Ep 120: Cisco's Inclusive Hiring Program with Pat Romzek

Episode 120: Future of Work: Cisco’s
Inclusive Hiring and Apprenticeship
Program with Pat Romzek

Episode Link: http://workolo.gy/ep120-wp

INTRO: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Workology podcast a podcast for the disruptive
workplace leader. Join host Jessica Miller-Merrell founder of Workology.com. As she
sits down and gets to the bottom of trends tools and case studies for the business
leader H.R. and recruiting professional who is tired of the status quo. Now here's
Jessica with this episode of Workology.

Jessica: [00:00:25] Welcome to a new series on the Workology podcast that we're
kicking off that focuses on the future of work. This series is in collaboration with the
partnership unemployment and accessible technology or PEAT. You can learn more
about PEAT at peatworks.org.

Jessica: [00:00:38] In 2016 the Department of Labor reported the rate for
unemployment. For those with a disability was ten point five percent this Talev poll
remains largely intact and presents a great opportunity for businesses who are looking
to hire employees to fill open roles within their organization. The question is how do
companies find engage and retain this untapped talent market. Today I'm joined with
Pat Romzek. He is an executive consultant with Project life changer at Cisco. Pat
welcome to the Workology podcast.

Pat: [00:01:12] It's just great I appreciate it. It's great to be here.

Workology Podcast | www.workologypodcast.com | @workology

Jessica: [00:01:15] Let's talk a little bit about your background so give listeners some
insights into who you are and how you came to Cisco and Project Life Changer.

Pat: [00:01:25] Well think you just go for a for allowing you to be part of this. You know
it's interesting my background. I actually this wasn't part of my job. I was a I lead cloud
strategy for Cisco I left Cisco in March of this year I retired actually my day job was in
the area of sales sales leadership executive roles at Cisco over the last 16 years.

But I'm a special needs dad and I became aware of the terrible statistics around
employment of people with disabilities that you mentioned earlier. And I was in you
know I guess I challenge myself to do something about it. So I started this project life
change a couple of years ago at Cisco sort of outside my day job is really as a
volunteer leader and it's taking on a bit of a life of its own and then subsequently to my
retirement in March Cisco asked me to come back and continue to lead this project. As
a consultant so that's what I've been doing most recently. But it's an area of great
interest and passion for me.

Jessica: [00:02:24] Well, walk us through what Project life changes so that we kind of
can put everything together.

Pat: [00:02:30] Okay great. Yeah. Project Life Changer. We started a couple of years
ago and it was myself and a small group of folks that endeavor to make a difference in
employment of people with disabilities in Cisco as a technology company. Our
company is a collaboration solutions globally. We use it every day.

And because of this technology, I’m working out of my home office. I have the
opportunity to work anywhere anytime. And I had this notion that why couldn't we
leverage technology to try to make a difference in employment for people with
disabilities. A lot of money's been spent over a lot of long period of time as you know
Jessica and it really hasn't had a huge impact. So what we were trying to do is make a
difference leveraging technology and we have this idea that work is something you do
not a place that you go.


And our concept was to use collaboration solutions technology to allow people with
disabilities to work in a virtual kind of you know work environment work from home to
eliminate some of the barriers to employment. It's really grown quite a bit since that
early those early days. It's still fundamentally part of what we're trying to do with Life
Changer but we've we've we've gone well beyond just a technology based solution
into embedding it into our process and culture and making part of what we do at
Cisco.

Jessica: [00:03:49] So one of the things I liked about Project Life Change and I thought
was interesting is that it isn't just limited to a single disability like say Project Life
Changer isn't an autism hiring or down syndrome hiring specific disability program for
Cisco. Why did you guys decide to go that direction?

Pat: [00:04:09] It's a great it's interesting. It's sort of the evolution of this so I remember
it was a volunteer project that I started in as time went on we had more and more
success. We did a pilot in San Jose California actually in us and that's where our
headquarters are. We hired some people. What we found was we learned a lot of the
process. But what we found was there was a lot of global opportunity here. So then we
moved last year into pilots.

