Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Eric Thomas Of Genesys On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have a Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Keep an open mind. You truly don’t know where your career or life will go.
As we all know, over the past several years there has been a great deal of discussion about inclusion and diversity in the workplace. One aspect of inclusion that is not discussed enough, is how businesses can be inclusive of people with disabilities. We know that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. What exactly does this look like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about the “How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Are Disabled “.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Eric Thomas, Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer.
Eric is the first Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at Genesys where he leads global programs that deliver progressive diversity and foster an inclusive culture throughout the company. He focuses on programs that aid to attract, develop and promote talent that is representative of the communities the company serves. Eric encourages employees to bring their best selves to work every day. Prior to his current role, Eric served as vice president of Global Delivery, in Genesys Professional Services leading a team of more than 450 employees responsible for worldwide implementation services.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
Of course, thank you for having me in this interview series. I am actually not a seasoned DE&I practitioner. I spent the last 25 years in many different corporate roles with the most previous role being the VP of Global Delivery in Genesys Professional Services where I led a team of more than 450 employees who were responsible for worldwide implementation services. When Tony Bates took the helm of the company in 2019, he initiated a cultural transformation with the goal to establish a more empathetic organization. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, those efforts were accelerated and my current role as Global DE&I Officer, and the office of DE&I were created.
You are a successful leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Oh I think there are many more than just three, but the three character traits that have been most instrumental would be adaptability, self-awareness and faith. We all have strengths and weaknesses, but being aware of your capabilities as well as your limitations is extremely important. I came into this role knowing that I didn’t understand DE&I as a business so there was a level of having to navigate the things I did know and also what my limitations are without letting those limitations become limitations forever. One of the first things I did was to create a network of other Chief Diversity Officers who are seasoned practitioners so I could spend time with them and pick their brain to begin closing the gap of my limitations. You then have to have faith and confidence in your ability to lead others on the right path but have the self-awareness to adjust if it isn’t going right. I had to place faith in my learning agility as well as previous experiences to continue to have the success that we have had over the past two years.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
A few times throughout my career I was selected to support failing environments and try to figure out how to turn things around. These types of situations are overwhelming and stressful because you don’t even know where to start and you also want to be the reason that it gets better. There is usually a level of urgency to get things immediately fixed, but you must be careful to not break things more than fix it. So you come in patiently listening to observe so you can properly see the real problems and pain points. Most people will expect you to come in and fix the problem by getting things back on the original track, but in reality, you lay a new track which is something you have to get key stakeholders on board with. In addition, you must have courage and faith in your ability to implement these changes that have to be made in order to course correct.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
Since Genesys’ DE&I Office is relatively new, it has been an incredible experience to create something from the ground up and ensure we build something that will leave an impact on Genesys long after I am gone. We are really focused right now on creating a more diverse workforce by ensuring we are hiring women and people of color. We are really wanting to ensure the work environment at Genesys reflects the world and communities that we live in which are filled with people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to our discussion about inclusion. Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to promote Diversity and Inclusion? Can you share a story with us?
As I mentioned earlier, I am not a DE&I practitioner by trade. I started in this role because I was inspired by the direction and the idea that this office could lead Genesys to become a more inclusive work environment. The well-being of our employees is our number one priority — and that means creating an environment where every voice is heard, valued and understood, where every employee can be their authentic self at work. We lead with empathy, but we do understand that true global inclusion is hard work. One of the things we did to work on extending beyond race, ethnicity and gender to be inclusive was to speak with each of our global offices about challenges facing those specific offices. Because what is considered a challenge in the United States, may not be the same in India or the UK. So we listened to each of these regions so that we could then take back all the feedback we heard to create goals for DE&I that would impact Genesys on a global level.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have an inclusive work culture?
According to the CDC, a whopping 25% of Americans are disabled and one in three have unmet health care needs. That is a large percentage of your customers and employees who aren’t able bodied, but have to use products or go into offices that aren’t created for people with disabilities. Most products and offices that companies build are solely created with abled bodies in mind, aside from what is legally required in each state. This creates a one minded track that limits the people who either use a product or work for a company. Having people who are truly different from each other lends to new perspectives being brought to the workplace which will lead to new products being created that can be used by a wider range of consumers.
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what this looks like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Can you please share a few examples?
