Automotive And Transportation:
A Level Road For Employees With Disabilities
By Sandra H. Shichtman
There are many companies in the automotive and transportation industries
that include college graduates with disabilities as important employees.
They comply with the provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act
(ADA) and provide reasonable accommodations to those who need them in
order to be successful in their careers. Here are three such companies.
Ryder System, Inc.—
Helping You Succeed
Ryder System is a leading provider of logistics and transportation services
to commercial customers in North America, Europe, and Asia. The company
offers full-service leasing, commercial rental, and program maintenance
of trucks as well as comprehensive supply chain solutions. Both sides
of its business—fleet management solutions and supply chain—serve
the automotive industry.
Kirk Imhof, group director, recruiting, for the company, says that Ryder
also transports automotive parts to and from its customers’ manufacturing
plants and warehouses. “We’re a $6.2 billion company,”
he adds. “We have 28,000 employees serving 15,000 customers.”
The 76-year-old company is headquartered in Miami, FL.
The company looks at all types of college degrees when hiring for the
fleet management solutions segment of the business. General business
skills and finance degrees are desirable for other areas. But, within
its supply chain segment, the degrees would revolve around engineering,
according to Imhof. Ryder recruits on-campus, through social media,
and on the Internet at its Website.
“We will have an entirely new Website designed and deployed by
the end of the year,” Imhof explains. A TTY number will be included.
At the present time, potential candidates can call 1-800-RYDERLIFE for
information about the company. In addition to academic skills, Ryder
looks for potential hires to have good judgment, solid character, be
results oriented, and have the ability to build relationships.
Students can apply for Ryder’s summer internship and co-op programs.
Imhof describes them as meaningful programs that align students’
schooling and skills with potential careers at Ryder. Internships are
available for undergraduates, especially those working on engineering
degrees, and individuals in an MBA program for finance. Undergraduates
in any academic year are eligible, depending on whether the classes
they’ve completed mesh with the required job skills. They can
return multiple times, since Ryder prefers to build a long-term relationship
with the student in hopes that it will end up in regular full-time employment
once they earn their degree.
Graduates are most frequently hired into rental manager trainee positions
on the fleet management side of the business. Imhof explains that, in
those positions, they would receive full training and work at the counter
of one of Ryder’s facilities. From entry-level, they could remain
in the management realm or move into the sales realm, either in lease
sales or rental sales. Graduates with engineering degrees could be hired
into customer logistics specialist, logistics engineering, and then
customer logistics management roles. They could remain as logistics
engineers, making individual contributions as specialists in the logistics
realm or move into management and leadership roles.
New hires take part in Ryder’s onboarding and orientation program
that welcomes them into the organization and gives them the tools they
need to succeed. The program includes orientation to Ryder’s culture,
values, and policies; information about what is expected of the employee
in his or her role with the company; facility-specific emergency and
safety procedures; as well as facility-specific amenities. They receive
training specific to their roles. “As their careers progress,
so do the offerings in training and development,” Imhof says,
including mentoring. “We also have general training in diversity,”
Imhof explains. “Then, all managers get a management level training
in diversity.”
Ryder embraces a work-life balance, flexible work options where it’s
appropriate, and stays competitive in the marketplace with its compensation
and benefits plans. And, for employees with disabilities, Ryder complies
with all provisions of ADA, state versions of ADA, and will provide
reasonable accommodations to help them succeed in their roles.
Go online at www.ryder.com/careers for more information.
Toyota Motor North America—
Health And Safety Of Its Employees
In 1957, Toyota Motor North America began operating in the United States.
Today, it employs nearly 34,000 people in this country in its sales,
manufacturing, research and design, and financial services operations.
It currently has ten manufacturing plants and more than 1,400 automobile
dealerships here. Its parent company, Toyota Motor Corporation, employs
more than 320,000 people globally.
While each U.S. company, such as Toyota, Lexus, and Scion, does its
own recruiting and hiring, in general, the company hires college graduates
with degrees in areas that include business, logistics, and engineering.