We did one in San Jose continue the pilot in San Jose with some non-profits in the
state of California there. But we also did pilots in Bangalore,India where we hire a lot of
people. Other pilots include Brussels, Belgium; San Paulo, Brazil and some and a
couple of other smaller locations. These are large employment centers where Cisco
hires a lot of people and we endeavor to think could we make a difference not only in
the U.S. but in some of these other markets. And based on the success that we had in
those places we then expanded the program to really be global in nature and focusing
across geographies in disability.

You asked the question about disabilities some programs that some companies have
are focused on sort of one disability. What we found is great success across the entire
disability spectrum. You know we've hired people when we did one of the pilots we did
in Bangalore we hired a large group of people that were visually impaired they were

blind. We think about how hard is it to be an engineer at Cisco in our technical center
in Bangalore, India when you're blind.

Pat: [00:05:37] And what we found is that these people's productivity was so high
despite their visual impairment that it led us to start looking in other areas as well. So
we've now hired across really the disability spectrum about 30 percent of the people
we've hired them visually impaired about 40 percent mobility impaired. Remember, we
started Jessica, with this notion of you know location independent in our virtual
employment flexible employment environment where people could work in kind of a
flexible work environment so mobility impairment about 40 percent of the people we
did hire and we've hired a number of people with autism as well.

We've been hiring people with autism for a long time in the tech industry. But 20
percent of the people we've hired have been people with autism and then the
remaining 10 percent are a variety of other disabilities and hearing impaired and other
things by it has been across the spectrum in what we try to do is not be prescriptive to
say we're only going to hire certain types of people and we're only going to hire certain
types of people in certain locations. We tried to focus on where we had the greatest
opportunity for success which typically we're in these large employment centers. And
then what we tried to do is to recruit the best candidates in those locations for roles
and then we accommodated them in the roles. Does that make sense.

Jessica: [00:06:54] Yes. So you're saying that you have focused in really three target
areas as far as geographic. So San Jose Bangalore Bangalore and Brussels. How
many people have you hired throughout the entire existence of the Life Changer
Program.

Pat: [00:07:13] We’ve now moved into what we're calling kind of a systemization you
know our full integration mode at Cisco So we're really embedding this whole idea of
life changer in hiring people with disabilities as a foundational fundamental strategy in
terms of what we're trying to do around talent as a company. So it's gone beyond
those locations. Those were the locations where we we did pilots where we hire most
of the people are in these large employment centers. So Bangalore, India we've hired

quite a few people we part people in Brussels we've hired people in Sao Paulo we've
hired people in San Jose, Raleigh, North Carolina; and Krakow Poland.

Most large companies tech companies especially typically have these sort of locations
where they're hiring a lot of people and that's where we've tried to focus our energy
where we had large critical mass of candidates employees in new hires. Now in terms
of your point about how many we've hired we've hired about 100 people prescriptively
meaning that we have identified opportunities requisitions positions that we
intentionally recruited people into with disabilities.

We have about another hundred little more than that that we've actually got committed
over the next year so that we're hiring into and we've added a couple of other locations
including some other locations in Europe some other locations in Asia. We have a
program that were work that we're launching in Australia and in China. So it's it's gone
well beyond those original locations. But it is typically focused on large you know sort
of employment centers and I'll tell you a little bit more about that when we get into a
little bit more about the recruiting and why we sort of focus there.

Jessica: [00:08:58] It's very impressive especially when you're looking at this from a
global scale. My question to you is how are you recruiting in these different markets for
people specifically with disabilities. I’m assuming recruiting in each location is different.

