TRANSCRIPT
Advancing Equal Employment Opportunities and Creating Inclusive Workplaces
Part 8: Large Employer Initiatives and Public Sector Employment

February 25, 2020 from 2:30 – 4:00 pm [Eastern Time]

Celestia Ohrazda: Good afternoon, or morning for some of you, and welcome. I'm Celestia Ohrazda, information design specialist for the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University and the Southeast ADA Center. The Southeast ADA Center, a project of a Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, Georgia APSE, and the Washington Initiatives for Supportive Employment, which is abbreviated as WISE, W-I-S-E, are partnering to bring you this eight part webinar series. "Advancing Equal Employment Opportunities and Creating Inclusive Workplaces." Thank you for joining us for our eighth webinar, and last, "Larger Employer Initiatives and Public Sector Employment." The goal of this eight part webinar series is to build awareness of Employment First, a movement to advance meaningful employment, fair wages, and career advancement for people with disabilities. The series will future a variety of topics for supported employment providers, vocational rehabilitation professionals, people who identify as having a disability, and also their families. Each of the webinar embraces the vision, mission, and values of APSE, and provides tools and resources that can be used to advance equal employment and opportunities for people with disabilities. All eight webinars have been archived, so if you've missed any, take a moment and try to catch up. I want to thank APSE, A-P-S-E, the National, for their support and encouragement of this eight part webinar series. APSE is the voice of the Employment First movement and a leader in advancing equal opportunity for people with disabilities in the workplace. APSE has provided guidance, speakers, and promoted the series. For those of you who are APSE members, you already know that you are part of a great organization. If you're not an APSE member, I encourage you to join so that you can take advantage of all that APSE has to offer. You may learn more about APSE membership at their website at APSE.org. First off, I'd like to introduce our presenters for this webinar. We have Susan Harrell, who's the assistant executive director from the Washington Initiative for Supported Employment. We also have Keri, who's a human resources supported employment program supervisor from Kitsap County. Brian Collins, who's a senior manager real estate and facilities for the Microsoft Corporation. Gillian MaGuire, who's also from the Microsoft supported employment program manager, and Ryan Farrow, also a supported employment program manager with the CBRE Nike account. At this time, I am going to turn our webinar over to Susan. Susan.
Susan Harrell: Yes, I'm here.
Celestia Ohrazda: Great!
Susan Harrell: Good afternoon or morning.
Celestia Ohrazda: Yeah, I'm not sure. You know, we actually have people from all 50 states, all territories. And we have people from South Africa, Australia. So we have people from all over the world who have registered for this webinar series. It's pretty exciting. 
Susan Harrell: That is exciting. I'm happy that everyone could join us. And hopefully others will be able to view this from the archives. So I'll go ahead, and I think I'll first talk a little bit about my experience. And then I will have our other presenters talk a little bit about their experience, how long they've been working on their projects and other experience that they have related to this field. And then we'll move on to those slides with the content. So, I work fist off at WISE, and our organization provides technical assistance and training on a variety of topics around being supported employment. Particularly for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. But we also do some work on other projects that are involving other folks with significant disabilities. I focused over the last 20 years on large employer initiatives, both public and private sector. Starting first with Washington state. We have a supported employment program here and I was one of seven job developers that helped to develop that program and sell it to state agencies as well as developing the jobs that were posted and announced and filled. And from there, I have continued to work with large employers and it's really utilized a lot of my job development skills that date back to when I started a supported employment program in 1985. It also brings in a lot of the things that I've learned in working with social security and medical benefits, because often there are questions surrounding that when we're thinking about large hiring initiatives and potential bottleneck. As well as a variety of other experiences that I've had. And over the years, I have connected up with all of the presenters that are presenting today and have worked with them on a variety of different efforts or in a variety of different capacities over the years. With that, I'm going to go ahead and ask Brian to start. We can move from left to right on this presenter slide deck. 
Brian Collins: Thank you, Susan. Hi, my name is Brian Collins. I am based in Redmond, Washington state. I am a senior manager with Microsoft in the real estate and facilities group. And in our team here at Microsoft, we manage Microsoft's buildings, the design, maintenance, and upkeep of our buildings. As well as the services that we provide our employees. Food services, transportation, landscaping, mail, et cetera. And to my right is the person who runs the supported employment program for me, Gillian MaGuire.
Gillian McGuire: Thanks, Brian. So hi everybody, I'm Gillian MaGuire, I'm the program manager-- I work for CBRE but CBRE is a vendor to Microsoft. So I'm working on the Microsoft account, hand-in-hand with Brian in advocating for improving/expanding this supported employment program. And I have the pleasure of having worked with everybody on this screen in one capacity or another. My background is in civil rights for people with disabilities. I come from a long career in civil rights and advocacy, so being able to join the corporate world on building a solution for employment for people with disabilities has been a real honor to me. It's been a real pleasure. So, hand it over to Ryan.
Ryan Farrow: Thanks, Gillian. Hi, I'm Ryan Farrow and I'm on the CBRE account with the Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. And I started here about a year ago, a little over, about 15 months. And my background came also from starting in the field. I started as a part-time job coach about 10 years ago. And continued to do work as an employment specialist, started to work on job development, and you know, business relationship development. And actually had the pleasure of working directly with Susan for a while at WISE as well. And then joined this account recently, jumping into the corporate world out of non-profit. And so I'm excited to be here and share with everybody. And I'll turn it over to Keri now.
Keri Sieckowski: Hi, thank you. This is Keri Sieckowski and I'm located in Kitsap County, Washington, specifically in Port Orchard, which is the county seat. Geographically we're located across the Puget Sound from Seattle, if that gives you an idea of where I am. My background is actually in human resources, not in supported employment. But the county started a supported employment program initiative a couple of years ago. And I'm the program supervisor over that. So I've partnered with Susan and WISE to get that program up and running here at the county. And I'm really excited to be here today to tell you what I've learned.
Susan Harrell:  Great. Can we advance to the next slide please?  So, the way that we titled this is it's universal. And that was really our original title slide. And I just wanted to point out that one of the things that I've discovered in the years that I've worked on these initiatives, really, in a lot of the job development I did prior to this large employer focused development, is that it really is universal. A lot of the things we do to our employers impact and benefit all of the workers in the workplace and the culture of the workplace. And so the things that we bring are things that employers are seeking and it really is helpful to them. So that's the reason for the title. Next slide... So I'm sure most of you know about supported employment and what it is. But just for a quick review of what it is that we're looking at in terms of building these projects, we're looking still at crafting duties around an individual's interest and skills and needs and providing training to the individual and those in the workplace or having someone who's providing that training to assure that long-term success And creating jobs within the community in an integrated setting at a competitive wage. 
