Thursday, January 31, 2008

Walgreens has program to hire people with disabilities

Walgreens has a program called Walgreens Outreach, which is designed to
hire people with disabilities.


The national drugstore chain has a distribution center in Anderson, South Carolina that is the center of this operation. It is here that the employees with disabilities receive pre-hire training. Completion of pre-hire training doesn’t guarantee paid employment, though.

The jobs within this program vary, but are in the areas of general warehouse, Maintenance, human resources, management, and the computer room. The employment is generally full time, but part time employment can be arranged as an accommodation for an individual’s disability.

The Outreach web site states that this is not an operation which is closed to only people with disabilities. There will be people with and without disabilities on the same teams doing the same jobs. However, most importantly, it does point out that they will be paid the same.

I found the
Program’s background
To be very interesting. It illustrates the importance of thinking about and implementing the concepts of universal design when creating new equipment. It highlights the strengths of ensuring accessibility to all when beginning a new program and how important it is to think about this before launching one.

The home page for Walgreens Outreach has a specific link for jobseekers and another just for agencies seeking to place employees.

For more information, check out their
FAQ page.

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