Ep 120: Cisco's Inclusive Hiring Program with Pat Romzek

Episode 120: Future of Work: Cisco’s

Inclusive Hiring and Apprenticeship

Program with Pat Romzek

Episode Link: http://workolo.gy/ep120-wp

INTRO: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Workology podcast a podcast for the disruptive

workplace leader. Join host Jessica Miller-Merrell founder of Workology.com. As she

sits down and gets to the bottom of trends tools and case studies for the business

leader H.R. and recruiting professional who is tired of the status quo. Now here's

Jessica with this episode of Workology.

Jessica: [00:00:25] Welcome to a new series on the Workology podcast that we're

kicking off that focuses on the future of work. This series is in collaboration with the

partnership unemployment and accessible technology or PEAT. You can learn more

about PEAT at peatworks.org.

Jessica: [00:00:38] In 2016 the Department of Labor reported the rate for

unemployment. For those with a disability was ten point five percent this Talev poll

remains largely intact and presents a great opportunity for businesses who are looking

to hire employees to fill open roles within their organization. The question is how do

companies find engage and retain this untapped talent market. Today I'm joined with

Pat Romzek. He is an executive consultant with Project life changer at Cisco. Pat

welcome to the Workology podcast.

Pat: [00:01:12] It's just great I appreciate it. It's great to be here.

Workology Podcast | www.workologypodcast.com | @workology

http://workolo.gy/ep120-wp

Jessica: [00:01:15] Let's talk a little bit about your background so give listeners some

insights into who you are and how you came to Cisco and Project Life Changer.

Pat: [00:01:25] Well think you just go for a for allowing you to be part of this. You know

it's interesting my background. I actually this wasn't part of my job. I was a I lead cloud

strategy for Cisco I left Cisco in March of this year I retired actually my day job was in

the area of sales sales leadership executive roles at Cisco over the last 16 years.

But I'm a special needs dad and I became aware of the terrible statistics around

employment of people with disabilities that you mentioned earlier. And I was in you

know I guess I challenge myself to do something about it. So I started this project life

change a couple of years ago at Cisco sort of outside my day job is really as a

volunteer leader and it's taking on a bit of a life of its own and then subsequently to my

retirement in March Cisco asked me to come back and continue to lead this project. As

a consultant so that's what I've been doing most recently. But it's an area of great

interest and passion for me.

Jessica: [00:02:24] Well, walk us through what Project life changes so that we kind of

can put everything together.

Pat: [00:02:30] Okay great. Yeah. Project Life Changer. We started a couple of years

ago and it was myself and a small group of folks that endeavor to make a difference in

employment of people with disabilities in Cisco as a technology company. Our

company is a collaboration solutions globally. We use it every day.

And because of this technology, I’m working out of my home office. I have the

opportunity to work anywhere anytime. And I had this notion that why couldn't we

leverage technology to try to make a difference in employment for people with

disabilities. A lot of money's been spent over a lot of long period of time as you know

Jessica and it really hasn't had a huge impact. So what we were trying to do is make a

difference leveraging technology and we have this idea that work is something you do

not a place that you go.


And our concept was to use collaboration solutions technology to allow people with

disabilities to work in a virtual kind of you know work environment work from home to

eliminate some of the barriers to employment. It's really grown quite a bit since that

early those early days. It's still fundamentally part of what we're trying to do with Life

Changer but we've we've we've gone well beyond just a technology based solution

into embedding it into our process and culture and making part of what we do at

Cisco.

Jessica: [00:03:49] So one of the things I liked about Project Life Change and I thought

was interesting is that it isn't just limited to a single disability like say Project Life

Changer isn't an autism hiring or down syndrome hiring specific disability program for

Cisco. Why did you guys decide to go that direction?

Pat: [00:04:09] It's a great it's interesting. It's sort of the evolution of this so I remember

it was a volunteer project that I started in as time went on we had more and more

success. We did a pilot in San Jose California actually in us and that's where our

headquarters are. We hired some people. What we found was we learned a lot of the

process. But what we found was there was a lot of global opportunity here. So then we

moved last year into pilots.

