Ep 76 | The Value of Dealing With Disabilities in Today's Workplace with Alicia Kucharczyk

Unlock the potential within your business by embracing the untapped talent of individuals with disabilities and some resources that may help along the way. Listen in as Alicia Kucharczyk from the Connecticut Department of Aging and Disability Services and Dana  discuss the transformative power of Vocational Rehabilitation (VocRehab) on this episode of Quirky HR. Alicia brings a wealth of knowledge, sharing how VocRehab’s counseling, job training, and tailored programs not only empower those with disabilities but also equip employers with the tools to foster truly inclusive workplaces. This episode is a must-listen for those looking to be at the forefront of inclusion in the workplace, and for corporate leaders committed to creating a workspace that thrives on the diversity of its people.

Alicia delves into the importance of disability awareness training and how simple adjustments can often meet the needs of employees without going through a formal ADA process. Dana and Alicia also discuss the delicate topic of mental health in the workplace, strategies for destigmatization, and how to strike a balance between providing support and meeting operational demands. Whether you’re an employer, HR professional, or someone passionate about creating a workplace where everyone has an opportunity to excel, this conversation with Alicia Kacharzyk is an enlightening exploration of the human side of business.

You can find the resources Alicia mentioned at the following:
http://disabilityworksct.org
https://portal.ct.gov/rehabilitationservices?language=en_US
Or you can reach out to Alicia directly on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-kucharczyk-523808122/

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Dana Dowdell - Boss Consulting - @bossconsultinghr - @hrfanatic

Transcript

Dana Dowdell: 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Boss Consulting HR and our downloadable products. We launched downloadable products in 2023 and I'm excited to share them with you through the Quirky HR podcast. If you head over to Boss Consulting HR and navigate to the downloadable section, we'll, of course, make sure that it's linked in the podcast description. There you can find resources for small business owners, HR departments of one new business owners who are not quite sure where to go to get started, all for purchase. Our goal is to provide all the resources and tools for small business owners so that you can make sure that you are doing right by your employees and running your HR function appropriately. With that, check them out over on Boss Consulting HR and we'll get right into the show. Welcome back to Quirky HR. Today, I am joined by Alicia Kucharczyk . She is the or a Associate Education Consultant for the State of Connecticut Department of Aging and Disability Services. Alicia, welcome to Quirky HR.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 1:26

Thank you so much for having me.

Dana Dowdell: 1:28

Thank you so much for being here. So before we dump into the conversation, I just think it's important to note that Alicia works for the State of Connecticut, so if you are listening from some other location other than Connecticut, you will likely have access to your own state agency that can offer similar, if not the same, services that Alicia and I are going to talk about today. So we'll get into that a little bit. But before you decide to stop listening because you're like I don't live in Connecticut, we're going to talk about what resources are available for all employers. So let's start there. Alicia, Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at your agency and how you partner with employers?

Alicia Kucharczyk: 2:16

Absolutely so. I've been working with the State of Connecticut for about 16 years and I've had a variety of different roles throughout my tenure there. All of the state, all of the counselors that we hire are trained in rehabilitation counseling, which is the field that we provide services to people with disabilities. We are made up of counseling staff, supervisory staff and then we have program staff that help administer the program and oversee different aspects. So the most recent few years I've been working in kind of the program administration side of things, primarily doing a lot of training, quality assurance, outreach.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 3:01

This is kind of part of our outreach campaign and bringing awareness to VocRehab. It's a national program so it's a federal grant that's issued. All states have a VocRehab program and some of them may be called different types of agencies. Ours is the Bureau of Rehabilitation Services and we're within the Department of Aging and Disability Services here in Connecticut. So I've been working on outreach, trying to bring awareness to our services and the people specifically in Connecticut, but also employers, because as part of our current regulations that we're working under, it's a real priority to make sure that we're meeting the needs of employers, trying to hire a diverse workforce, especially including those folks with disabilities, who may be underrepresented in the workforce right now.