It hires individuals with graduate degrees such as MBAs, marketing,
and finance. Recruiters for each company visit college campuses and
career fairs nationwide. Application forms are also available online.
In addition to academic skills, Dana Green, manager, corporate diversity
& inclusion for Toyota Motor North America, says, the company looks
for individuals who value Toyota’s guiding principles—continuous
improvement and respect for people—and apply those principles
throughout their work. “We also value strong relationship-building
skills, a highly professional demeanor, passion for your work, and a
flexible and adaptable approach to your work,” Green adds.
Some of the companies offer internships and co-op programs to students
still attending college. For example, Toyota Financial Services, which
provides financial and insurance products to Toyota’s automobile
dealers and their customers, offers summer internships designed to provide
junior- and senior-level college students with an opportunity to work
in the financial services industry. The company provides a brief orientation
in general policies, dress code, summer activities, and lists of other
interns and the departments in which they work. Each department also
orients its interns.
Entry-level positions for college graduates as well as their titles
vary according to the company into which they are hired. However, all
new hires receive an orientation that focuses on the company’s
human resources policies and codes of conduct. In addition, each company
provides specific orientation and training programs and each department
within the company offers its own orientation program. All Toyota companies
offer bonuses in addition to a competitive and comprehensive base salary
as well as a benefits package that includes family health coverage,
a pension plan, and a 401(k).
Future employees in Toyota Financial Services will need to have excellent
analytical/data analysis skills. Math, science, and engineering skills
will be more important than ever for Toyota’s manufacturing and
research and development businesses, especially as it expand research
and development in the areas of hybrid and alternative technologies.
Green says that all Toyota companies comply with ADA requirements. As
an example, the Toyota Financial Services building has an ergonomics
program that addresses the health and safety of its employees. It has
made workspace adjustments for employees with disabilities based on
reasonable accommodation requests.
For more information about Toyota, visit www.toyota.com.
General Motors Company (GM)?—
Rapid Changes In Economy And Technology
Since 1908, General Motors (GM) has manufactured automobiles and trucks.
Today, the company does business in 140 countries around the world and
has 219,000 employees worldwide. Its global headquarters is in Detroit,
MI.
According to Mark McKeen, senior manager, GM North America talent acquisition,
the company will do very little on-campus recruiting this spring and
fall because of its recent corporate restructuring. However, it is moving
forward with future plans that look beyond the internal combustion engine.
“Our focus is on alternative propulsion technologies,” he
states. “And that’s in the areas of batteries and hybrid
and full cell propulsion.”
To do so, the company will look for graduates with engineering degrees,
primarily in the electrical and chemical disciplines. In addition to
on-campus recruiting, GM recruits at some key engineering organizations.
For example, in October 2009, GM recruiters visited the Society of Women
Engineers (SWE) and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)
national conference. McKeen adds that GM will also recruit individuals
with accounting degrees.
McKeen adds that graduates hired into both engineering and accounting
roles can grow within their specialty field of expertise or move into
managerial assignments as they gain more experience. Cross-functional
assignments in other disciplines and global opportunities might also
be available to them.
Both orientation and training are available to new hires at GM. Its
online new-hire onboarding portal gives them an overview of the company
and some of its cultural and business priorities. It contains the required
forms new hires can download, fill out, and bring with them on their
first day of employment. Its links to GM’s affinity groups, including
Jump Start, help them learn about the company as well.
Training includes General Motors University (GMU), where both online
and classroom-based courses are available. Through GMU, employees have
the opportunity to earn certificates and to develop skills in certain
areas of expertise. New hires can also opt to be mentored.
GM offers both internships and co-op programs for college students.
“We even recruit freshman for those in certain specialty areas
such as engineering,” McKeen explains. The work of interns and
co-ops is directly related to the student’s field of study. For
example, students in the University of Michigan’s battery program
get hands-on experience helping with the development of the battery
for GM’s Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in electric vehicle.
GM tries to create work-life balance opportunities for its employees,
such as working from home. Those opportunities, McKeen adds, depend
on what employees work out with their managers.