We did one in San Jose continue the pilot in San Jose with some non-profits in the

state of California there. But we also did pilots in Bangalore,India where we hire a lot of

people. Other pilots include Brussels, Belgium; San Paulo, Brazil and some and a

couple of other smaller locations. These are large employment centers where Cisco

hires a lot of people and we endeavor to think could we make a difference not only in

the U.S. but in some of these other markets. And based on the success that we had in

those places we then expanded the program to really be global in nature and focusing

across geographies in disability.

You asked the question about disabilities some programs that some companies have

are focused on sort of one disability. What we found is great success across the entire

disability spectrum. You know we've hired people when we did one of the pilots we did

in Bangalore we hired a large group of people that were visually impaired they were


blind. We think about how hard is it to be an engineer at Cisco in our technical center

in Bangalore, India when you're blind.

Pat: [00:05:37] And what we found is that these people's productivity was so high

despite their visual impairment that it led us to start looking in other areas as well. So

we've now hired across really the disability spectrum about 30 percent of the people

we've hired them visually impaired about 40 percent mobility impaired. Remember, we

started Jessica, with this notion of you know location independent in our virtual

employment flexible employment environment where people could work in kind of a

flexible work environment so mobility impairment about 40 percent of the people we

did hire and we've hired a number of people with autism as well.

We've been hiring people with autism for a long time in the tech industry. But 20

percent of the people we've hired have been people with autism and then the

remaining 10 percent are a variety of other disabilities and hearing impaired and other

things by it has been across the spectrum in what we try to do is not be prescriptive to

say we're only going to hire certain types of people and we're only going to hire certain

types of people in certain locations. We tried to focus on where we had the greatest

opportunity for success which typically we're in these large employment centers. And

then what we tried to do is to recruit the best candidates in those locations for roles

and then we accommodated them in the roles. Does that make sense.

Jessica: [00:06:54] Yes. So you're saying that you have focused in really three target

areas as far as geographic. So San Jose Bangalore Bangalore and Brussels. How

many people have you hired throughout the entire existence of the Life Changer

Program.

Pat: [00:07:13] We’ve now moved into what we're calling kind of a systemization you

know our full integration mode at Cisco So we're really embedding this whole idea of

life changer in hiring people with disabilities as a foundational fundamental strategy in

terms of what we're trying to do around talent as a company. So it's gone beyond

those locations. Those were the locations where we we did pilots where we hire most

of the people are in these large employment centers. So Bangalore, India we've hired


quite a few people we part people in Brussels we've hired people in Sao Paulo we've

hired people in San Jose, Raleigh, North Carolina; and Krakow Poland.

Most large companies tech companies especially typically have these sort of locations

where they're hiring a lot of people and that's where we've tried to focus our energy

where we had large critical mass of candidates employees in new hires. Now in terms

of your point about how many we've hired we've hired about 100 people prescriptively

meaning that we have identified opportunities requisitions positions that we

intentionally recruited people into with disabilities.

We have about another hundred little more than that that we've actually got committed

over the next year so that we're hiring into and we've added a couple of other locations

including some other locations in Europe some other locations in Asia. We have a

program that were work that we're launching in Australia and in China. So it's it's gone

well beyond those original locations. But it is typically focused on large you know sort

of employment centers and I'll tell you a little bit more about that when we get into a

little bit more about the recruiting and why we sort of focus there.

Jessica: [00:08:58] It's very impressive especially when you're looking at this from a

global scale. My question to you is how are you recruiting in these different markets for

people specifically with disabilities. I’m assuming recruiting in each location is different.