Pat: [00:09:11] Yeah, it is very different. Typically our recruiting strategy we call an
acquisition or acquisition strategy focuses on three things. First of all we leveraging
we've developed partnerships with non-governmental organizations nonprofits
government groups other advocacy groups in these locations so we typically use as an
example India you know we record a lot of people in India. Well what we did was we
work with some non-profits in India that had a lot of Marketplace awareness and had
access to the talent pool and location. So we use them to source candidates. That's
number one.

Number two we focus on universities that are focused on that the population of people
with disabilities in some location are universities that are really deeply focused on

people with disabilities so we tend to target them. In the U.S. for example, we've got a
short list of universities in the U.S. that we're working with to specifically recruit people
with disabilities. The third thing we've done on the talent side just goes a little different
in maybe different from what a lot of companies are doing. We're building our own
talent pool as well. What do I mean by that.

Pat: [00:10:19] Well we had a challenge in India where we were hiring so many people
that were having trouble finding enough candidates that had the background we
wanted. Now these were technical entry level technical jobs in our technical service
center. So we were looking for people with specific types of capabilities and
background and we weren't finding enough of them. So what we decided to do was to
build our own talent pool. We developed a program we call it the Life Changer Talent
Incubation program.

Essentially what we do is we recruit people in with disabilities that have character traits
we're looking for that have the drive and the commitment and the capabilities to do
these types of roles. And then we put them through an accelerated and aggressive
training program and apprenticeship program to move them into a job. We're building
our own supply chain of talent. And depending on the market we may focus on one or
two of those strategies versus all three but we are employing all three of those
strategies globally to bring people on board

Jessica: [00:11:25] I like the idea of apprenticeship program I think that's really
creative and something that I think a lot of our listeners maybe have heard about or
read about but haven't really considered for themselves.

Pat: [00:11:37] It has made a huge difference for us because then it is we bring people
that have the right character traits we're looking for people that have technical aptitude
but have some of the other characteristics we're looking for. We can give them the
back technical background we can give them the experience to an apprenticeship.
What we can't do is necessarily change their character per se. Right. So we look for
people with character traits. We provide them the education the technical background
through our our talent incubation program leveraging the Cisco network Academy

curriculum by the way. And then what we do is use sort of an apprenticeship program
to sort of orient them in that role to understand what's involved in the role and how that
how that might work. So that's really helped us and now we're actually using
universities to recruit people into these into this sort of academy apprenticeship
program.

So it's been very very effective for us. And I know a lot of tech companies I've talked to
just to have the same challenge where do I find enough talent. You know you've got
employers that will say I can't find people that have the skills any. And then you have
the candidates that say nobody wants to hire me. And the reality of it is is there's a big
broad pool of talent here that are capable of doing these kinds of roles. That may not
have just the exact right experience or didn't go to the right university or didn't have
the right work experience. Well if they got the capabilities and you put them through
training in an apprenticeship programs they can grow into the job and be some of your
Absolutely but employees.

Jessica: [00:13:09] Can you talk to me a little bit about the different tools and
technologies you have used as part of the life changer program?

Pat: [00:13:16] Yes so we started out using collaboration solutions. As I said you know
voice video a live voice HD video collaboration tools that we use fundamentally across
Cisco and these are things that we we actually sell. And these are things that many of
our customers use from Cisco. So that was sort of a cornerstone but what we added to
that was the accommodations technology necessary for the individual. And it was all
different.

We would take our collaboration platform we would integrate it with the right levels of
accessibility and accommodations to satisfy and support the individual candidate. And
then we provided you know other tools to help with the onboarding process whether it
was training programs like we talked about earlier or it's you know manager training
and tools and those types of things. But from a technology point of view, it's
fundamentally collaboration solutions coupled with accommodation accessibility

technology.

Jessica: [00:14:17] I think this is an important conversation because it's not just about
having a disability hiring program but also being willing to customize the accessibility
piece for your employees to make sure that they're going to be successful in their
roles.

