able to build on that?

[Jeannette Leigh]

I think having more awareness for the people who are looking for work is important too, because in speaking with Norman, he finds it challenging to be looking for anything without help. He seems to want to be independent, but then he realizes that the assistance and the opening of more doors are very important.

Plus, what we found, and I think I speak for both of us, is that the agency came to us and asked us to tell them what our needs were and specifically what we were looking for. They went back to the drawing board and brought us three candidates. In truth, none of them would have been a bad choice; they all would have fit.

I think if I could take a guess, it's really making more of the disabled persons aware of the benefits and getting them involved and signed on with these agencies.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Right.

I do have to say this, and I know Mr. Cuzner will say it's shameless. I've been to L.Tara Hooper and Associates every year since I was elected, sometimes multiple times, about applications they made to HRSDC to start a program to help 5 individuals or 15 individuals get the skills they need to be job ready, or you might call it interview ready. We've supported that with those $10,000 amounts that we send to L.Tara Hooper and Associates for that purpose, for that specific and measurable goal.

It's the most incredible thing to watch, as she is herself struggling with her own disabilities. The people she has employed all have disabilities, and they're helping people. It's just an amazing model—if you want to call it that—of going forward.

So when you talk about Mark Wafer's program and what he's done so successfully through Rotary and through his championing of this, Jill, can you envisage at Tim Hortons a day when perhaps the next steps are taken for an employer network, that Tim Hortons might embrace this as being one of the premier companies of Canada, along with other premier companies of Canada?

I know Loblaws are already in that category of being able to...I don't want to say blow the lid off this, maybe that's exaggerating—I'm a bit of a salesman when it comes to these things—but certainly taking the awareness to a much higher level than let's say a government program could do by sending it out through Service Canada outlets.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

We'll conclude with your response. Go ahead.

[Jill Ramseyer]

In short, yes, I think it is going to take the large organizations within the country, and that is a position I think we should be taking as an organization. I think other large organizations, like Loblaws, Canadian Tire, those types of organizations, should be leading the pack, as far as that goes, to talk to other employers, and within that, have small employers involved as well. When dealing with large and small, you get the large who say that won't work for them. Talking to small business about it, that is true as well, but we need something specifically for small business.

I think you can manage it so that it applies to all, because it affects the business in the same way, regardless of whether it is large or small. The difference will be the resources within the business to be able to do it. I think the big guys need to take a stance and lead the way as the employer champions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for that response.

We'll conclude with Mr. Cuzner.

Go ahead for five.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks very much, and I appreciate the comments. It's good to see Matt again.

I think Tim Hortons has led the way in a number of different areas over the years. When I think back to having smoking taken out of public places and restaurants, Tim Hortons was way ahead of that. The community caught up on that kind of stuff.

I want to go back to something.

Gregg, you first got turned on to this through a Rotary meeting. That just sort of clicked the light on for you. Rotary's been doing it.

Matt, can you just touch on the Rotary stuff and how you guys are delivering the message now?

[Gregg Moore, Co-owner, Brantford Volkswagen]

Rotary is a group of individuals who typically own companies. We're there meeting, having fun, and exercising what we each know. That's where we met Mark. It was quite an inspiration when I heard Mark speak about the dynamics of hiring somebody like this and what they can actually bring. We made a decision once we hired Norman.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Was it your own Rotary club, or is this a Rotary initiative nationwide?

[Gregg Moore]

It was our own Rotary club. Mark belongs to Rotary in Ajax, if I'm not mistaken. Joe Dale.... We were actually invited to participate in Rotary at Work, which was a video with David Onley. It was pretty powerful. They did a presentation for us. I just thought this was a good fit.