In recent months, Impressions magazine has, on a number of occasions, featured Jed Seifert, co-founder of Ohio-based apparel decorator Stakes Manufacturing, discussing the benefits of hiring workers with disabilities—not only for the workers themselves but the decorated-apparel companies that hire them.
Now Seifert has teamed up Stakes co-founder, Vince Bartozzi, Patrick Bardsley and Tim Howe with Spectrum Designs, and Marshall Atkinson of Atkinson Consulting to create what they describe as the “definitive guidebook championing hiring people with disabilities into the print workforce.”
The result, INKclusivity: Company Benefits of Disability Inclusion & How-to Implementation Guide for the Print Industry, both challenges the printing and decorated-apparel industry’s notion of who should be considered for a job and aims to open business owners’ minds to what is possible when you focus on people’s abilities as opposed to their disabilities.
“We’re helping companies understand the benefits of hiring people with disabilities and what inclusion does for your business. This starts with breaking down the false stigmas and preconceived notions around hiring people with disabilities and then educating them on the incredible free disability employment support organizations all over the country that are eager to assist them. This isn’t charity, many of our top performing and most reliable employees have disabilities,” Seifert says.
Hiring the Disabled: the Ultimate Win-Win for Apparel Decorators
Among the many specifics the book addresses are the importance of building an inclusive workplace culture and environment and implementing effective hiring, onboarding and training practices when it comes to hiring workers with disabilities. The book also provides an overview of the aforementioned resources available to those companies looking to bring in workers with disabilities as part of their overall hiring strategy. And to be clear, this is very much a strategy we’re talking about here, hiring the disabled being one of those things that when done correctly is in many ways the ultimate win-win—a situation in which doing right also means helping out your company’s bottom line.
To learn more about the benefits of hiring the disabled and Seifert’s extensive experience in this area, click here. To obtain a free copy of the INKclusivity: Company Benefits of Disability Inclusion & How-to Implementation Guide for the Print Industry, click here.