Dana Dowdell: 3:53

So I've been practicing an HR in Connecticut for 15 years maybe and I have not ever worked with your agency and I even want to say that in terms of knowledge and awareness of it, I think of it more on the workers comp side of things, because you guys work with people who maybe are not able to return to their existing job but can be rehabbed, if you will, to work in another capacity. But can you speak to how employees or individuals and employers find you and start working with you?

Alicia Kucharczyk: 4:34

Yes, absolutely so. In Connecticut we have a website, disabilityworkct. org, where you can find us. We are trying to do a better job of marketing and getting the word out there. We work with thousands of people with disabilities each year. We are present with youth, so we start working with folks as early as high school and all the way up through adulthood and the career lifespan of somebody. But we are a pretty small program and our services are very specific. We're very goal directed around assisting people with disabilities and career pathways and securing, maintaining and advancing employment, and so our program is relatively small in comparison to some of the other bigger state agencies. But we are always trying to outreach, especially to new employers, to increase those opportunities for work for people that we're serving.

Dana Dowdell: 5:34

So if an employer has, hopefully, a progressive viewpoint and maybe has a candidate who needs an accommodation, or has an active employee that needs an accommodation, they can partner with your agency and kind of find ways to support that employee or that candidate to reach their full potential in employment.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 5:58

Yes. So there's a couple of different ways that we partner with employers. So one of the first ways is direct counseling services that we're providing to the Connecticut citizens with disabilities. So on a one-on-one basis, our counselors are providing and facilitating various services through community partners where we may be going out and job seeking, speaking to employers about paid opportunities. We have various programs where we can incentivize bringing somebody into the workplace for a trial work experience and on-the-job training, a paid internship. Sometimes we have different industry-specific trainings where we partner directly with an employer and we customize a training program that's inclusive for folks with disabilities to help individuals get up and running and learning on the job. So we sometimes come from that individualized perspective in trying to navigate and assist the folks that we're serving and actually securing a job and then hopefully being able to grow in that job. We also, as I mentioned earlier, take kind of a dual customer approach where we also try to outreach to employers directly and this might be folks employers and HR groups that we've never worked with before.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 7:12

We have a dedicated workforce outreach team that's a team of vocational rehabilitation counselors that doesn't. They don't carry a caseload of citizens of Connecticut with disabilities, but they carry a caseload of employers or people that they're outreaching to. They primarily work with our community colleges, our local American job centers and employers and we talk about. We have various different programs that we can offer directly to employers to try to help develop a pipeline so that the folks that we're working with individually can access and enter into some of those job opportunities. So, as I mentioned, developing customized trainings together is one way that's been very successful here in Connecticut. We also a really nice way to kind of get your feet wet, so to speak, is by doing partnering with us on disability awareness training. That's something that we offer, where we can partner with employers across Connecticut, offer disability awareness training to HR or other leadership teams or employees, just to begin exploring what does it mean to work with somebody with a disability and how do we create a more inclusive and diverse workforce wherever you are.

Dana Dowdell: 8:23

I'm really curious about that disability awareness training, because we're you and I are speaking offline where, particularly with the clients that we work with, I think it's often kind of a very narrow viewpoint in terms of accessibility to the workforce and the workplace and this perception that there is an inclusivity when maybe there's biases that are happening that we're not aware of. Can you maybe speak to some of like success or impact with this training, because I want all of my clients to look at candidates for what they're bringing to the table in terms of education and experience, and that's much easier said than done. So I'm curious if you've seen a lot of success or just kind of openness or awareness to like this idea that candidates are coming in all shapes and sizes and that we should be focusing on things other than necessarily how they present.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 9:23

