Bank of America is breaking down barriers and busting through antiquated prejudices for employees with disabilities.
Thirty-four percent of adults with intellectual disabilities are fully employed, according to data collected by Bank of America. Approximately 6.5 million Americans have an intellectual disability, which works out to be 1% to 3% of the population, according to the Bank of America support services playbook.
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To support this population and help them excel, Bank of America created its support services team, an in-house marketing operation that employs over 300 teammates with intellectual disabilities. Over the last year, the team has worked to find creative ways to keep employees engaged and supported as they navigate the pandemic.
“We weren't ready for the pandemic and when everything hit, our biggest concern was the safety of our employees,” says Mark Feinour, support services executive director. “My biggest concern was the mental and emotional piece of my team, because to a lot of them, [work] was their social outlet.”
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For many of these employees, their work life doubles as their social life and support system, Feinour says. As the leader of this team, he was tasked with guiding his employees through a work from home transition that other employees may not have required.
“Part of our challenge was getting our teammates to understand why we needed them to be home,” he says. “A lot of our employees live, work and play together.”
Feinour set up personalized trainings to get his team comfortable with the WFH tech they hadn’t used before. He also organized a program to help with personal matters like medication refills and safely obtaining flu shots.
To foster connection and communication, Feinour had weekly mailings sent to his employees at their homes, which included cards, newsletters and games. One initiative involved gathering recipes to create a quarantine cookbook.
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“We took all the recipes, put them in a cookbook, made a hardcopy and sent that out to everybody,” Feinour says. “It’s about trying to come up with creative ways where they're still getting information and are also engaged.”
The pandemic has disproportionately affected employees with disabilities. One in five people with a disability has lost their job since March 2020, compared to one in seven workers in the general population, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Employees with disabilities also grapple with damaging stereotypes, including the belief that it can cost companies too much money to accommodate workers with disabilities or that these workers won’t be able to do the job as well as their colleagues.
However, employees with disabilities are an untapped resource for employers. Organizations need to reject the stereotypes around disabled individuals and realize their potential, Feinor says.
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“We have one of the lowest attrition rates of any operation at the company,” he says. “I have one of the highest tenure rates out of any line of business at the company. You can't put a value on not having to train and not having to replace candidates or employees all the time. The quality of work that our team is able to do, nobody can touch it.”
