My first magazine stories on Habitat prompted a flood of calls and letters to David Morris, who co-founded the company with his father Saul in 1981 and, at the insistence of a social worker friend, began hosting clients from Orange Grove Center in 1986.
Parents of grown children with disabilities wanted to know where to find a company like Habitat in their state. Business owners and civic leaders from across the country requested tours of the plant. Human resources managers asked Morris to share his secret. "That’s easy," he’d reply, pointing to his disabled employees. "You’re lookin’ at ‘em."
The piece I wrote for Nation’s Business prompted a Blue Chip Enterprise Award for Habitat from MassMutual and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A Q&A with Morris in Southwest Airlines Spirit in 2003 triggered calls and e-mails that lasted for more than a year.
Since so many people wanted to know more about this unusual company that succeeded not in spite of, but because of, its disabled workers, I decided to write a book about Habitat. In May of this year, Able! How One Company’s Disabled Workforce Became the Key to Extraordinary Success made its national debut.
People with disabilities take one look at the book cover and "get it" right away. They already know how tough the job market can be, that their greatest obstacle isn’t the disability, but the employer who automatically thinks they can’t pull their weight.
This helps explain why the business community has been a much tougher sell. Morris, who was recently honored at an Atlanta Braves game with the EP (Exceptional Parent) Maxwell J. Schleifer Distinguished Service Award, always hears the same questions: Won’t this cost me money? Don’t people with disabilities have more accidents on the job? What if they can’t keep up?
"They do make mistakes, but so do I," says Morris, who speaks from the heart when he lectures to business, civic, education and healthcare groups. "And most of the modifications are minor. All it takes is changing your paradigms and your mindset and realizing that disabled people aren’t dumb."
The Habitat model obviously works. The employees — there are up to 100 during peak season, and most have disabilities — are extremely dependable and loyal, which translates to little turnover and practically no absenteeism. In 24 years, there have been zero back orders, and the product defect rate is less than one-half of one percent.
And what about those on-the-job accidents everyone worries about? Of the three reported at Habitat since 1981, all involved able-bodied supervisors, not disabled employees. What’s more, revenues at this multi-million-dollar company, which moved to Chattanooga two years ago and doubled in size, have steadily grown in an economic downturn that has hit other manufacturers hard.
National studies have, in fact, shown that people with disabilities are often more productive than their able-bodied co-workers. The average cost for modifying a jig, raising a desk to accommodate a wheelchair, or purchasing adaptive computer software, is under $500; state and federal governments frequently reimburse for such expenses.
Despite widespread misconceptions, a few business owners and managers are starting to "get it." Large corporations routinely hire people with disabilities as part of their corporate diversity programs. Others test the waters by employing one or two disabled workers. Some host low-paid "clients" through social services workshops, an approach Morris took before hiring his first developmentally disabled employees outright in 1993. But I’ve yet to find another company, here or elsewhere, that gives priority to hiring people with special needs and pays them standard industry wages, or above. All this, too, without government grants or tax incentives.