Absolutely. No, absolutely. We some of the successes that and some of the goals as part of that disability awareness training that we perform is really around building comfort and knowledge around disability, considering all of those attitudes, beliefs, identifying unconscious bias, looking at the leadership team, who's represented and who's not at the table. We've done a lot of this within our agency and taking a look at just the value of having various different perspectives when we're talking about accessibility or a new office space, operations-related things and trying to keep everybody in mind, having everybody at the table. So this particular training offers that context to maybe have some of those more uncomfortable conversations and it really breaks down some of those barriers, because that's part of it is just being able to have open, honest conversations, have curiosity, ask questions, learn about ways that we might be able to introduce assistive technology or simple accommodations that might benefit everybody, that aren't really high cost or that carry that stigma of like legal, we're going to get legal involved or something along those lines.

Dana Dowdell: 10:45

Yeah, I'm curious if you're seeing, especially with kind of this weird period around DEI, there's a lot of news around DEI programs and them not being supported organizationally anymore. Are you seeing any impact in that mindset on not only the clients that you're working with but also the employers that you traditionally work with as well?

Alicia Kucharczyk: 11:21

You know, I think we've been pretty lucky that we haven't seen it really play out with the consumers that we're working with. You know, I think because of the pandemic, unfortunately in Connecticut we did see a decline in the number of people that we were able to serve. I think when we're working with folks that are medically complex or have progressive issues that create concerns around medical and safety and all that, with the pandemic, people opted out of the workforce a little bit more, so I think we're seeing that start to rise back up now People are getting back in. I think in our agency we've done a lot with digital accessibility, things like making sure that documents are accessible and providing training and partnering with different programs that are able to perform those kinds of trainings. So for us, I feel like it's a lot more just making sure that everybody's represented. We also serve the public, so we're trying to make sure at all times that we've got things that we're able to transcreate or translate them from English to Spanish, making sure that everybody can access them.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 12:33

Our agency is also pretty diverse when it comes to. You know, we have a lot of folks with disabilities that work with us. We work regularly with sign language interpreters, american sign language interpreters. We have folks who utilize a wheelchair or, you know, need different physical mobility type of disabilities. So we're very oriented in that space. So for us it's very comfortable to kind of have those conversations and it's always part of our leadership model to always make sure that we're talking about the things that might be uncomfortable or that might not sit well with everybody in the room.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 13:10

I mean, we have seen some of those changes that are going on with the DEI and sort of like that whole. We've seen some of that at the national level I think, in terms of communities of practice and stuff like that. But no, I mean I think we've in Connecticut we've had a really good track record with that, in particular the disability awareness training, but also just partnering with employers and establishing new partnerships. It hasn't slowed down. You know we're getting.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 13:37

We have a contact us form on our website and we get a lot of both job seekers that are interested in services but also employers that are reaching out to find out more, and it's really created a great opportunity for us to engage with various employers and start talking. We work with folks that are. We work with employers that are large. We've got some really, you know, companies with a global presence that we engage with and do some of these trainings with. We've also got very small businesses that we work with as well. That may just have a couple of employees and, depending on how much is needed, we could do something very light in terms of that awareness training or we can. We can be working really one on one and trying to establish an opportunity with someone where it's really hands on and really intensive.

Dana Dowdell: 14:25

I feel like that gives me a little bit of hope, in that, you know, maybe we are becoming more inclusive or just having an awareness of all our procedures and policies and how we operate organizationally and and having that you know, is anyone excluded in this new process or in this new policy? Hopefully.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 14:47

Yes.

Dana Dowdell: 14:47

I agree.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 14:49

I try to be optimistic.

Dana Dowdell: 14:51

Yeah, I mean I, you know again, we were talking offline, you know, in the small business market I think I see some the worst of the worst in terms of someone needing a meeting and accommodation and there's all these assumptions that are placed on that before even speaking to the employee more in depth. So it is it's nice to have a little bit of hope that maybe we're getting a little bit better, but can you speak to this idea of kind of more informal approaches to accommodations or assistance in the workplace and that maybe not everything has to be a full ADA interactive process?