Pat: [00:14:35] Exactly and just go the other thing I would add and you you sort of
implied that it's more than technology. I mean you need to accommodate individuals
but you also need to change your processes. We started this as a volunteer project
with the idea we're going to use technology you know as a as a real enabler of
innovation. And it was but we learned a lot in the process. We learned that we had
process issues that we needed to work through.

We learned that we had talent acquisition barriers that we didn't even know about that
was limiting our ability to bring people into the company. So we addressed those as
well. It’s not just technology but it was a combination of technology process evolution
and a lot of sort of internal innovation that ultimately led to our success it wasn't
technology and you're right you can't just throw technology at the problem in assume
that you're going to make a profound impact or really make big impact. You have to
address the process issues as well. And you've got to look at this as a sort of an entire
supply chain. That's just my view.

Jessica: [00:15:36] Let's take a bit of a reset. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell and you are
listening to the Workology Podcast in partnership with PEAT. Today we are talking
about the inclusive apprentice program at Cisco with Pat Romzek. You can connect
with Pat on Twitter at @promek.

Sponsor Msg: [00:15:55] The Workology podcast Future of Work series is supported
by PEAT the partnership on employment and accessible technology. PEAT's initiative
is to foster collaboration and action around accessible technology in the workplace. Is
funded by the U.S. Department of Labor's office of Disability Employment Policy ODEP

learn more about PEAT at peatworks.org.

Jessica: [00:16:19] All right let's let's kind of get back to things a little bit. You've
talked you've talked about your program in depth and I wondered what are the some
of the ways that maybe you've had to adjust your candidate interview and selection
process you talked about processes a little bit but maybe kind of talk a little bit more
about those process changes that you might have made. What we found
fundamentally just got is as we started when we when we first started on this pilot we
found initially that we were hiring very many people even though we were trying to end
and as we really sort of did a pretty thorough evaluation of what was happening why
was this happening.

Pat: [00:17:00] Why were we struggling to get more people through the talent recruiting
pipeline. What we found is that while the pool of people with disabilities is vast it's a
huge pool we are working in a partnership with the state of California. There are
hundreds of thousands of candidates and their talent pool that they were providing to
us because they were working with us in partnership. What we found is that often
times the candidates either wouldn't go to you know the best top school because of
their disability they maybe they didn't finish in the top of their class in high school.

They're very intelligent capable but maybe didn't finish the top of their class. Maybe
they didn't go to stand for MIT or or Harvard or Michigan. You know maybe they went
to a community college maybe they went to a different kind of university. typically what
we would see is their background might not be an indicator of their capabilities. So you
know traditional recruiting process where you know we get a hundred candidates for
every rock open requisition at Cisco or more some some jobs we have thousands of
candidates.

Pat: [00:18:02] You're screening candidates based on their resumes. What you'd find
with a lot of people with disabilities is they don't self-declared and say, “Hey, I have a
disability and that's why I didn't finish in the top of my class.” But on paper they sort of
look like candidates that maybe went to a secondary school maybe weren't in the top
of their class maybe didn't have the exact right background experience. So we did we

did a couple of things. First of all, we turned the process upside down. Instead of
looking at candidates and trying to fit them into jobs we looked at jobs and then went
to look for candidates. So we recognized there were certain types of roles that were
the best opportunity for success for someone with a disability.

Typically, theses roles early in their career are the kind of career roles where they can
grow in the company typically in a role that doesn't require extensive travel. So it might
be a job that is more of a desk job or a virtual job they could do from home. We were
looking for roles in specific organizations where it seemed like it was a really good fit
with the talent pool.

Pat: [00:19:03] So we did this whole idea of I call it supply driven by demand. So we
would start with a job which we defined as the demand for the person the talent and
then we would build the supply to match the demand. When we started doing that we
immediately started having more success. And then what followed from that Jessica
was this idea this apprenticeship program. So as we started having more and more
success we started realizing that there were a lot of candidates that maybe just didn't
have the right background.

