If you were offered an investment opportunity that earned more than three times the initial value, wouldn’t you consider that a good risk? According to a government official in Nevada, that’s the ROI that taxpayers in his state can expect when businesses hire people with disabilities.
Actually, the exact amount is a $3.67 return for every dollar spent, writes director of Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, Frank Woodbeck, in his December 3 article, “Opportunity at Work” for Nevada Business Magazine.
But, as advertising jargon likes to say, “that’s not all.” Woodbeck goes on to list a number of incentives available to any U.S. business that altogether generate close to $40,000 in savings. He writes:
These incentives come by way of Work Opportunity Tax Credit of up to $2400; Disabled Access Credit for 50 percent of eligible expenditures over $250 and up to $10,500 a year/tax bill reduced to $5000; Barrier Removal Tax Deduction up to $15,000 a year. Also, partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation for candidate identification/screening, on-the-job- training, job coaching, work attire, assistive technology, in total typically can be worth over $10,000.
If there is to be a change in attitude toward employing people with disabilities, it will come as businesses begin to understand there are bottom-line benefits of hiring from this talent pool, rather than looking at it only as a way to make life matter for these individuals.
That’s why the continued attention to the success stories of nationally recognized corporations that are actively recruiting and employing people with disabilities is so critical. In business, imitation is not just a sincere form of flattery; it’s a shortcut to success.
So when Woodbeck name-drops Walgreens, TJ Maxx, Lowe’s, Best Buy, and Macy’s as examples of companies that are “reaping the rewards” of hiring individuals “who are highly competent and often more enthusiastic about their jobs,” the hope is that small and mid-size businesses in need of help with jobs ranging from front-end customer service to behind-the-scenes tasks like sorting, packaging and assembly, will partner with organizations that help train and place people with disabilities in these positions, or can provide these services on a subcontract basis.
When you think about it, $40,000 is a fairly minuscule savings for corporations like Walgreen’s, which had revenues totaling $71.6 billion this year. But for any company that is closely aligned with a state or local economy, both as a consumer resource and a job creator, the opportunity to realize that significant of a cost-savings coupled with a boost in productivity is hard to resist. That’s even before getting back to Woodbeck’s original point about the positive impacting on the local tax base, or the chance to make life matter for individuals who have struggled for so long to find meaningful employment.
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