Pat: [00:09:11] Yeah, it is very different. Typically our recruiting strategy we call an

acquisition or acquisition strategy focuses on three things. First of all we leveraging

we've developed partnerships with non-governmental organizations nonprofits

government groups other advocacy groups in these locations so we typically use as an

example India you know we record a lot of people in India. Well what we did was we

work with some non-profits in India that had a lot of Marketplace awareness and had

access to the talent pool and location. So we use them to source candidates. That's

number one.

Number two we focus on universities that are focused on that the population of people

with disabilities in some location are universities that are really deeply focused on


people with disabilities so we tend to target them. In the U.S. for example, we've got a

short list of universities in the U.S. that we're working with to specifically recruit people

with disabilities. The third thing we've done on the talent side just goes a little different

in maybe different from what a lot of companies are doing. We're building our own

talent pool as well. What do I mean by that.

Pat: [00:10:19] Well we had a challenge in India where we were hiring so many people

that were having trouble finding enough candidates that had the background we

wanted. Now these were technical entry level technical jobs in our technical service

center. So we were looking for people with specific types of capabilities and

background and we weren't finding enough of them. So what we decided to do was to

build our own talent pool. We developed a program we call it the Life Changer Talent

Incubation program.

Essentially what we do is we recruit people in with disabilities that have character traits

we're looking for that have the drive and the commitment and the capabilities to do

these types of roles. And then we put them through an accelerated and aggressive

training program and apprenticeship program to move them into a job. We're building

our own supply chain of talent. And depending on the market we may focus on one or

two of those strategies versus all three but we are employing all three of those

strategies globally to bring people on board

Jessica: [00:11:25] I like the idea of apprenticeship program I think that's really

creative and something that I think a lot of our listeners maybe have heard about or

read about but haven't really considered for themselves.

Pat: [00:11:37] It has made a huge difference for us because then it is we bring people

that have the right character traits we're looking for people that have technical aptitude

but have some of the other characteristics we're looking for. We can give them the

back technical background we can give them the experience to an apprenticeship.

What we can't do is necessarily change their character per se. Right. So we look for

people with character traits. We provide them the education the technical background

through our our talent incubation program leveraging the Cisco network Academy


curriculum by the way. And then what we do is use sort of an apprenticeship program

to sort of orient them in that role to understand what's involved in the role and how that

how that might work. So that's really helped us and now we're actually using

universities to recruit people into these into this sort of academy apprenticeship

program.

So it's been very very effective for us. And I know a lot of tech companies I've talked to

just to have the same challenge where do I find enough talent. You know you've got

employers that will say I can't find people that have the skills any. And then you have

the candidates that say nobody wants to hire me. And the reality of it is is there's a big

broad pool of talent here that are capable of doing these kinds of roles. That may not

have just the exact right experience or didn't go to the right university or didn't have

the right work experience. Well if they got the capabilities and you put them through

training in an apprenticeship programs they can grow into the job and be some of your

Absolutely but employees.

Jessica: [00:13:09] Can you talk to me a little bit about the different tools and

technologies you have used as part of the life changer program?

Pat: [00:13:16] Yes so we started out using collaboration solutions. As I said you know

voice video a live voice HD video collaboration tools that we use fundamentally across

Cisco and these are things that we we actually sell. And these are things that many of

our customers use from Cisco. So that was sort of a cornerstone but what we added to

that was the accommodations technology necessary for the individual. And it was all

different.

We would take our collaboration platform we would integrate it with the right levels of

accessibility and accommodations to satisfy and support the individual candidate. And

then we provided you know other tools to help with the onboarding process whether it was training programs like we talked about earlier or it's you know manager training

and tools and those types of things. But from a technology point of view, it's

fundamentally collaboration solutions coupled with accommodation accessibility


technology.

Jessica: [00:14:17] I think this is an important conversation because it's not just about

having a disability hiring program but also being willing to customize the accessibility

piece for your employees to make sure that they're going to be successful in their

roles.