Susan Harrell:  It's really about real jobs for real pay and particularly wanted to point out that even with these large employer initiatives, as we're describing them and you're hearing about the way that they're set up, just keep in mind that the flexibility around crafting duties to meet the individual who ultimately is hired and their interest, skills, and needs still exist as a part of these programs and projects and it's really a cornerstone to the approaches that they use. Next slide...
Susan Harrell:  In Washington state, a developmental disability, it may be defined differently than it is in your state or your country. But just to kind of provide the framework around the population that these projects are focused on, they're focused on people with developmental disabilities and that means that it originates before the individual attains the age of 18, and it continues or it can be expected to continue indefinitely. And it results in substantial limitations, both in adaptive and intellectual functioning and/or each of those things. And I have a list of eligible conditions that qualify if those other substantial limitation requirements are met. And I won't bother reading through all of them, but I wanted to provide that as framework. Next slide...
Susan Harrell:  Again, it's universal. And you know, we learn as we're doing these kinds of projects that considering the needs and abilities of everyone, the diverse group of people who could become employed within a workplace throughout the design process allows you to really think about creating products and services and environments that truly meet the diverse population of customers and employees' needs. And I put a quote in here from Microsoft because I just think it says so much about what this is about. "The diversity of our workforce and the inclusion of talented people from different backgrounds is the fuel that keeps the engine of innovation and growth running. It is essential to our long-term success in order to build the best products for everyone, we need to have a diverse and inclusive workforce across all abilities." And I want to just mention really briefly here that I talk to employers about focusing on people who have significant intellectual and developmental disabilities and the reason that I do that is because if they can figure out how to make things work in their structure and processes and all of the things that go into creating a sustainable effort in supported employment, they'll be able to take what they learn and move that through the organization and apply it to other people of diverse backgrounds and needs. 
Susan Harrell:  What I often find is that it's easy to start with thinking about disabilities that we see all the time and that we see people working in workplaces and maybe you widen doorways and lower or raise desks and make things accessible physically for someone. But when we're talking about actually looking at people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, they are often left behind. They're highly unemployed across the country, across the world, and if we can figure it out for that group, that information transfers to applying it to other populations. But if we stop doing that, if we only start with what is happening and has been happening in many workplaces all along in terms of modifying things for somebody with other kinds of disabilities, sometimes we just don't get to employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. So that's why we focus on this. It's not that we're saying that these employers will only hire people who qualify under that definition I read earlier, it's that we're saying let's start building that basis of understanding to make employment work for all and let's start by focusing on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Next slide...
Susan Harrell:  So this is just a list of some of the things that we see either increase or decrease with supported employment in the workplace. And this is something that I actually borrowed and modified from a project in King County, Washington. And really, I thought spoke a lot to what are these selling points around supported employment, both for supported employees, potential supported employees, as well as the employer. And really what we see is that the increase that happens in a variety of factors for individuals to become supported employees is they increase their confidence, their status and autonomy, their skills, the economic benefit, as well as their contribution. And I really think that contribution has been something that people have longed for and not had the opportunity so much to be able to experience within a workplace, a community workplace. And for the employer, we see an increase in diversity, inclusion, productivity, efficiency, meaningful work, and actually Brian added this last modification to this chart, which is awareness. Did you want to talk a little bit about that, Brian, and your experience with that?
Brian Collins:  Yeah, I think that I come at this from two particular angles. One is when I describe being accountable for the Microsoft supported employment program to my peers out in the industry, real estate and facilities executives, they'll say "well, what is that?" So I have an opportunity then to have a conversation about the community of supported employees. What that means, where they live, how they live. And that becomes kind of super important in creating that awareness because they have been underrepresented in the workplace. And the meaningful work then is super important as well for us. Because as we reach levels of very low unemployment, we don't want to overlook people with ID/DD, we want to make sure that we can fill jobs. And for us, I'll talk a little bit later about what those jobs consist of, but they are entry-level jobs and they can very easily be and successfully be carried out by this community as well. Thanks, Susan.
Susan Harrell:  Thanks, Brian. I've really seen the impact to product development and adaptations as well. And I know that you're going to be talking a little bit more about that a little later in this presentation. So I think that's really exciting. You know and I think the list for the things that we see decrease is equally important. For individuals with disabilities, we see isolation, poverty, and the need for public assistance decrease. And then for the employer, there's a decrease in turnover,  we're able to find individuals that are really satisfied with the work that is being offered and are very pleased to have the opportunity. And that doesn't mean that we have zero turnover, you know, people with disabilities experience the same kind of things in life that other folks experience. And sometimes that means that the job just doesn't work out or they move on. But we also see people get promoted into new positions and grow in their jobs. We see a decrease in the stigma around disabilities. And that's mostly because familiarity and really having the experience of working alongside someone who is also contributing changes the perspectives of all of the workers in the workplace when it comes to their thoughts about individuals and what they can contribute when they have an intellectual or developmental disability. Or any other kind of disability. And then inefficiency, you know, a big piece of what happens when job development for supported employment is really looking for efficiency, really figuring out how best to leverage the work that an individual can do in a supported employment position to free up other workers to do more of what they were really hired to do. Next slide. 
Brian Collins: So this piece about measures of success, really, you know, you could go through the list and see but the list looks the same as what we all want out of our workplace, which is the job that is more alike than different from everyone else's. So all of these things about wages, hours, and benefits being the same as what other people would get. Having a job that really meets what you have in terms of your capabilities and interest and strengths and encourages them and promotes the idea that someone will move into more challenging work and challenging positions and develop their skills. 
Brian Collins: And then the relationships piece. Being part of the activities in the workplace and the discussions in the workplace, whether it's true relationships between a supported employee and the other people in that workplace. And in the end, I think it helps to overall increase the independence of the individual across the variety of blocks of life. And improves the quality of their life and the productivity and the supports the come into play in helping the person in the workplace with either the natural supports or they're a job coach supporting them, keeps their eyes on all of these measures of success and tries to hold true to all of these values in order to assure that the individual really ends up having a job that is like what the rest of us would like. And it's ultimately something that I think is super important for all of us within the support community to stay focused on, is that it is our job to try to assure that people move into a job that is like what we would like. Next slide. 