Ensuring that workplaces are more accessible is both an investment as well as a shift in mindset. Part of that is rethinking corporate culture. If leadership doesn’t explicitly discuss disability and destigmatize it, those employees and customers dealing with it are more likely to struggle in silence. They are more likely to fear that raising an issue at all is “making a big deal” out of it. In some cases this can create the exact prejudice that the employee was trying to avoid in the first place. But when you create an atmosphere where everyone can openly discuss their needs, you can create change culturally. Unlearning stereotypes and bias around ableism is an important first step to creating a culture of acceptance and positivity. Listening and learning is key. This can be uncomfortable, but it is a necessary first step.
Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? If you can, please share a few examples.
Disability can be a visible, readily identifiable condition, like deafness or cerebral palsy, but it can also be a an invisible one like anxiety. It can be something that affects vision, hearing, cognition, mobility, motor skills or emotional stability. Disability can be lifelong, acquired, temporary, situational, or chronic. We have to adjust our perspective. We have to plan for the possibility of disability instead of designing systems in an ableist way.
Some examples of creating a more inclusive work environment is eliminating physical barriers. Setting aside parking spaces. Installing ramps. Designing workplaces that allow for wheelchair navigation. Providing workers with height-adjustable desks. Making sure that elevator buttons can be reached by all. Offering flexible hours and remote work for people dealing with mobility issues. And when you’ve addressed some of these more obvious areas of need, be sure to include this in job postings and job descriptions. Produce guidelines that explain the company’s position — that you’re actively hiring people with disabilities, that your workplace is solving accessibility challenges and that employees are working together to create a positive and inclusive culture. Finally, establishing disability etiquette can go a long way. Not sure what’s needed? Ask your employees directly. Or hire a consultant who specializes in workplace accessibility to perform an assessment.
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help promote disability inclusion? Can you share with us how the work culture was impacted as a result?
There are more than 2.2 million people around the world who are legally blind or have poor vision. Contact centers and support systems are unable to meet their needs. We here at Genesys wanted to make a change in being able to support those people.
So we partnered with Be My Eyes to create a partnership where companies can give their visually impaired customers brand new tools to navigate customer service easier. Be My Eyes, a mobile app and the largest global community for visually impaired people, allows call centers to provide experiences that are accessible to the visually impaired. Their native integration enables visually impaired customers to connect with sighted contact center agents for visual assistance on a live video call. For example, if a customer is in a drug store shopping for allergy medicine, they can make a video call through Be My Eyes, and the agent on the other end will help them on the spot. It could help locate a product and also recommend related items on sale. By helping visually impaired customers navigate the sight-biased world, brands can revisit their entire customer experience to be more inclusive and accessible. More importantly, consumers no longer need to wrestle with a product that doesn’t work for them.
By pushing ourselves to more inclusive, we are creating an environment at Genesys where our employees are now being exposed to potentially bias and ableism which in turn creates a conversation on how we can become more inclusive not only for our employees but also our customers.
This is our signature question that we ask in many of our interviews. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started My Career”?
There are so many things I wish someone would have told me! The first would be to save until it hurts! I am currently telling my son this at the start of his career to start putting money back into a 401K now instead of later. Prepare now for your future!
You don’t have to have it all figured out at 22 years old. It is okay to explore. I thought I had to have it all lined up and set the course for my career, but perfection is the enemy of good. You should have good outcomes and do good work, but perfection doesn’t have to be the outcome for every single thing you do.
Keep an open mind. You truly don’t know where your career or life will go.
Be your own advocate and share your talent loudly so all can hear. Don’t keep your list of accomplishments and wins just to yourself or even just to your manager. Make sure other people know on your team what you have worked on and the wins you have accomplished. The more people who see the work you are doing, the more you will be acknowledged for that work.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
It’s a quote from Muhammad Ali that basically says a man that looks at his life at the age of 50 the same as he did at the age of 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. As a father and a husband, I am always growing and learning. The type of father I am now is not even close to the type of father I was 10 or even 5 years ago. As far as my role with Genesys, coming out of being focused on a specific business role to now spending two years building the DE&I practice I have learned so much by immersing myself in understanding DE&I. The way I view the office when I first began is nowhere close to how I view the practice now and I hope in another 3 years, I am seeing the practice in a completely different way.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
A movement I would like to inspire is as a mankind we become truly accepting of each other’s differences and different lived experiences. I don’t think we practice that on a wide enough scale and think we are so polarized not just in the US, but also on a global level. I think the movement of finding ways to get us to not necessarily all agree, but just be willing to listen and to accept differences.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