Pat: [00:14:35] Exactly and just go the other thing I would add and you you sort of

implied that it's more than technology. I mean you need to accommodate individuals

but you also need to change your processes. We started this as a volunteer project

with the idea we're going to use technology you know as a as a real enabler of

innovation. And it was but we learned a lot in the process. We learned that we had

process issues that we needed to work through.

We learned that we had talent acquisition barriers that we didn't even know about that

was limiting our ability to bring people into the company. So we addressed those as

well. It’s not just technology but it was a combination of technology process evolution

and a lot of sort of internal innovation that ultimately led to our success it wasn't

technology and you're right you can't just throw technology at the problem in assume

that you're going to make a profound impact or really make big impact. You have to

address the process issues as well. And you've got to look at this as a sort of an entire

supply chain. That's just my view.

Jessica: [00:15:36] Let's take a bit of a reset. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell and you are

listening to the Workology Podcast in partnership with PEAT. Today we are talking

about the inclusive apprentice program at Cisco with Pat Romzek. You can connect

with Pat on Twitter at @promek.

Sponsor Msg: [00:15:55] The Workology podcast Future of Work series is supported

by PEAT the partnership on employment and accessible technology. PEAT's initiative

is to foster collaboration and action around accessible technology in the workplace. Is

funded by the U.S. Department of Labor's office of Disability Employment Policy ODEP


learn more about PEAT at peatworks.org.

Jessica: [00:16:19] All right let's let's kind of get back to things a little bit. You've

talked you've talked about your program in depth and I wondered what are the some

of the ways that maybe you've had to adjust your candidate interview and selection

process you talked about processes a little bit but maybe kind of talk a little bit more

about those process changes that you might have made. What we found

fundamentally just got is as we started when we when we first started on this pilot we

found initially that we were hiring very many people even though we were trying to end

and as we really sort of did a pretty thorough evaluation of what was happening why

was this happening.

Pat: [00:17:00] Why were we struggling to get more people through the talent recruiting

pipeline. What we found is that while the pool of people with disabilities is vast it's a

huge pool we are working in a partnership with the state of California. There are

hundreds of thousands of candidates and their talent pool that they were providing to

us because they were working with us in partnership. What we found is that often

times the candidates either wouldn't go to you know the best top school because of

their disability they maybe they didn't finish in the top of their class in high school.

They're very intelligent capable but maybe didn't finish the top of their class. Maybe

they didn't go to stand for MIT or or Harvard or Michigan. You know maybe they went

to a community college maybe they went to a different kind of university. typically what

we would see is their background might not be an indicator of their capabilities. So you

know traditional recruiting process where you know we get a hundred candidates for

every rock open requisition at Cisco or more some some jobs we have thousands of

candidates.

Pat: [00:18:02] You're screening candidates based on their resumes. What you'd find

with a lot of people with disabilities is they don't self-declared and say, “Hey, I have a

disability and that's why I didn't finish in the top of my class.” But on paper they sort of

look like candidates that maybe went to a secondary school maybe weren't in the top

of their class maybe didn't have the exact right background experience. So we did we


did a couple of things. First of all, we turned the process upside down. Instead of

looking at candidates and trying to fit them into jobs we looked at jobs and then went

to look for candidates. So we recognized there were certain types of roles that were

the best opportunity for success for someone with a disability.

Typically, theses roles early in their career are the kind of career roles where they can

grow in the company typically in a role that doesn't require extensive travel. So it might

be a job that is more of a desk job or a virtual job they could do from home. We were

looking for roles in specific organizations where it seemed like it was a really good fit with the talent pool.

Pat: [00:19:03] So we did this whole idea of I call it supply driven by demand. So we

would start with a job which we defined as the demand for the person the talent and

then we would build the supply to match the demand. When we started doing that we

immediately started having more success. And then what followed from that Jessica

was this idea this apprenticeship program. So as we started having more and more

success we started realizing that there were a lot of candidates that maybe just didn't

have the right background.