Brian Collins: So, this is one of those slides where I really wanted to make the point that there are a variety of ways to create employment for individuals with disabilities. And you know, there's the generalized job development model which I would say happened a lot in the early years of supported employment, back in 1985 when I was starting out in this field. And it's that a job is available and you kind of look around and figure out do you have an individual on your caseload as a provider of services who fits what that job requires? And the person applies and gets the job. Now that's one way of developing jobs, but we've already experienced that that doesn't work for everyone. And then there's individualized, customized job development where you're really taking the individual first and identifying a job that is starting with the needs of that specific individual and creating the tasks that meet the needs of the employer as well. And often we're creating a proposal for employment after we've done a lot of informational interviews and gathered the information we need to see how things might work. We go to the employer with an individual in mind that we have identified through a variety of processes has certain needs and skills and would want to contribute in a particular way and we craft a job that way. And then the primary large scale model that we'll be talking about today is what I like to call a reverse customized job development approach. I've heard people say that large scale hiring models are not customized employment. And what I would say is that it depends on how they're created. That in the models that I've worked on, there's a focus on creating a job that has flexibility and duties. So you might create a job description that initially has 20 different things that the individual could be doing as a part of their job. And the individuals apply. The employer decides who they want to hire through an interview process. And often, you'd be surprised that the decisions employers make around who they want to hire, because I've heard folks say, "Well they'll only hire the person who seems to be able to do the most of those duties." But in fact, employers often think about who fits their workplace, the culture of the workplace and really feels like they belong there. As they're going through the interview, just as they do with other people who are being interviewed, and the job then is customized.
Brian Collins: So its 20 tasks are customized down to the tasks that meet the needs of that individual and their contribution that they can bring to the workplace. It also can include maneuvering what the person is doing around available transportation for the individual to get to and from the job, or other kinds of things that might call for a modification in the hours that somebody works and therefore impacts the duties. What I'd like to say is that an inclusive employment for all approach, when you're really focused on getting everyone employed, everyone who wants to be employed can be employed, you use all three models because it will increase your employment outcome. And we've seen it work really well with being able to apply. Certainly, the reverse customized job development approach, alongside the individual customized development-- job development approach, because Microsoft will talk about their numbers. They hired a huge number of people into supported employment positions in the years that they have been working on it with this particular structure. And you'll hear from the others as well about what they're doing as a potential for a number of individuals to be employed this way. Next slide...
Brian Collins: So the hiring framework that we use, although it's adapted around what the employer wants in terms of how they approach and get to these things, but really what we're looking at is a program that achieves scalability, which means that the planning for the growth of the program is comparable in terms of the size of the employer. So often I talk to employers about a 1 to 3% targeted number over however many years they think it will take them to get there. And so they really work on scaling. It's not that they necessarily set that goal externally, but they think about growing their program. Sustainability. So making sure that things continue. And to me, one of the best ways to do that is to craft the approach, the actual structure of the program, around what the employer needs and what will work in that environment so that it can be sustained. And then making sure that quality exists, that you continue to look at any issues that are coming up and address them promptly and proactively. And make sure that you're getting feedback from all of the people that are involved so you can make sure that you are hearing when something is happening and you can step in. Next slide.  
Brian Collins: So I want to just briefly go through these basic components and then get to the presentations we have planned around the various projects. But the basic components, when I'm talking to an employer about what is it that needs to happen, we talk about job development as one of those components. So determining who develops the jobs in that large employer work setting. Defining the job structure, tasks, and hours. You know, thinking about who's going to be doing that as well as providing information to department managers and staff about the supported employment program in that environment. And there's a variety of approaches that can be used. You can have a community job developer from one work-- one employment provider agency be the point of contact for job development. You could open it up to all employment services providers for job development. You could hire internally or change somebody's role within that employer environment to be able to create that job development kind of [inaudible]. Or you could contract it out otherwise to some other entity that's separate from the employer and separate from the job coaching, job development agencies that have a pool of potential candidates. And then candidate [inaudible], you know, trying to figure out where you're going to distribute the job announcements, how you're going to screen the candidates, and what needs to happen during the hiring process and how you're going to support that to make sure that an individual and all individuals that are interviewed really have a worthwhile experience in that job interview and that those who are on the interview panel or singular department manager, however that works out, that they also are getting the support they need to be able to be effective in that interview process. Next slide...
Brian Collins: Next component I want to talk about is initial and long-term training. You know, there's a selecting of providers of these job coaching services. And I have to tell you that some of the large employers that I've worked with have decided to select just a few and go through a request for information process to screen for certain factors that they think will help them to know that that job coaching agency and every other one that they select will be able to do the work and have a pool of candidates that they can source for potential hires as well. 
Brian Collins: And then there are others in large employer initiatives that decide that they're going to only have one agency provide all of the job coaching services. And yet others will open it up to the whole group without any kind of a screening process. So it varies from location to location. It's really based on what the employer decides they want to do. And then really thinking about the quality of the support that the job coaching entity, whoever that is, or whichever entity it is, what they provide is also important. So really talk to employers about thinking about setting some expectations about what support needs to look like and the feedback from job coaches when things are going to change. And just a variety of different things. So helping an employer think about how they're going to do that. And then thinking about how do you provide technical assistance and that support to the department management and the supervisor and coworkers, the people that are involved with the supported employee, as well as the supported employee themselves. And then finally, the quality assurance and program leadership component is really about setting the stage right at the very beginning of thinking about a hiring initiative where you get resolutions or directives from leaders about the value of supported value and the kinds of things that are setting as targets and setting as goals to be achieved. And then regular evaluations and reporting on the success of the program. Now this is really about reporting to leadership and continuing to fuel the drive to grow the program and support the program over the long haul. And then really thinking about goal tracking and setting on an ongoing basis. So a piece of it is the regular evaluations and reporting. And then the other piece is setting those long-term goals and continuing to revisit those year after year and thinking about what are we going to do next? Because there's a lot that employers can do and you're going to hear about some of those things here fairly shortly. Next slide? So I'm going to turn it over to Keri now to talk about the Kitsap County supported employment program. 