They didn't have the right experience of the work experience that we could build them
up because they were capable they were highly capable we could build them up using
these incubation programs as a way to give them the experience and the background
to make them successful in the job. So those were a couple of different ways that we
really altered our processes and we're doing that today and now we're using these
strategies you know really across the whole company.

Jessica: [00:20:00] I find this fascinating and I think that a much needed right and that
you guys have recognized this and then you've made adjustments because you are
right. There are so many individuals with disabilities that don't self declare. And so we
are missing opportunities to engage those people because they don't fit into the sort of
that perfect little profile that we've created for those positions.


Pat: [00:20:23] Exactly right. The other thing you know maybe just to add to that you
asked what how we changed the process. The other thing we do is now we're looking
differently. So we're looking for people with specific capabilities character traits that if
they don't have the right background they don't have the right degree from the school
or the right work experience will put them through an incubation program. And when
we bring him in the incubation program we're looking for people with certain character
traits technical aptitude Yes but frankly not as much technical experience more
technical aptitude for character traits. So we'll do things like video interview views
versus just looking only at a resume and references and in feedback we get from
nonprofits or universities so it's changed the way we look at the candidate pool.

Jessica: [00:21:06] Let's talk a little bit about how Cisco is measuring success with this
program. What kind of metrics or measurements or goals do you have. Or does Cisco
have that will say look this this life changer program is successful.

Pat: [00:21:23] Well there's one measure of success, impact. I mean you know it's easy
to say I guess but where you know at the top line sort of we're looking at how many
people are we hiring. How are we changing the mix of our workforce?But there's a lot
more we look at along the way. I'll give you an example. We measure everything at
Cisco so many roles that we have. You know we have a very clear view and measure
of a person’s contribution. Everybody at Cisco is pretty accountable. It's that's the
culture of the company. So some of the people that we've hired as an example. So we
did this pilot in India where we hired people into this technical service you know roll
entry level roles that they were working with our customers as kind of entry level
technical service representatives.

And I told you earlier that some of many of them were visually impaired. We had a
group of 34 people 20 of them were visually impaired. We had so much success that
we hired more and more more of them. What we were able to do is benchmark their
productivity and see they were outperforming their non-visually impaired peers. So
while we were happy we hired these people were really focusing on how are they
contributing to the success of their team and of the company and what we found was
pretty amazing and we've got great benchmark statistics now that have helped us

drive further acceleration of the program because what we found is the people that we
hired in these roles were more productive than their coworkers who didn't have a
disability.

Pat: [00:22:55] And in fact we measured things like service closure rate service request
closure rate of team productivity error rates things like that. And what we found is for
the people that we hired under this program that were visually impaired again think of
them as an engineer on the phone with a customer helping them solve a technical
problem and they are visually impaired or blind or using a screen reader to read a
computer screen.

What we've found is that their service request closure rate for the group from 60
percent to 85 percent. We we were closing issues faster. We were the productivity
group went up 250 percent. They were driving more successful closure of technical
issues and we were getting higher customer satisfaction at the same time the error
rates went down. So you know that's how we were measuring the success of those
individual people and that success then led us to hire even more folks because what
happened was our business leaders recognized not only is this good for people it's
good for society it's great for our workforce our culture but it's good for our business
too. These folks are adding incrementally driving up productivity of the team. So it
wasn't a case of just a social justice kind of a social impact strategy. It became really
fundamental to our business strategy and strategy.

Jessica: [00:24:20] I love that you guys are focused on these areas like the productivity
and the closure rate and the error rate because those it's not just turnover or retention
it's either impacts directly to the business that senior leadership is looking at and is
important to the success of the of your growing company.

Pat: [00:24:40] Many companies are are really focused on this topic but there is
struggle trying to move it through the organization because they really don't have a
very strong business case. The business case is more of it's the right thing to do kind
of strategy versus I can I can I can show you that this will have a positive impact on the
company bottom line. What we have is you know the ability to demonstrate that this

has a positive impact on the company bottom line. So yes,it's the right thing to do.
Yes, it's great for people. Yes, it's great for society and for our customers, but it's also
great for our business and the combination of all of those things has really led us to
have even greater success rate is sort of a success breeds success kind of model.