They didn't have the right experience of the work experience that we could build them

up because they were capable they were highly capable we could build them up using

these incubation programs as a way to give them the experience and the background

to make them successful in the job. So those were a couple of different ways that we

really altered our processes and we're doing that today and now we're using these

strategies you know really across the whole company.

Jessica: [00:20:00] I find this fascinating and I think that a much needed right and that

you guys have recognized this and then you've made adjustments because you are

right. There are so many individuals with disabilities that don't self declare. And so we

are missing opportunities to engage those people because they don't fit into the sort of

that perfect little profile that we've created for those positions.


Pat: [00:20:23] Exactly right. The other thing you know maybe just to add to that you

asked what how we changed the process. The other thing we do is now we're looking

differently. So we're looking for people with specific capabilities character traits that if they don't have the right background they don't have the right degree from the school

or the right work experience will put them through an incubation program. And when

we bring him in the incubation program we're looking for people with certain character

traits technical aptitude Yes but frankly not as much technical experience more

technical aptitude for character traits. So we'll do things like video interview views

versus just looking only at a resume and references and in feedback we get from

nonprofits or universities so it's changed the way we look at the candidate pool.

Jessica: [00:21:06] Let's talk a little bit about how Cisco is measuring success with this

program. What kind of metrics or measurements or goals do you have. Or does Cisco

have that will say look this this life changer program is successful.

Pat: [00:21:23] Well there's one measure of success, impact. I mean you know it's easy

to say I guess but where you know at the top line sort of we're looking at how many

people are we hiring. How are we changing the mix of our workforce?But there's a lot

more we look at along the way. I'll give you an example. We measure everything at

Cisco so many roles that we have. You know we have a very clear view and measure

of a person’s contribution. Everybody at Cisco is pretty accountable. It's that's the

culture of the company. So some of the people that we've hired as an example. So we

did this pilot in India where we hired people into this technical service you know roll

entry level roles that they were working with our customers as kind of entry level

technical service representatives.

And I told you earlier that some of many of them were visually impaired. We had a

group of 34 people 20 of them were visually impaired. We had so much success that

we hired more and more more of them. What we were able to do is benchmark their

productivity and see they were outperforming their non-visually impaired peers. So

while we were happy we hired these people were really focusing on how are they

contributing to the success of their team and of the company and what we found was

pretty amazing and we've got great benchmark statistics now that have helped us


drive further acceleration of the program because what we found is the people that we

hired in these roles were more productive than their coworkers who didn't have a

disability.

Pat: [00:22:55] And in fact we measured things like service closure rate service request

closure rate of team productivity error rates things like that. And what we found is for

the people that we hired under this program that were visually impaired again think of

them as an engineer on the phone with a customer helping them solve a technical

problem and they are visually impaired or blind or using a screen reader to read a

computer screen.

What we've found is that their service request closure rate for the group from 60

percent to 85 percent. We we were closing issues faster. We were the productivity

group went up 250 percent. They were driving more successful closure of technical

issues and we were getting higher customer satisfaction at the same time the error

rates went down. So you know that's how we were measuring the success of those

individual people and that success then led us to hire even more folks because what

happened was our business leaders recognized not only is this good for people it's

good for society it's great for our workforce our culture but it's good for our business

too. These folks are adding incrementally driving up productivity of the team. So it wasn't a case of just a social justice kind of a social impact strategy. It became really

fundamental to our business strategy and strategy.

Jessica: [00:24:20] I love that you guys are focused on these areas like the productivity

and the closure rate and the error rate because those it's not just turnover or retention

it's either impacts directly to the business that senior leadership is looking at and is

important to the success of the of your growing company.

Pat: [00:24:40] Many companies are are really focused on this topic but there is

struggle trying to move it through the organization because they really don't have a

very strong business case. The business case is more of it's the right thing to do kind

of strategy versus I can I can I can show you that this will have a positive impact on the

company bottom line. What we have is you know the ability to demonstrate that this


has a positive impact on the company bottom line. So yes,it's the right thing to do.

