|
How Harbor City Services Accomplishes Its Social Mission: Impact and Accommodation
Harbor
City Services, Inc. (HCS), achieves a social
impact by creating a work environment that
accommodates the needs of a disabled workforce
- without stifling their development. John
Herron designed the company with mixed duties
so staff and employee can adjust their level of
responsibility, customer contact, hours
of work and time off to meet their recovery
needs.
Harbor
City Services is a documents management
and destruction, moving and storage, and
warehousing company. This allows participants
to hold manual labor or ‘thinking',
i.e., non-manual, jobs. It also gives the
options of frequent customer contact, limited
contact, or no contact at all. We can reassign
a person from outside work in customer settings
to inside work. We have time-sensitive work
such as moving, and work without the pressure
of a deadline, e.g., re-filing, shredding,
etc. This allows us to adjust the demands
on employees when needed and still provide excellent customer services.
There
is no time limit on how long a person can
work for Harbor City Services. We allow
absences for recovery time when needed while
assuring the individual of a job when they
are ready to return. Some individuals will
achieve a level of stability in their recovery
and move on to other jobs outside of this
company. Others will grow into new jobs
in this company. Still others will successfully
keep doing the same job well. We consider
all of these outcomes success for Harbor
City Services.
Additional
Harbor City Services workplace accommodations
include modified work schedules, back-up
staffing to relieve deadline pressure, mixed
teams (disabled and non disabled) to promote
models of good work performance, and regular
staff meetings (trainings) on proper behavior
toward co-workers and customers. We add
financial education with services such as
direct deposit and credit union access with
financial training.
We
designed the Harbor City Services benefit
package to serve the disabled worker; it
includes pay above minimum wage, reduced
fare bus passes, vacation pay, a 403 (b)
retirement plan, and medical and dental
benefits. Harbor City Services provides
bonus pay when the company is profitable.
This improves worker ownership in our service
and increases productivity. In addition,
Harbor City Services welcomes on-site mental
health and social supports that our workers
identify and give us permission to contact.
This allows the benefits of employment to
become part of the support system and combine
with other services in the interest of the
employee.
For more information on social enterprise, check out the following:
Virtue
Ventures
Social
Edge
Community
Wealth Ventures
National
Association of Information Destruction
Social
Enterprise Alliance
Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations
|