Alicia Kucharczyk: 15:32

Absolutely. So, you know, I think about this question in the context of me as a state of Connecticut employee. It's a big employer and our agency has a big focus on disability. So I think about myself in terms of some of the things that we've tried to do, just as in our leadership team, trying to make sure that all of our staff are satisfied and happy and if there are unmet needs, that we're looking at them. So we think about that. We also then, you know, I think about one-on-one when we're working with job seekers and how we, you know, can sit down with employers and start hashing out and having conversations about, you know, different ways that we can engage to help someone secure success. So, you know, in terms of the employee side, you know, some of the things that we've looked at are, you know, basic accessibility type of stuff. Again, making sure that we have interpreters on calls, making sure that we are communicating really clearly and reiterating and re-communicating and re-confirming to make sure that everybody is accessing information, you know, the same way, and that everybody is included. We have a lot of ongoing recurring meetings where we sit down and talk things out around a particular you know when we're in the leadership team or if I'm working with HR and we're talking about, you know, implementing something for the staff. You know we really try to look at it from all the different angles and circumstances of what might come up, and so that's really just kind of keeping an open mind. Sometimes, you know, really informal things might just look like, you know, having the option to have, you know, a standing desk at your job site. It might just look like, you know, flexing a schedule or being able to utilize an alternate work schedule.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 17:24

You know, with disability, sometimes there are things. Sometimes there are really major things that someone might need, but sometimes it's really minor in terms of just tweaking a schedule due to a med management issue. Or, you know, transportation or something that's going on around personal care, that might be happening, you know. So it's just kind of having those schedules, having those conversations and trying to come in it with an open mind, knowing that the person you're working with is trying their best, you know, to make it work on the job. And you know, as I kind of go down that whole job seeker path, you know I think about the employers that we work with every day if somebody's struggling on the job, if somebody gets injured on the job and is going through. You know, sometimes there has to be a formal process, right, we have to utilize, whether it's workers comp or short-term disability, long-term disability there are voc rehab professionals inside of most of those types of agencies or insurance companies that are taking a look at transferable skills if something happens and the person can no longer do the job that they're doing.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 18:33

But one of the things that we try to do within the state is we try to maximize, you know, what is the individual doing and what can be done at a high-tech or a low-tech way to try to keep somebody as productive as possible.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 18:47

Sometimes simple things like an I like a watch, you know, like the Apple Watch or you know whatever kind of watch or tablet, alarm reminders, ipad apps. There are so many things now that make accommodations so accessible that it really could you know we could you could come up with a whole plan that really is pretty low-cost, you know. But and it doesn't have to be formal through like a formal accommodation request. Our counselors are trained to be able to sit down and have some of those conversations, because I know it's tricky from from an employer's side of the house. It's tricky because you can't really ask certain questions and you can't, you know, you're kind of trying to make an assumption and trying to say, hey, you know, what is it that we can do to make sure that you're able to, you know, fully thrive in this workplace? And sometimes that's what's nice about having that voc rehab person there, because we can sort of be that in between where we're talking about the practicality of actually getting everything done and the logistics behind all of that.

Dana Dowdell: 19:57

I'm very curious about mental health-related disabilities. Two kind of a two-fold question, I guess, because one, are you seeing any change in the in an increase of mental health disabilities? And two, you know, how can we, how can we as an employer just be more supportive while maintaining a fairness and also balancing that operational need when someone is experiencing a mental health disability Because it's, I see it with clients. I've never seen more people take FMLA for mental health, which is amazing and I'm so glad that they're doing it. But there's still a stigma around it and I know we have clients where you know they're just kind of the. The cynicism around mental health disabilities is still very prevalent.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 20:58