Yes, it's great for people. Yes, it's great for society and for our customers, but it's also

great for our business and the combination of all of those things has really led us to

have even greater success rate is sort of a success breeds success kind of model.

Jessica: [00:25:32] So you've sort of answered my next question which is I like the

idea of making the business case because that is a great way to think about how to

create a program like this at another organization. What advice do you have for

somebody who might be just getting started or is thinking about putting together a

pilot program like Cisco.

Pat: : [00:26:40] Well, I would leave it with a few things so you know we've been quite

introspective as I said earlier you know we need pilots and we scale. So we're trying to

learn continuously improve along the way we've learned quite a few things. And I would I would say that it falls into two categories. First is what are the critical success

factors to have a successful program. And then secondarily I've also been asked quite

a number of times where are the barriers. There's barriers.

From a critical success factors standpoint, I would tell you that it's sort of a building

blocks approach. It's not a one size fits all. I talk to them would be like sort of a senior

level manager and a you know what we're going to hire X number of people and you

know go forth and prosper sort of the strategy. What we learned was just executive

sponsorship was important, but so is operational support in meaning we had executive

sponsors that were saying yes we're going to hire these people. This is part of Cisco’s

strategy.

We also had to develop sort of the working operational leadership to drive the process

change and the awareness that the hiring manager level you need both. It's got to be

both top down and bottom up is what I would tell you and there's ways to do that

which I'd be happy to share with folks if they're interested or at least what we did.

Secondly, target of the best opportunities what we found to be successful is don't

focus across the entire company.


Pat: [00:27:40] We have so many thousand employees we have thousands of open

requisitions any point in time. How do you drive change in that kind of a high value

recruiting environment? What we've found to be successful start with a few roles in

locations that we knew we could be successful with. And rather than starting with

talent and bringing them in and having them apply for a bunch of jobs we started with

the roles themselves and we built the talent supply to match that demand. We got

commitments from our business leaders to target people with disabilities for certain

types of roles that we got the supply of talent to match the demand. We built a

business case. It’s really important have a business case because some folks in the

organization are really heard by the social impact of people impact. That's why it's

good for society good for human beings other people are driven by business impact or

other factors so having a business case is really important.

It really makes a big difference to focus on roles in organizations and in leaders where

you can establish talent targets and commitments and strategies not trying to just sort

of recruit everybody and everywhere. It's really about focusing more on where we can

be successful in having the right levels of sponsorship in those organizations to be

successful. And then and then externally building the partnerships with nonprofits and

universities to build the supply of talent and then it's but not least it's it's all about

communications making people aware of what we're doing and we're doing it well why

it's good for the company what the business case is.

And then at a more tactical level you know even just training and awareness for hiring

managers so they know how to recruit and how to retain people with disabilities as part

of their workforce. So it's a combination of things. And I'll be happy to share with you

just like I've got a slide deck that kind of shows some of this that I'd be happy to share

with you if you want to make it available to the audience.

Jessica: [00:29:37] Absolutely. I think what we'll do is we'll include your PowerPoint

presentation into the transcript over on Workology dot com on the on Pat's podcast so

if you just go to the Workology.com website and click on podcast. We'll have Pat's

information and all his resources there for you to be able take a look and kind of get


your thinking caps on. To plan your own program.

Pat: [00:30:03] There's a reason why the employment of people with disabilities has

been a challenge for a long time a lot of money has been spent really hasn't made

huge impact. And what we recognized was that there were a number of challenges that

were impeding our ability to be successful. Certainly, there's misconceptions. You

know it's sort of peeling an onion you know a lot of times the first thing you see is the

misconception that all that a hiring manager or an executive might think well these

folks I'm not really sure.

Can they do the job you know because they know of a neighbor a friend a nephew a

niece that had a severe disability or developmental disability and they're sort of looking

in their mind I'm not really sure if they can do these kinds of roles so there's these

misconceptions the way you overcome those is with education and awareness? You

do have issues and barriers associated with access.