Going forward, GM plans to reinvent the company, with a strong customer
and product focus and movement toward mass-producing vehicles such as
the Chevrolet Volt. McKeen says that employees will have the opportunity
to help with the design and engineering of those vehicles. Cultural
sensitivity, excellent communication skills, and the ability to speak
a foreign language will be important as the company expands in places
such as India and China. Personal accountability, the ability to produce
quickly, and to learn continuously because of the rapid changes in both
the economy and technology will also be important.
More information about General Motors can be found at www.gm.com\careers.
Renee Arrington-Johnson,
Senior Industrial Engineer,
General Motors
A graduate of the General Motors Institute (GMI), now called Kettering
University, in Flint, MI, Renee Arrington-Johnson earned a bachelor’s
of science degree in industrial engineering. She completed a co-op assignment
at GM while attending college. “It was required as part of getting
your degree,” she explains. “We were required to work and
attend classes.”
Following her graduation, she came aboard at GM as an associate industrial
engineer; customary for any engineer to work as an associate for the
first year at GM. “Basically,” she remembers, “my
job was to analyze manpower in the facility where I worked.” She
adds that the facility was in Dayton, OH, where compressors and parts
for air conditioning systems were manufactured. Her job responsibilities
included improving both production flow and worker efficiency and reducing
the number of defective assemblies.
She was promoted to industrial engineer after a year and transferred
to GM’s facility in Syracuse, NY, where injection molds and plastic
parts were manufactured. “We were dealing with steel and aluminum
in Dayton,” she explains. “In Syracuse, we were dealing
with plastics and painting. So, it was a different manufacturing environment.”
Since graduating from GMI in 1982 and becoming a full-time engineer,
Arrington-Johnson has had a number of different assignments. She’s
been a contract engineer, an industrial engineer, and an ergonomist,
which is part of industrial engineering, and where she looked at repetitive
strain disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome and back problems. “I’ve
worked in plants, I’ve worked in labs, and now I’m working
in headquarters,” she states. Today, Arrington-Johnson is a senior
industrial engineer. She is also the chairperson of GM’s People
with Disabilities Affinity Group.
“I have an eye disease that affects my vision,” she explains,
adding that it’s progressive and has gotten worse over the years.
At first, she needed a small bit of assistance, mostly with transportation.
But, when she needed more assistance, she asked for and received it.
Arrington-Johnson states that some areas at GM have many glass doors
and she had problems seeing them. “Actually, my boss watched me
walk into a glass section one time. I told her, ‘If you just put
red dots on the doors…you know, the peel and stick dots…then
I’ll know the glass is there,’” she recalls.
She also has problems with contrast and depth perception and very little
peripheral vision. She needed to have lines painted around columns in
her office area so she’d be able to safely navigate the area.
Arrington-Johnson says she filled out work orders, flagged them as ADA
to indicate they related to compliance issues, and GM’s facility
management personnel put red dots on the glass doors and painted lines
around the columns to accommodate her disability. She adds that support
for and involvement with all the affinity groups from GM’s executive
leadership is strong.
Like all the affinity groups at GM, the one for employees with disabilities
has a dual purpose. The first is to recruit, employ, and retain people
of their constituency group. They are support groups, where employees
can talk with others who have similar problems and issues. But, they
also provide a window for GM to test its products and marketing strategies.
The People with Disabilities Affinity Group has been asked to evaluate
prototypes to determine applications for people with mobility problems,
including senior citizens, would be able to use them. “We’ve
participated in clinical evaluations, such as evaluating how easy it
is to get in and out of a vehicle,” she says.
The People with Disabilities Affinity Group was also consulted about
GM’s OnStar feature, which offers mobile voice and data communication.
GM wanted customers with hearing disabilities to be able to use OnStar
in their cars. “We have people in our group who are hearing impaired,”
she comments. They worked with OnStar through three phases of development,
until they were able to develop a plug-in TTY system so that customers
with hearing disabilities can communicate with OnStar operators.