Jessica: [00:25:32] So you've sort of answered my next question which is I like the
idea of making the business case because that is a great way to think about how to
create a program like this at another organization. What advice do you have for
somebody who might be just getting started or is thinking about putting together a
pilot program like Cisco.

Pat: : [00:26:40] Well, I would leave it with a few things so you know we've been quite
introspective as I said earlier you know we need pilots and we scale. So we're trying to
learn continuously improve along the way we've learned quite a few things. And I
would I would say that it falls into two categories. First is what are the critical success
factors to have a successful program. And then secondarily I've also been asked quite
a number of times where are the barriers. There's barriers.

From a critical success factors standpoint, I would tell you that it's sort of a building
blocks approach. It's not a one size fits all. I talk to them would be like sort of a senior
level manager and a you know what we're going to hire X number of people and you
know go forth and prosper sort of the strategy. What we learned was just executive
sponsorship was important, but so is operational support in meaning we had executive
sponsors that were saying yes we're going to hire these people. This is part of Cisco’s
strategy.

We also had to develop sort of the working operational leadership to drive the process
change and the awareness that the hiring manager level you need both. It's got to be
both top down and bottom up is what I would tell you and there's ways to do that
which I'd be happy to share with folks if they're interested or at least what we did.
Secondly, target of the best opportunities what we found to be successful is don't
focus across the entire company.


Pat: [00:27:40] We have so many thousand employees we have thousands of open
requisitions any point in time. How do you drive change in that kind of a high value
recruiting environment? What we've found to be successful start with a few roles in
locations that we knew we could be successful with. And rather than starting with
talent and bringing them in and having them apply for a bunch of jobs we started with
the roles themselves and we built the talent supply to match that demand. We got
commitments from our business leaders to target people with disabilities for certain
types of roles that we got the supply of talent to match the demand. We built a
business case. It’s really important have a business case because some folks in the
organization are really heard by the social impact of people impact. That's why it's
good for society good for human beings other people are driven by business impact or
other factors so having a business case is really important.

It really makes a big difference to focus on roles in organizations and in leaders where
you can establish talent targets and commitments and strategies not trying to just sort
of recruit everybody and everywhere. It's really about focusing more on where we can
be successful in having the right levels of sponsorship in those organizations to be
successful. And then and then externally building the partnerships with nonprofits and
universities to build the supply of talent and then it's but not least it's it's all about
communications making people aware of what we're doing and we're doing it well why
it's good for the company what the business case is.

And then at a more tactical level you know even just training and awareness for hiring
managers so they know how to recruit and how to retain people with disabilities as part
of their workforce. So it's a combination of things. And I'll be happy to share with you
just like I've got a slide deck that kind of shows some of this that I'd be happy to share
with you if you want to make it available to the audience.

Jessica: [00:29:37] Absolutely. I think what we'll do is we'll include your PowerPoint
presentation into the transcript over on Workology dot com on the on Pat's podcast so
if you just go to the Workology.com website and click on podcast. We'll have Pat's
information and all his resources there for you to be able take a look and kind of get

your thinking caps on. To plan your own program.

Pat: [00:30:03] There's a reason why the employment of people with disabilities has
been a challenge for a long time a lot of money has been spent really hasn't made
huge impact. And what we recognized was that there were a number of challenges that
were impeding our ability to be successful. Certainly, there's misconceptions. You
know it's sort of peeling an onion you know a lot of times the first thing you see is the
misconception that all that a hiring manager or an executive might think well these
folks I'm not really sure.

Can they do the job you know because they know of a neighbor a friend a nephew a
niece that had a severe disability or developmental disability and they're sort of looking
in their mind I'm not really sure if they can do these kinds of roles so there's these
misconceptions the way you overcome those is with education and awareness? You
do have issues and barriers associated with access.