Meaning people can't physically get to work. I mean if you can't get to work everyday if you live in you know some of these locations where transportation can be a real

challenge. In the U.S. and outside of the U.S.. So you know having a virtual or a flexible

employment model a lot of people work in a flexible work environment and allow them

work virtually allows a lot more people to participate in the workforce than otherwise

could.

Pat: [00:31:21] There's a lot of process barriers as I as I said earlier you know we

record that and we did a lot of process redesign to recognize it and try to enable

accelerated employment. There clearly is bias among some people and you may call it misconceptions that people may call bias. The business case is really important

because it helps people understand this is not we're not just doing this because only

because we feel like it's good for people.

That's part of it for sure but it's not the only reason we're actually doing this as well

because it's really good for our business. And then last but not least one of the barriers

is as I talked earlier this notion that some of the candidates are highly capable but


don't have the exact work experience or education levels that we would look for. And

as a result what we are trying to do is to build a supply chain of talent using training

and apprenticeship programs to bring people more capable. And give them the

employable skills to make them successful at Cisco and beyond.

Jessica: [00:32:21] Well Pat I thank you so much for joining us and I know that we're

going to have lots of questions and comments and people are going to know how to

connect with you. So where can people go to learn more about you and what Cisco is

doing here.

Pat: [00:32:35] We we are in the process of posting a lot of you know some material on

our external web site. A lot of it is not all there quite yet. It's sort of in process so you'll

find it in our office of inclusion and collaboration. You'll find materials around life

changer. It's been sponsored by Sherry Slater. It's a diversity officer and her team. But

if you have questions you can you can get questions answered directly by sending an

e-mail to a special email alias we have that we use it's life changer one word life

changer @ Cisco dot com.

You can contact me my Twitter address which is @Promzek or my e-mail address

which is P-E ROZEK at yahoo dot com or PROMZEK at Cisco dot com same email

address. Cisco versus Yahoo's so feel free to reach out to us if you'd like to know

more we'd be happy to share. You know what we're doing and we don't think I would

tell you just that.

Well we're really happy with the success we've had. We don't think we've got

everything figured out here and we learned as well from other folks. So it's always

good to collaborate. We do think there's a significant opportunity though to enhance

our brand our workforce and our business. It does require extensive focus and

execution both top down and bottom up focusing and doing it in the right way makes a

big difference for us. But we think the opportunities are enormous.

And you know Cisco's vision. It goes back to our founding you know 30 years ago was

change the way the world lives plays and learns we can't think of a better embodiment


of our vision in this project and that's what's helping us really create a lot of

momentum that we get a lot of support internally. So I hope you find it useful but it's

probably useful and we'd be happy to share what we're doing is well learn from other

folks as well to hopefully make a difference in the world and transform the lives of

people with disabilities at the end of the day.

Jessica: [00:34:29] It's conversations like these that provide insights into the larger

organizational changes that need to happen for an organization to embrace an

inclusive hiring program. As we've seen from Pat and his work at Cisco it's not simply

creating a new talent funnel and candidate specific marketing programs. Companies

have to flex their entire interview selection onboarding and training program to truly

make an inclusive workplace. Thank you for join in the work alci podcast a podcast for

the disruptive workplace leader who's tired of the status quo. This is Jessica

Miller-Merrell. Until next time you can visit work all day dot com to listen to all our

previous podcasts episodes.

To find out more about Project Life Changer at Cisco you can connect with Pat on

Twitter (at @promzek), on LinkedIn (Patrick Romzek), on the Cisco Website for

Inclusion and Collaboration or by emailing a special alias Cisco setup at

[email protected]

Episode Link: http://workolo.gy/ep120-wp


mailto:[email protected]

http://workolo.gy/ep120-wp

Ep 120: Cisco's Inclusive Hiring Program with Pat Romzek

Business

Transcript of Ep 120: Cisco's Inclusive Hiring Program with Pat Romzek