Micron moves to provide greater focus to job seekers and employees with disabilities
Micron Technology says it’s boosting efforts to hire, support and empower people with disabilities.
The Boise memory-chip maker has joined The Valuable 500, a coalition of companies dedicated to promoting disability inclusion through business leadership and opportunity.
“Fostering diversity, equality and inclusion is at the heart of Micron’s vision,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a news release. “By signing The Valuable 500 pledge, we’re adding our voice to a global movement to lead and inspire positive change.”
The organization behind The Valuable 500 calls on influential leaders and their brands to ignite systemic change by unlocking the social and economic value of the 1.3 billion people living with disabilities around the world.
The percentage of Micron employees that identified as living with disabilities increased from 3.3% in fiscal year 2019 to 7.2% in 2020. That wasn’t due necessarily to hiring more people with disabilities, Connors said, but rather reflected more people identifying themselves in that category.
Micron declined to say precisely how many employees identify as people with disabilities, but it appears the company has about 2,880 such employees, based upon calculating 7.2% of Micron’s roughly 40,000 employees worldwide. Using the same calculation, Micron may have about 430 workers with disabilities among its 6,000 Treasure Valley employees.
“Building disability inclusion in the technology industry cannot be achieved alone; leaders must collaborate and hold themselves accountable,” Mehrotra said.
Diversity, equality, inclusion
Ensuring an inclusive environment requires the creation of a sense of community and belonging, Sharawn Connors, Micron vice president of diversity, equality and inclusion, said in a Zoom interview from San Jose, California.
The company created an employee group for people with disabilities and included those with family or friends with disabilities.
“They’ve been instrumental in calling out opportunities for us at Micron,” Connors said. “They highlighted that we need to really focus on manager training to ensure our managers understand how to support employees with disabilities. We also heard that we need to have closed captioning at our meetings.”
At a factory in Malaysia, Micron hired several people with hearing impairments. The company recognized that it needed managers versed in sign language to communicate with those employees. They also installed an alarm system that added flashing lights to go with audible warnings.
“We want to make sure that those things are in place, and so this initiative really supports that work,” Connors said.
Through its inclusion in The Valuable 500, Micron hopes to foster confidence in employees and those seeking jobs to reveal if they have a disability.
“A lot of times people with disabilities don’t feel comfortable disclosing that they have a disability,” Connors said. “So what this initiative is saying is, ‘It’s OK. Come as you are at Micron. We we accept people with disabilities. You will have the same opportunities to advance as everyone else.’”
Mental health, unseen conditions
Micron doesn’t ask that people disclose their specific disabilities. Those disabilities include conditions that can be seen or unseen, Connors said.
“It could be similar to my sister, someone who has cerebral palsy, or it could be someone who has mental health issues as well,” she said. “We consider that a disability, so it’s a very wide spectrum. But the point is we want those folks to know that they are supported at Micron and they don’t have to hide.”
More than 1.9 billion people around the world live with some sort of disability, while only 4% of companies have taken action to include people with disabilities in the workplace, according to the Global Economics Disability Report.
With the coronavirus pandemic causing stress for people on the job and at home during the past year, Micron has seen an increase in mental health issues among its employees, Connors said.
“A lot of people aren’t OK right now, and we’re here to support them and provide them resources to get the help that they need,” she said. “We’ve been very vocal about that. And I think it’s unfortunate that it’s had this taboo, it’s been taboo for so long. But I see that changing.
“We recognize that there are many people that struggle with mental health, and it doesn’t make you any less valuable at Micron, and it doesn’t it doesn’t in any way impede your opportunity to advance in the company.”