Meaning people can't physically get to work. I mean if you can't get to work everyday if
you live in you know some of these locations where transportation can be a real
challenge. In the U.S. and outside of the U.S.. So you know having a virtual or a flexible
employment model a lot of people work in a flexible work environment and allow them
work virtually allows a lot more people to participate in the workforce than otherwise
could.

Pat: [00:31:21] There's a lot of process barriers as I as I said earlier you know we
record that and we did a lot of process redesign to recognize it and try to enable
accelerated employment. There clearly is bias among some people and you may call it
misconceptions that people may call bias. The business case is really important
because it helps people understand this is not we're not just doing this because only
because we feel like it's good for people.

That's part of it for sure but it's not the only reason we're actually doing this as well
because it's really good for our business. And then last but not least one of the barriers
is as I talked earlier this notion that some of the candidates are highly capable but

don't have the exact work experience or education levels that we would look for. And
as a result what we are trying to do is to build a supply chain of talent using training
and apprenticeship programs to bring people more capable. And give them the
employable skills to make them successful at Cisco and beyond.

Jessica: [00:32:21] Well Pat I thank you so much for joining us and I know that we're
going to have lots of questions and comments and people are going to know how to
connect with you. So where can people go to learn more about you and what Cisco is
doing here.

Pat: [00:32:35] We we are in the process of posting a lot of you know some material on
our external web site. A lot of it is not all there quite yet. It's sort of in process so you'll
find it in our office of inclusion and collaboration. You'll find materials around life
changer. It's been sponsored by Sherry Slater. It's a diversity officer and her team. But
if you have questions you can you can get questions answered directly by sending an
e-mail to a special email alias we have that we use it's life changer one word life
changer @ Cisco dot com.

You can contact me my Twitter address which is @Promzek or my e-mail address
which is P-E ROZEK at yahoo dot com or PROMZEK at Cisco dot com same email
address. Cisco versus Yahoo's so feel free to reach out to us if you'd like to know
more we'd be happy to share. You know what we're doing and we don't think I would
tell you just that.

Well we're really happy with the success we've had. We don't think we've got
everything figured out here and we learned as well from other folks. So it's always
good to collaborate. We do think there's a significant opportunity though to enhance
our brand our workforce and our business. It does require extensive focus and
execution both top down and bottom up focusing and doing it in the right way makes a
big difference for us. But we think the opportunities are enormous.

And you know Cisco's vision. It goes back to our founding you know 30 years ago was
change the way the world lives plays and learns we can't think of a better embodiment

of our vision in this project and that's what's helping us really create a lot of
momentum that we get a lot of support internally. So I hope you find it useful but it's
probably useful and we'd be happy to share what we're doing is well learn from other
folks as well to hopefully make a difference in the world and transform the lives of
people with disabilities at the end of the day.

Jessica: [00:34:29] It's conversations like these that provide insights into the larger
organizational changes that need to happen for an organization to embrace an
inclusive hiring program. As we've seen from Pat and his work at Cisco it's not simply
creating a new talent funnel and candidate specific marketing programs. Companies
have to flex their entire interview selection onboarding and training program to truly
make an inclusive workplace. Thank you for join in the work alci podcast a podcast for
the disruptive workplace leader who's tired of the status quo. This is Jessica
Miller-Merrell. Until next time you can visit work all day dot com to listen to all our
previous podcasts episodes.

To find out more about Project Life Changer at Cisco you can connect with Pat on
Twitter (at @promzek), on LinkedIn (Patrick Romzek), on the Cisco Website for
Inclusion and Collaboration or by emailing a special alias Cisco setup at
lifechanger@cisco.com

Episode Link: http://workolo.gy/ep120-wp


Ep 120: Cisco's Inclusive Hiring Program with Pat Romzek

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Ep 120: Cisco's Inclusive Hiring Program with Pat Romzek