Opening Doors: Recruiting Workers with Disabilities for Business Success

John Cronin says he considers himself to be a stylish dresser, although he concedes that his penchant for wearing colorful socks and mixing striped and plaid clothing doesn’t appeal to everyone. “My mom would say, ‘What the heck are you wearing?’ ” John Cronin says, adding that he would reply, “ ‘You’re not the fashion police.’ ”

John Cronin’s affinity for vibrant hosiery eventually led to the creation of John’s Crazy Socks, a Farmingdale, N.Y.-based business where roughly 65% of the employees have a disability. John Cronin has Down syndrome, and he faced limited employment options as he prepared to graduate from a combination high school/job training program in 2016. He also couldn’t find an appropriate college track. That’s when he and his dad, Mark Cronin, decided to start a company to sell the kinds of vividly adorned socks that John Cronin loves.

Mark Cronin says that before the launch of John’s Crazy Socks, his son had few professional opportunities. “There was a dearth of things for John,” he explains. “A lot of the options were just like day care.”

Today, John Cronin is the face of his namesake company and a jack of all trades. He designs some of the socks, runs the morning meeting that sets the company’s agenda for the day, and regularly posts on the company’s social media accounts. Both father and son are frequent speakers at conferences, where they’ve addressed corporate audiences about the power of inclusion, talked to budding entrepreneurs about how to start a company, and advised social services agencies on how to help people with disabilities find jobs. And if John Cronin has some free time, he’ll also help fill orders.

“John does not just sit around,” Mark Cronin says. “He is an inspiration.”

A Missed Opportunity

Many employers think that having people with disabilities on their staff is difficult and expensive, but that’s most often not the case. A 2023 U.S. Department of Labor report found that when employees with disabilities do require an accommodation, more than half of them have no cost. Of those that do, the median amount is $300.

The government defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. The definition also includes those with a history of impairments, such as cancer survivors, and people perceived as having a disability, such as burn victims with significant scars.

Meg O’Connell, founder and CEO of Global Disability Inclusion, a St. Augustine, Fla.-based consulting organization, points out that many employers already have people with disabilities within their ranks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 27% of U.S. residents have a disability. For about 10% of them, that disability is an “invisible” condition, such as a mental health issue, diabetes, or chronic pain. Last year, SHRM research found that nearly half of employees with invisible disabilities (47%) have not disclosed their conditions to their employers.

“It’s not about a diagnosis,” O’Connell says. “It’s not about your condition, but what you can do for an organization.”

To help companies recruit, hire, and retain people with disabilities, O’Connell helped the SHRM Foundation create the Employing Abilities at Work Certificate program, which is free to employers. It educates HR professionals, people managers, and others about creating a more equitable and inclusive workforce for those with disabilities. The program defines different types of disabilities and explains accommodations that may be required for people who have them. It also gives tips for how to cultivate welcoming workplaces by, for example, sending summary notes after meetings to ensure neurodivergent colleagues can process the information and not scheduling back-to-back meetings in different locations if colleagues have mobility concerns.

Innovative Hiring Initiatives

Mark Cronin says hiring people with disabilities is important to him because of the challenges his son faced finding work, adding that employing people with disabilities—in his son’s case, with intellectual disabilities—is not an act of charity.

All job candidates at John’s Crazy Socks must pass a test that requires them to fulfill six orders in 20 minutes. That means finding the socks in the rows of bins in the company’s headquarters and packing them with a note from John and a piece of candy. “They are good employees,” Mark Cronin says. “They pay attention. They care. They don’t miss work.”

John Bleecker has worked at John’s Crazy Socks for six years, and he says he loves his job. “The socks are so pretty,” Bleecker says. “They make me happy.” He says he has applied to various jobs over the years and never heard back from them. “I like it here because my autism doesn’t hold me back,” he explains.

Efforts to hire people with disabilities extend far beyond organizations with a direct connection to the community. Companies including Boston Scientific and EY have programs to recruit and hire people from this population.

Lori Golden, EY’s global diversity leader, says the organization identifies job candidates through its relationships with multiple nonprofits. It has recruiting efforts at schools for the Deaf and blind. EY also has 17 Neuro-Diverse Centers of Excellence around the U.S. Staff at these locations are trained to interview and hire neurodivergent applicants who may have diagnoses such as ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. They take measures to make their new hires feel welcome, such as being sensitive to sensory needs or specific communication styles.

John Franzen, who has autism spectrum disorder and a stutter, says he looked for a job for 18 months, filing about 100 applications, before landing a position at EY. “It’s hard for me to communicate (my skills) to the person who was interviewing me,” says Franzen, an account support associate at EY. “As a result of that, I got passed over for jobs.”

EY gave Franzen a series of tasks during his interview that enabled him to demonstrate his technical knowledge and skills without having to speak much. While he says he can have difficulty communicating, Franzen adds that having autism spectrum disorder also enhances his job performance: “I hyper-concentrate on a project and get it done.”

Elizabeth Kohm, program manager at the SHRM Foundation, says a good practice for creating job ads that attract candidates with disabilities is to include an invitation to candidates to let the employer know if any accommodations may be needed for a potential interview.

Hiring neurodivergent individuals has helped Boston Scientific staff positions on its production line that can be difficult to fill due to their repetitive nature. The medical device manufacturer created a job training and hiring program with Mind Shift, a nonprofit that helps organizations hire people with autism.

Through the program, neurodivergent people seeking to be hired visit one of two Boston Scientific locations in Minnesota to see the company’s operations. They are given tests to assess whether they may be a good fit with the company. If they are, they are accepted into the training program.

Trainees are paired with a mentor who shadows them for as long as it takes for them to feel comfortable in their role. New hires also meet monthly with representatives from Boston Scientific and Mind Shift to discuss how the job is going. After a year, participants may be offered a full-time job.

“Our strategy is about winning in the marketplace, leveraging all talent to yield the best performance,” says Camille Chang Gilmore, vice president of human resources and global chief diversity officer at Boston Scientific. “In order to do that, we have to ensure that we have a workforce that is reflective of our patients, our employees, and the communities in which we serve. And one of the things that we know is that the neurodiverse community is a part of an employable community that we want to ensure is represented. It can only make us better.”