Keri Sieckowski: Thank you. So the supported employment program at Kitsap County is fairly new. There was a resolution passed late in 2017 that actually created the program. And we were initially approached by the human services department. They have a division of developmental disabilities. And that division is responsible for partnering with employers and Kitsap County and with the job coaching agency to create these placement opportunities within the county. And we identified that ironically, we did not have our own supported employment opportunities here within the county governments. So, we started this partnership with human services to create a county-wide initiative. And drafted a resolution for approval by the Board of County Commissioners. And that kind of accomplished what Susan was just referring to with the quality assurance and program leadership because that really from the very beginning set the stage that this was-- this initiative, this hiring initiative was being created with the full support of County Commissioners. And it also-- that resolution built into it those components such as regular feedback and reporting back to leadership. So that the employing officials, the elected officials, and the board is fully aware of how this initiative is performing. Ultimately the program is housed within human resources. And we within this department are responsible to actually develop the jobs and develop the program and oversee the program growth. And new in 2020 is that we decided to move the budgeting for the positions into human resources, whereas formerly-- formerly, excuse me, if a department or an elected office was interested in trying to create a supported employment opportunity, they needed to find the money in their budget to do this or go to the Board of County Commissioners to request the funding. What we decided to do this fiscal year was to move that funding into a cost center that's actually overseen by human resources. So I was given funding this year for a specific amount of jobs. And then I can go out and create those jobs into the department that I know are interested in them. And they don't have to worry about figuring out where that funding is going to come from within their budget. So that's new this year. And so far that does seem to be working out well. We do have to make sure that because it's-- the money's being kind of overseen by HR, that it makes me take a more active role in overseeing those positions and making sure the work is of value and that it continues to be of value. And so I'm going to be setting up some programs to do that such as quarterly meetings with the departmental contacts just to check in and make sure that their experience is still going well. Next slide, please. 
Keri Sieckowski: So some of our key milestones, I mentioned in November of 2017, we passed a resolution to establish the program. That resolution accomplished quite a few things. One of the things is that it created the actual supported employment classification within our classification system here at the county. And so we created the separated employment associates and it carved out the fact that this is a position that is specific to the supported employment program. In other words, we're not creating accommodations for existing employees who may need some type of a workplace accommodation. We're actually creating a supported employment associate that is specific to the supported employment hiring initiative. That resolution also allowed me within human resources to create a different recruitment process that is different from the process that's as defined in our county personnel manual. So some of the things that are different is that I don't post these positions publicly out on our public website. I create the job posting and then we push it out specifically to the job coaching agencies within Kitsap County. So they are the only ones who receive it. They work with their clients to apply for the positions. And then I partner with the human services developmental disabilities division to screen the applicants. And part of what they're helping me with is to ensure that the people who applied are in fact coming from job coaching agencies and meet the requirements. I know the resolution such as being able to participate, they must be a current client of our Washington State Department of Social and Health Services disabilities administration. So they're able to check on that for me to make sure that these are active, supported employee applicants. And then the other thing we do is if they are chosen to come in for an interview, we mail the interview questions out ahead of time. And if there's going to be any practical testing, we mail that out ahead of time to the job coaches. So the job coaches are able to go over the interview questions and practice some of the practical testing ahead of time. And then the job coach comes into the interviews with their client as well. So, we created this whole separate recruitment process specific to this program. In October of 2018, we hired our first supported employee and that's actually an interesting position in that she supports three departments. So we had three departments that were interested in this program. And we needed to share some of the funding. And so that is a position actually here in my building. And in my building we have human resources, human services, and public works. So all three of those departments share this supported employee, she provides office administrative support to all three of us. In May of 2019, we created a-- we came to an agreement with APSE, which is our largest union, and we have since signed that same agreement with other unions and guilds and what this is is the guilds and the unions recognizing the supported employment program and allowing us to create work within departments that they represent. And working with the unions and working with the guilds to carve out work that may technically be represented work but allowing us to carve that out to create these supported employment positions. 
Keri Sieckowski: So we have agreements with almost all of our unions and guilds now. And then in December of 2019, I received funding for three more supported employment positions in 2020. And just yesterday, the county's seconded supported employee started and she's going to be doing support work in the superior courts. And then I'm in the middle of developing a third position that will again be one of those shared positions, and that's going to be in the court clerk's-- excuse me, the county clerk's office and district courts. Next slide, please. 
Keri Sieckowski: So again, our current numbers. I have currently two supported employees. So as I said, this is a very new program, very new hiring initiative for us. Currently both positions are office aide support-type positions. And both of them are 20 hours a week. And as Susan was referring to earlier with that job creation model, we are very flexible on what those hours can be. And we have also been very flexible with what the duties of the job are going to be depending on the hours that the supported employees are going to be working. So we are willing-- very willing to flex those hours based on the needs on whoever it is that we decide to hire. Next slide, please... So, as we were getting started on this, some of the issues that I ran up against, well for me, obviously I had a learning curve. My background is in human resources and I wasn't even really sure what supported employment was when we started down this road. That's where finding a good partner, if you decide to use this model, finding a good partner's going to be very important. I've been able to partner with Susan. She has come on-site and we've had many phone conversations where we started to really develop what this program is going to look like for the county. And I-- we were talking about this earlier today. I think it was very helpful that Susan was a neutral person. In other words, she wasn't trying to develop any jobs for any specific client, she was just trying to help me develop the program and what the program would look like. And I was very eager to get this program going. I didn't know what I didn't know so I was ready to just kind of jump in with both feet and get it going. 
Keri Sieckowski: So, we hit some bumps along the way. One of those was I didn't anticipate the union response. And it was not a negative response, but I-- you know, I got approval to this program, I went out, I started developing jobs, I was ready to start hiring into departments that are represented by the union. And they were, you know, a couple steps behind me. They were back where I was when I was still trying to figure out what supported employment even was. So they kind of got wind of what I was doing and they had a lot of questions about what is this program that you're developing? What are you coming in and doing when you're coming in and developing work in this department that we represent employees? And what does this meaning for our bargaining unit employees? So, I had to slow down quite a bit, sit down and have quite a few meetings with the unions. And answer their questions and reassure them about what that meant and then ultimately get those memorandums of understanding written and signed off on. This is another area where it was really important, again, if you're looking at this model, if you know of other entities who have run up against this, to reach out to them. So I was able to reach out to King County here in Washington as well as the City of Seattle. Both of who have pretty robust supported programs. And get help from them and get verbiage from them on how they were able to come to agreements with their unions. And pull that information in so that when I sat down with my unions, I could anticipate what some of their questions might be and answer them. Some of the staff response, again, some lessons learned. We had had our supported employee for probably close to a year when I realized that there were still a lot of-- there was still a lot of uncertainty with staff on what was and wasn't okay to, as far as like, can we give her this work or do we have to go through a job coach or do we have to go through Keri because she's the program supervisor? 