Absolutely so. When it comes to whether we, you know how we see mental health, that has always been a very large portion of the individuals and the job seekers that we work with, our counselors, have really great connections. Every I think every state you know has their local mental health authority. We have here in Connecticut the Department of Mental Health Addiction Services that you know kind of manages and oversees, and they have local mental health authorities in each community. We have strong partnerships with those agencies and those providers that we are able to partner with really well so that when we are working with someone, if they're not connected and need that connection, we can try to facilitate that so that they're the individual is not, you know, going into work without the support that they need, whether that's through, you know, med management or counseling or whatever you know kind of the mental health team decides. It's always been so. As I said, it's always been a big part of who we're working with. Oftentimes, you know, other disabilities come alongside. You know there's oftentimes a mental health diagnosis with some of the other disabilities that we see as well, just because sometimes, you know, tragic life situations creates a real strain and you know we have a lot of compassion, empathy for the people that we're working with that have been through really tough circumstances. We are seeing an uptick and one of the things nationally that's being addressed in Vogue Rehab is, you know, the idea of, or the newest kind of discussions around, what long COVID might look like and that whole realm of things and some of the fatigue and some of the brain fog and things that they talk about with that. That is something that's coming into the world of Vogue Rehab as a disability, as something that you know may require supports for individuals to be able to achieve success.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 22:59

I think the second part of your question remind me if I don't quite capture it, but the second piece around how do we make sure that individuals who may need supports within the mental health kind of are getting them but also still maintaining sort of what they need to do from an operations perspective and stuff. So you know, in working with folks with mental health related disabilities, I think, first and foremost, understanding that you know sometimes the disability and things can be cyclical and sometimes it's going to be harder, sometimes it's going to be easier, depending on the season, depending on the time of year, life circumstances, et cetera. You know, I think, recognizing that and also as a voc rehab counselor, we're trained to be able to create connections and build support systems and I think that's a real critical piece. I know maybe not from the employer HR perspective having things like employee assistance programs and programs that folks can refer to if they're in their darkest state and they're not able to kind of see their way out of it or they really need some supports. To have those resources available for employees as a stepping stone, as a starting point, is really helpful.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 24:25

I think we've seen a lot of that. We've utilized it within our state, within our bureau and our agency, to make sure that if our staff are feeling burnt out and making sure that in working and providing all that counseling, it can be really tough and you have to make sure you're doing that self care and taking care of yourself. So it is a balancing act in terms of making sure we're fair, operations are taken care of, having those resources and knowing what's in the local community that you can lean on, partnering with voc rehab and working directly one-on-one with some of our consumers or our job seekers with mental health, our whole thing is really building the support team around that individual. So if there is a clinician involved, if there's a counselor, if there's somebody that needs to be coaching or checking in. Those are the types of supports, on a one-on-one basis, that the voc rehab counselor might be trying to coordinate so that the individual has success in being able to show up to work on time, get the job done that needs to be done and really thrive in the workplace.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 25:35

So I think I'm thinking about things a lot of times from the perspective of me counseling somebody through, but then from the employer side, if you're seeing somebody that's struggling or somebody that has repeatedly taken those leave of absences or something, maybe making sure that your employee assistance program or if there are disability resources within your organization that they know there are agencies that can help kind of bridge those gaps, I guess Because, as I said, every state agency, every state has an agency that provides voc rehab services and is an eligibility-based program. You have to have a verified disability and it has to impact work as part of our criteria. But if it is impactful and someone maybe ends up losing the job or whatever, these are all resources for folks that they can go to to try to identify and address some of those barriers that the mental health is causing them to success.