Keri Sieckowski: So sitting down, I think had I sat down ahead of time with the staff and had Susan come in and we had our partner in the human services department come into a staff meeting, and really answer a lot of questions again, about what is supported employment and what does this hiring initiative mean for the county? And making sure staff understands that as we hire these supported employees, they are county employees and they are a new team member, they're not part of a special program, they're not different in any way. We're hiring a new coworker, they just happen to be hired under this classification of supported employee associate. And answering their questions and addressing their nervousness and kind of helping the staff get over that hump. And I think had I thought about it, it would have been good to do that ahead of time. And instead of you know, eight to nine months into it. But we could see, as we were having that discussion, we could see the light bulbs going off and staff starting to come up with ideas and work that they could start to share with our supported employee.
Keri Sieckowski: And since then have fully embraced the supported employee as a team member and we've seen growth in our supported employee as well. As people have started, around the building, to interact more and more with her. So that was kind of a lesson learned. To do the staff training up front. And then again, I think we were probably about six months into it, as I mention, our first supported employee is shared between three departments. And it was probably about six months into it where we had a check-in meeting. And we started, even though we're all in the same building, we hadn't been communicating probably as well as we could have. And we realized we had a lot to share and we had a lot to learn from each other as far as job development. There were some things that some of the departments had assigned that other departments hadn't even thought about. And so we were able to kind of do that information sharing. And I think going forward, that's definitely going to be something I do as I grow this program, to start having quarterly check-in meetings with all the program liaisons across the county so that we can talk about what is going well and then as a program supervisor, that will help me keep a pulse on what might not be working out very well with some of the departments so that I can address those sooner rather than later. Susan, I don't know if you had anything to add here. I know we talked a lot about this slide this morning. And I don't know if I touched on all of it or if there's anything you might want to add from your standpoint as we were developing this program. 
Susan Harrell: I don't think so, Keri. I think you did a great job covering the major points. And the one thing that I'd like to say is that somebody asked about this being considered integrated employment in the chat box. And yes, these supported employees in all of these programs that we're talking about are supported employees that are paid at or above minimum wage, they're integrated into the work environment, it's adapting some of the processes to get them in the door that happens. Not so much whether they get paid and are treated like everyone else and in fact, as Keri talked about, there's a focus on making sure that those relationships continue to grow and develop and are seen as the same kinds of relationships that coworkers have with each other in the workplace. Not just with the supported employee. So it's really about making sure that these jobs are real jobs, real wages, with the real benefits that the rest of us experience through employment. 
Keri Sieckowski: And from my standpoint, one of the bonuses of having it in human resources, so at Kitsap County, we have a centralized human resources department. Meaning we support all county government. So I'm not housed in a specific county department or elected official department, I support pretty much, I specifically support the courthouse, so superior court, district court, prosecutor's office, juvenile detention, all of that. And then I back up my coworkers who are supporting, you know, public works, the sheriff's office, community development. So we really have a pulse on what's going on county-wide with staffing and with reorganization issues.
Keri Sieckowski: So from a human resources standpoint, it's really nice. We have-- we have that regular communication with our employing officials, we know what's going on with them and their staffing needs. And it's an opportunity for us to say to them, "Well, have you considered supported employment? I know you need some help. We can potentially free up some staff time, we can carve off some work, create a supported employment opportunity for you," and go in and really work with our customers directly to develop what that job would look like. And then reach out to the job coaching agencies and bring them in. So it's helpful in that, like I said, we're just aware of the day-to-day things that are going on county-wide. And we can as human resources partners suggest to our customers that they consider this supported employment and hiring initiative. And I say county-wide. Every department that I've talked to has embraced this and is very excited about it. I think the biggest worry they have is do I have enough work to keep somebody busy? And yes, we do. And so a lot of that is just, again, it goes back to education and marketing and educating the customers on what supported employment is. It's kind of back, again, where I was on square one where I was like I think this sounds like a really cool idea but I don't really understand what it is. And now that I have an understanding of it, being able to explain that and market it and sell it to my customers county-wide. 
Susan Harrell: Yeah. And I think that one of the things that you and I talked about, Keri, is that what makes you unique is that you were somebody that had not worked in supported employment or individual competitive employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in your work history. You were somebody that your depth of experiences in HR, so we were taking someone who is an HR person, and working to support you in developing those skills that you needed to be able to manage this new supported employment initiative at Kitsap County. And there, in any situation, whether you take somebody who's experienced-- who has experience in supported employment and move them into a role where they're sort of the point person for this? They're going to have some deficits in understanding the relationships within that employer's environment. And so they have that where you have to sort of shore that up and help support them in figuring out how to navigate. Or like with you, you had all of that experience in the relationships with the department managers, and she's an amazing marketer, I've seen Keri do her work with department managers and navigate the union issues. And all of the things that she brings that depth of HR experience to. And then the piece where she needed some additional support was in thinking about how to analyze the job, thinking about the interview process, understanding all of the various components of supported employment. I tell you what, I think she-- she could go out and get a job within an employment agency as a job developer tomorrow. She picked it up really quickly. And the skills she brought on the other side of things around her HR role, it's been invaluable in the work that's being done in Kitsap County. So it's really remarkable.
Keri Sieckowski: Thank you. So next slide, please. So, again, the resolution that the commissioners signed off on throwing their support behind this program, they created some, you know, there's some long-term goals and we do report back to the commissioners regularly. So, obviously we're going to continue to market the program, especially during what we call the budget or the call letter in Washington State, there is an RCW, the revised code of Washington that says that counties go out, we do annual budgets. So every June, this-- what we call the call letter goes out, which is a call out to all of the employing officials to start creating their budget for the coming year. In human resources, we then begin to meet with our customers and start talking to them at what are your staffing needs going to be in the next calendar year? And that's really an opportunity for us, again, to get them thinking about the supported employment program. If they're talking about staffing needs, we can be creative with them. 
I think as part of the program materials, one of the attachments that you should have is a marketing brochure that we created in 2019 going into the 2020 calendar year. And that features Danielle, who is our first supported employee. The one who works here in human resources. So that was something we took out to all of our meetings with our employing officials as we were sitting down with them and with their budget contact to talk about what their staffing needs were for the coming year. One of the things that I probably need to get a little bit more proactive on is really training the other HR staff to always be thinking of supported employment when they are deciding staffing needs with their departments. I think we tend to get very busy to just go ahead and try and, you know, fill that recruitment and get that higher. And it would be good if we could kind of slow down and revisit with the department again and market the program and see if there's potentially an opportunity there to carve out supported employment work. I would like to get funding for three more positions in 2021. We'll see. I'll find out in about November of 2020 whether I have that or not. And we do have ultimately a long-term goal of having about 10% of our workforce, which would be 10 to 11 positions, by 2023. So fingers crossed. And that's it for Kitsap. I will pass it back to Susan. 
Susan Harrell: Ryan, you're next up. 
Ryan Farrow: Quick hand-off to me, thank you. 
Susan Harrell: Yeah.
Ryan Farrow: We'll go to the next slide, please. I kind of already did the introduction, but again, I'm Ryan Farrow. So I'm located at the Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. And really a lot of the stuff that I think we've done as a program, we're very lucky that I'm actually going before Microsoft because we definitely have come much after Microsoft. And Gillian and Brian, Lizzie, and Austin have been instrumental in getting our program off the ground. And a lot of the materials [inaudible] I'll go through. And we use that as a program. So we're the same network, because Gillian and I, specifically we both work for CBRE. And we're counterparts, so I just have to say I mean we've definitely set room for them to go into their program. [Inaudible]. So, a lot of the work that we've done as a program and how we've created it [inaudible] when I started last January and we launched the program and April. And a lot of the work that we did was informed by my experience as an employment specialist. So I know how it feels that when you're out job developing at a wide variety of businesses, doing warm and cold calls, that you're starting to see some maybe gaps, definitely, in how people are even making, you know, getting their foot in the door at all. Being able to actually-- I just want to check-in actually. It seems like people can't hear me very well. Should I do something different? 
Ryan Farrow: Yeah, I'm in a [inaudible]. So let me just turn it up on my end and we'll keep going. Okay. Okay, great. So, like I said, some of the things I noticed as an employment specialist that weren't allowing people to even be seen as a potential candidate was, one of the things I wanted to see change in the program that we were creating. So in coming in, I was meeting with a lot of groups to talk about what are your current hiring apparatuses and how can those be adjusted in general? Because you can try and-- you can try to create a really welcoming workplace, but if people aren't even able to be seen, I mean getting actual interviews and getting past like the algorithms that are set up in order for people to actually be seen. So, actually go to next slide, please? 
Ryan Farrow: Thank you. So, some of these things we end up doing with all the groups we've been engaged with is the one main thing that we do is we do working interview-- I mean working interview component with everything, every job that we have done so far. And in the past about 10 months now, there are have been over-- there's been over 100 interviews. And each time, the candidate will not only have the chance to sit down with the team and talk about how their work and their work experience and their transferable skills align with the position they're applying for, but also there's an added working component attached to it. It's especially important because one of our goals is really seeing a wide variety representation of candidates coming through with a wide variety of support needs on the job. And oftentimes there are many [inaudible] needs that their primary communication style is not verbal or they prefer to have an opportunity to share in person in an action what they want to do. And I've seen this change the way that our teams hire. Because in the beginning, it was clear with certain groups that I knew ultimately who they were going to hire because I'm a part of all the interviews currently. 
Ryan Farrow: I have, so early in the process I'm allowed to have time to do that. But I saw the ways in which teams started making decisions really based on that working component. And weighing that more heavily. Because someone might come in and they don't sit down like a typical candidate, but you see an action, and you see clearly they do align with what we want for this role. And then they have an elevated sense of the types of people that can do that job. So actually, and I kind of put the bullets a little out of order, but the phone scans are something too that we have either adjusted or just straight up eliminated. When I was working as an employment specialist it sometimes was, it was concerning if we were going through the process and we said well everybody needs to go through the phone screening process no matter what. And, as I mentioned, there was... There were times that someone who maybe doesn't use verbal communication, that having an interview on the phone isn't going to be something that will work very well for them. So we help teams and recruiters adjust their phone screenings or eliminate them. And usually I've already talked to the recruiter so they know that the person will have a job coach with them. And will be advocating for an in-person interview after the fact. So a couple of these things, you know, these are helping people to not be flagged by algorithms or computer based on online process or human algorithms that we all have unconscious bias that plays into how we make decisions. And these have helped to interrupt some of that. We also have direct engagement with our candidates and our employment agencies. 
Ryan Farrow: So as Susan mentioned earlier is that some programs, and this is where [inaudible] and our team really align, is we held a request for information process at the beginning of our program to intentionally choose our employment providers that we wanted to work with to make sure there's alignment in the quality and capacity in support of the program. We've always had to expand that group as we build and as we maintain quality and saying that we have consistent-- we have a consistent delivery of coaching services on campus. So that's been really, really important. And we meet on a monthly basis or more so that that way we get a chance to see how things are going from the employment agency's perspective. Because we fit and a place where Nike's campus is over 81 buildings and employees are sprinkled around all those buildings. So for us to be able to get out and see everybody on a daily basis or even a weekly basis is pretty difficult. So we have regular touch bases with all the agencies and coaches. And then also a thing we've been doing with many of the groups is lining up disability training, and the title of the training really is about building inclusive teams by adjusting or adapting the interview process. It's been really helpful because, and we've actually-- we contract with [inaudible] to do this work because the groups that really benefited from having some classroom times and learn some concepts have been when they are participating in the process. They're able to see the value of the working interview and know that there's different kinds of [inaudible] they can use. And honestly at the end of the day, a lot of it is giving people permission to just act natural and treat the candidate-- as the candidate that they're qualified to be there and they can do this job. So those have been really key pieces of leveling the playing field. And I actually like to use that term, too, of leveling the playing field. We find that most everything in communications is rooted back to sport in some way. What I'll share too is that I have limited slides today too because one of the things about a new program is that there's a limited amount of exposure in the beginning stages. There's a hesitation a little bit to get out there really, really broadly to talk about the program until we really get some stuff buttoned down. 
Ryan Farrow: So we felt after the first year or so of the program, this was a good time. But we don't have any materials that we'll be distributing but I'm happy to be a resource at the end. Next slide, please. And I'm just going to finish out with this because I think that the more that-- I've noticed a trend. The more a program has seen successes in people working, that helps other groups to see what's possible. And I'm sure that all of you have seen this in some regard in the work that you do. If one time you can talk to somebody and say hey, you know, we're supporting people with disabilities to find employment. And then that [inaudible] with a similar knowledge base or openness to that will say oh, that sounds great, you know, we're willing to talk about that. And others benefit in the train, hey, remember we talked about that job, I have the perfect person for you. Or I think that you might want to meet a group of several people that might be interested in this job. [Inaudible] people have more tangible experience with disability because all of us have that unconscious bias that builds up with stigma around people with disabilities especially and that really plays into people's decisions to even want to have the conversation. So Barry gave us permission to share his story. And this is the example of actually a lot of customization [inaudible] the individual. We do a mixture of what Susan has up in the slides about reverse customization and generalized job development. But me as the internal job developer, I'm able to see a lot of the jobs and able to talk with them early on about how we could either adapt the existing job description or we'd be able to create brand new positions.