Dana Dowdell: 26:36

I'm thinking of actually a couple of scenarios. I imagine this topic is going to grow. Particularly I'm seeing it with clients around PTSD and the impact of some of those mental health disabilities. In kind of general management styles, like being held accountable, can sometimes be inducing for people, and so I'm very curious to see where this goes, because I think that it's I'm just very curious to see what happens around this topic because we're seeing it with clients. Like I said, we're more clients that never have had employees take mental health-related FMLA leaves, and then the show must go on and there's a lot of bias in mental health and it's going to be interesting where it has.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 27:37

I've listened to some of your other episodes before too, and so I think you know checking in with the employees too around. I think one of the things you mentioned in a previous was about stay interviews and things of that nature, and we have done some of that within our agency.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 27:55

You know, getting a pulse for how our staff are doing, because we've you know we've had some retention issues within the state and within our agency and trying to get a sense for where is that burnout happening? Where are our policies and procedures not aligning with the actual day-to-day of what people are doing and really trying to, you know, develop? We're working now to try to establish some quick wins. You know things that have been just, you know, nuisance after nuisance, maybe with our case management or with you know, other different things that we have to do that are just, you know, kind of the aspects of the job that people don't always love, but sometimes those things can really add up and drain on you If you're, you know if you're really struggling already, and then on top of it, you're dealing with setback and setback when you're trying to get different things done.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 28:53

So I think looking at process, getting employee feedback, kind of having that 360 review, is this is what we're doing the right thing. And do we need to be doing it that way? Sure, because I think workloads are really high. You know We've been struggling, we're constantly hiring and we've been trying to build our program up, so our counselors have been. There's been a lot on their shoulders in terms of maintaining that, so the pace that they're working at is so high, you know, and I think that contributes to the mental health and, you know, to all of that as well, because we're all spread so thin.

Dana Dowdell: 29:35

Yeah, I just I think it'll be Dan Schwartz, who works very kind of well-known attorney here in Connecticut, did a post on LinkedIn about bullying and you know that fine line and I also I think that can. It gets intertwined as well with some mental health disabilities in terms of you know how people perceive certain behaviors in the workplace. Or you know we have a client right now where the employee was in a domestic abuse relationship and from an outside perspective it may just be management, but for that individual and their experience it's some type of heightened experience. And I think again, I just think it'll be very interesting to see what happens around this topic over the next you know, six, nine, 12 months.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 30:31

We do a lot of training with our new counseling staff on topics like this, because we often are working with folks who you know have been repeatedly let go from the workforce or, you know, dealing with repeated absenteeism and or not showing up to work or things like that, and you know, if they're at our door we're trying to assist them and we're trying to come from that perspective that everybody has a story and that everybody's been through something and you know, sometimes it's not, you know if you're a colleague watching something, just having that perspective, that you know we don't necessarily always have to know what's going on or comment on it, and that people have a lot going on behind the scenes.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 31:14

And I try to during a lot of our training I try to help talk about that perspective for our counselors too, because you know, when you're working with a lot of people and you want to try to be successful in getting them to work, sometimes there are just life circumstances that are getting in the way and just different barriers and things, and so exercising patience and meeting somebody where they're at and whether that's the you know person we're working with, you know if we're, you know, talking to an employer in terms of what they're willing to kind of partner with us on. You know, it's kind of like meeting people where they're at and trying to figure out ways to help you know, to help everybody, you know whether it's a job seeker, stay on their career path, increase their career path, you know, so that ultimately they find success. That's the goal.

Dana Dowdell: 32:04

This was fantastic, Alicia. Where can listeners connect with you or the department?

Alicia Kucharczyk: 32:13

So the department, we have a website where there are testimonials. If you're an employer and happen to be in Connecticut and want to reach out to us to partner, disabilityworkctorg is the website and there's a contact us form on there where you can reach out, whether you know somebody with a disability who maybe needs services and is a job seeker, or if you're an employer you know, looking to partner with us. And then I'm on LinkedIn. I do have like a professional page through the state of Connecticut just with my name, alicia Kacharzik. On there you can find me if you have questions or ideas and that's really it Fantastic.

Dana Dowdell: 32:51

And, as always, we'll make sure that Alicia's contact information the LinkedIn, the website are all in the podcast description so that you can just click right through to them. So, Alicia, thank you so much for your insight today and for joining me on Corki HR.

Alicia Kucharczyk: 33:07

Thank you so much, dana, I appreciate it.