Ryan Farrow: So Barry did come in the process where we had a job we were targeting and we worked with our employment agencies to find candidates. And Barry came through but the way that the job was created, they found it wasn't the best fit for him. They ended up choosing a different candidate. However the team said you know what, we have a lot of different locations on campus, this is our food services partner specifically. They wanted to find a place for him. And they saw what his skills were, they saw that he had a video resume that showed him in action. And they saw him during the working interview. They found a location and that chef that had first interviewed him had moved to a new location and she said "I'm ready to hire Barry." And when we went in there and thought it was just going to be another interview, and really what it was a meet-and-greet, because they said we are going to hire you. And it was pretty cool. Because during-- in the typical route of job development, in the fully competitive process, people like Barry are often overlooked. Because he's someone that his work experience, although very long, he's got 16 years in a shelter workshop in our area and was making less then minimum wage. After leaving, after 16 years in that workshop, he was only able to find volunteer work. And so-- and also his primary way of communicating is not verbally. He uses tactics to be able to communicate. And he needed support in that area. And so we were able to work and have him be seen for his skills and have those shine above all else. And so currently he's working at a competitive wage with his peers making right now 2 dollars above minimum wage and he's working 16 to 20 hours a week. So he's been really great to work with and he's just indicative of you know, a wider story-- or wider narrative we're seeing here. But I'll leave the rest of the time to Microsoft because they have a lot of cool stuff to share and I'm going to end there. Thank you. 
Brian Collins: Thanks, Ryan. It's Brian here. Could we go to the next slide, please? Great, thank you. So the real estate and facilities group at Microsoft deliver our services for employees through over 35 different vendor partners. We're a highly outsourced organization to specialist companies that help us with food, utilities, move services, landscaping. We have a very service based campus environment, which creates an opportunity for us to have a real benefit on the community in which we live. Of course, that's where we started our supported employment program. So when you think about Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Diversity and inclusion is at the heart of what-- of who we are. And we try to embed that in every product and every service at we create. And of course in the community that we live. In fact, it's a strategic imperative for the company. So then Microsoft real estate and facilities supported employment program is a program within the company that provides people with various learning abilities, typically ID and DD, the opportunity to maintain-- obtain and maintain employment through structure of ongoing assistance and support. And those individuals get paid the going rate for the job. We believe in making-- that we don't in fact have [inaudible] minimum wage on our contract or with any of our subcontractors globally. So for us, our mission within this program is to partner with those vendors, local employment agencies, and non-profit organizations to make a substantial difference in the lives of people with developmental or learning disabilities who may have been overlooked in the jobs market. And for us, we started our program formally back in 2013. 
And as we-- just before we go to the next slide, this is Andrew Scott. Andrew works at the Microsoft executive briefing center. And is an employee campus, isn't he?
>> Yep.
Brian Collins: Next slide, please. So we wanted to give you sort of a high view of what some of the major milestones have been in the program so far. Critical to us, one of the big lessons that we've learned and Susan touched on this, was the importance of engaging a corporate level champion for this program. It helps to keep the program invigorated and moving forward. It's been very important and we share that with any other business that we talk to about this program, how important that is to have somebody who provides that leadership. We are really committed to getting community guidance on this program. 
Brian Collins: This is a real opportunity for Microsoft to receive information and better understanding from the community. So we've engaged subject matter experts such as Susan at WISE as we've gone along. We've developed an advisory council, which is made up of the stakeholders in our program from supported employees to parents to subject matter experts to some of our employers and job coaching agencies. We also have an extended leadership team, which is a regular meeting of ladders from the employers that are a part of our program. That's just a handful full of several ways that we communicate with our community. And it's really beneficial. It helps us keep the program on track and helps us moving forward in a way that's really meaningful and important for the developmental disabilities community, as well as Microsoft and our vendor partners. 
Brian Collins: We do have a program management team in this model. Although we definitely, Susan touched on the fact that not every large employer program has necessarily a program manager. Ours has reached scale, which means we have expanded this program beyond our headquarters and we now have locations of Microsoft all across North America and several locations globally that have-- Brian will talk a little bit more about this, that have supported employees. So the need for a centralized program manager is evident in our program at the moment to help kind of manage all those moving parts. And then of course we have a lot of key partners in the program. The employers, most importantly, the coaching agencies, and then all of our local social service agencies who fund the coaching services. 
Brian Collins: So the other large sort of milestones for us are hiring employees, making sure that we celebrate the stories, and Ryan gave a great example with Barry's story. That it's really important to tell those stories, back as Ryan explained, that helps us explain why this is important to hire more supported employees, but it also helps everybody stay energized in the program. We've rolled it out to other locations and we keep spreading the word. And the goal is to keep on hiring people. So those are the major milestones. So we'll go onto the next slide, please.
Brian Collins: Well and only parts of the slide are showing up. So, that's okay. Oh, there it goes. It's filling in. So on this, I just wanted to hit a couple things really high level. This really talks about what we just talked about on the last slide. But I did want to point out that we do use a request for information that was developed for us in coalition or in collaboration with WISE. Again, so that is a document, Ryan referred to it as well, he uses it as well, where we select the job coaching agencies who are going to be good quality partners for us in this program. We flipped to the regular model of job coaching on its head, or job development on its head in this program. We let the businesses tell us what their needs are, we notify the job coaching agencies of the job opportunities, and then that frees the job coaching agencies up to just focus on job coaching rather than spending a lot of time doing job development. That job development piece has been shifted into my team, the program management team. So let's go ahead and go onto the next slide. 
Brian Collins:  So here's some numbers that we have from our program. Locally here, and in the Puget Sound region campus, we've got 7-- 175 employees and 98 coaching partners-- coaches, individual coaches across the region. And we partner with 13 different agencies. We bring up the regional numbers because we actually work quite competitive internally. So having that bit of competition now from site to site as employees are hired is actually kind of good for us. So today we have 229 employees globally in the category of supported employment. And we've had over 295 people go through the program. While the attrition rate is at 10%, we have, or we've had what we would call good attrition where people go onto to take a new job, it might within the program or even graduating out of supported employment into mainstream employment without the coach, et cetera. And the-- we also look at some of the negative, maybe bad attrition as well. Sometimes it's not the right fit for the individual, they might have to travel too far, they've moved and we've lost them. But we want to keep good track of those. If you go to the next slide, please... And here is just the examples of the 30 different job types that we have at Microsoft. And these are all jobs that we needed. There's very few of these jobs were actually created for the program. The jobs themselves, some are full-time, some are part-time, and we know that some of them actually have a full-time coach assigned to the role and some have kind of superseded and graduated from that. As you can see, they're very service based jobs here. And one might even suggest that they're kind of entry level jobs but all meaningful employment from our perspective. Next slide, please. 
Brian Collins: And just kind of some-- really briefly, some of the add-ons that we've had within the program. Because we've got a big community of individuals, we're looking to kind of grow and support that and have reciprocity in a number of different ways. One, we have what we call inclusive gaming afternoons. So I'm sure most people on the phone are aware that Microsoft builds the Xbox platform. So we have a cool lab here and some of our employees go spend time at the Xbox lab. And that's great for them to get to have some fun, but also our engineers actually learn from how the employees are engaging with the software, with the hardware, with the entire environment. 
Brian Collins: We got some great feedback recently that our employees wanted to learn some computer skills. So we set up some life skills on the computer, some very basic programming and operations and some of the folks who've participated in that program now are taking those skills and putting them into office work that they're doing, which again, is really, really cool. Our career progression videos are there to help the vendor companies and managers to look at ways of improving the opportunity for individuals to grow in role. So, as we've grown our program basically we've been able to grow the support and some of the infrastructure we have around that. 
Brian Collins: Our goals still remain the same. We want to hire more supported employees. We want to make sure we've got those employees in all locations across Microsoft globally. And we want to improve our program in any way we can, particularly on the job side. Next slide please...
Brian Collins: So one of the thing that Brian and I do is we will attend events and conferences and accept invitations to share the information about our program with groups such as yourselves. But also with groups of employers, large businesses, small businesses. We take calls from anybody who would like to hear more about our program and what we've learned. And in the spirit of that sharing of information, we've developed a public facing website, which contains open source materials that anybody is free to use and to learn from. We've developed a toolkit on our website. You can see the website address there is AKA.MS/SupportedEmployment. If you type that into your browser, it will automatically populate the address and send you to our website. And on there, we also have several videos that tell the stories of individual supported employees who work on the camps. 
Brian Collins: And the idea behind these little short videos, they're each about a minute long, is that they can be shared on social media. So you're welcome to share these materials and use them if they would be useful to you as you talk to employers. And also if you talk to employers who would like to spend a half an hour, 45 minutes talking to somebody at Microsoft, talking to Brian and myself, we would be very happy to be a resource to you. And everything-- so everything that Brian mentioned, the career progression videos actually are located inside the toolkit and soon will actually be on our website. And all of these materials, like I say are open source and you're very welcome to use them. I just wanted to point out that the young woman on the left there putting up her arms in a victory signal there, that's Tanya Harris. And she works for Suddath, which is the move company here on the Microsoft campus. She is on LinkedIn. For anybody who would like to connect with Tanya, she's on LinkedIn, you can check her out, when I say check her out, I mean connect with her. Sorry. And during the DD Awareness Month, which is March, Tanya is going to be posting her own story about her employment journey on her LinkedIn profile. So feel free to connect with her and like her stories. And with Brian Collins also and myself, Gillian MaGuire, we're on LinkedIn and we'll be sharing stories throughout the DD Awareness Month in March. And we'd love to connect with you. And there's our email address as well if you'd like to pop us an email, SupportedEmployment @Microsoft.com. So four minutes left for questions, alright. 
Susan Harrell: Exactly. And I think I'm going to leave the rest of the slides for attendees to read. I think they're pretty self explanatory. And I want to leave room for questions. And I also want to make one additional comment which is that you can see, as different as these programs are, they hold a lot in common. And a lot of it is really about making it work within their culture. And holding true to values that really arrive at real jobs for real wages in real environments where people have these great relationships with other people. 
Susan Harrell: And finally, I just want to say that both the Nike program as well as the Microsoft program utilize vendors as the employers for people in supported employment. And if you look at their vendors list, those vendors have corporate locations that they vary. And being in your neighborhood or your state or your country. And they already know about supported employment because of the exponential influence that Microsoft and Nike have had by engaging their corporate partners, their vendor community, in this hiring process. So there are opportunities to engage with employers that already are familiar with this, at least in the Beaverton location and in the Redmond location. So consider that when you're thinking about taking this information and moving it into where you live. Now with that, I'm going to just leave it to questions now. 
Celestia Ohrazda: Yeah, we only have four minutes here. So before everyone gets off, we just would like to-- if you have any questions, I will be sending out the email and you can send them directly to us and we will contact the presenters just because we only have a few minutes and we've got to show our little-- our slide here that has our post-test answer in it. And we don't want people getting off the line. So Marsha, if you can advance the slide to the post-test? Okay. So here's our Easter egg. This is Barley the Beagle, also known as the Professor. Keep this in mind, because I know a lot of you will be taking the post-test for educational credit and a certificate of completion. So just hint-hint. So education credit. To reiterate, you must be registered. Your attendance will be verified and the post-test must be completed. Once you complete the post-test, you will be able to print a certificate of completion automatically or request CESP credit. I'm going to put a link to the post-test in the chat room. You will also be receiving an email from me with a link to the post-test, a link to the evaluation, and a link to the archive, that you can share with others. Just get the link here for you. 
Celestia Ohrazda: Here's a link to the post-test because that's always one of the things that people ask for first. So again, I want to thank you for participating in this eighth webinar series "Large Employer Initiatives and Public Sector Employment." This is part eight and the final webinar in the series. 
Celestia Ohrazda: All of the webinars have been recorded and archived. So you can go back and listen or view any of the prior archives and still receive a certificate of completion for those once you complete the post-test. As I mentioned, there's two types of education credit, a certificate of completion, or the certified employment supported professional credit, also known as CESP. And once again your feedback is very important to us. So when you take the post-test or receive the email, take a moment to complete the evaluation. We use these evaluations to further improve any of our webinar series. 
Celestia Ohrazda: And all the webinars in this series and the presentations and supporting materials are on the website. And these are located, I will put them right here in the chat area. At this web. Someone said the link doesn't work. Yes, if you copy and paste the link, it should work for you. Again. If you have any questions, I notice quite a few did come through, send them to our email and I will put that email up here in the chat room and we will follow up with the presenters and the questions. Here is our email address. 
Celestia Ohrazda: If you missed this webinar for whatever reason, it will be archived within-- usually within 48 hours and you will be able to watch it and take the post-test. 
Celestia Ohrazda: presenter contact information. Actually that was one of the questions. And that is available in the archive of the materials as well. 
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Part 8 transcript: Large Employer Initiatives and Public Sector Employment



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