Worthwhile, September/October 2005
During a time when other companies were seeing their sales slip and slashing payrolls, Habitat International’s revenues tripled. Its secret? Hiring scores of workers with physical and mental disabilities. Nancy Henderson Wurst reports.
For months a social-worker friend had tried to persuade David Morris to host some clients with developmental disabilities at his successful, indoor-outdoor rug and golf-product company. She hinted. She coaxed. She hounded him at dinner parties. But Morris, who launched Habitat International Inc. with his father Saul in 1981, wouldn’t budge.
“What if they can’t keep up?” Morris countered. “I can’t afford to lose money over something like this. What if they make mistakes? Or need a lot of extra training? Or distract the other workers?” Finally, Morris, whose company supplies major retailers like The Home Depot, Lowe’s and Meijer’s, agreed to give it a try.
One morning in the fall of 1986, eight people with various degrees of mental retardation showed up at the North Georgia plant, along with their job coach, and began folding, boxing and stacking the freshly-cut rugs. Morris couldn’t help but notice how hard they worked, how quickly they learned and, with a little training, were able to move on to more difficult tasks. Before long, the once-skeptical entrepreneur witnessed something even more powerful when his “able-bodied” workers, who had at first been leery of the newcomers, approached him and asked, “Why can’t we hire more people like this, who care, do their work with pride and smile?”
After that, Morris says, “We never looked back.”
For several years, Morris routinely hosted “enclaves” of people with developmental disabilities from state-funded workshops, then later hired them outright, adding them to the payroll and paying them standard industry wages. Today, most of the workers at Habitat, which is now headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have a physical or mental disability, or both. (The company employs up to 100 people during peak production.) People with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder make accent rugs next to those with Down syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy. Employees who have sustained strokes, brain damage or loss of their arms, hearing or sight, work packaging golf putting greens alongside recovering alcoholics, homeless people and ex-prisoners.
No, Habitat isn’t a charity, Morris asserts. And yes, you can hire an unconventional workforce and still make a profit. In fact, you may actually be more successful. Absenteeism and turnover at Habitat are practically zero, accidents are unheard-of, and the product defect and return rates are so negligible they aren’t even recorded. The bottom line is hard to ignore: Between 2001 and 2004, as a nationwide economic slump triggered massive layoffs and closings, Habitat’s multi-million-dollar sales actually tripled. Revenues — and margins — are even higher this year. “Now it’s a runaway train,” says Morris, a headstrong, energetic lecturer who is bent on spreading the gospel to business owners across the U.S. “It is unstoppable.”
An avid student of Buddhist and Taoist philosophies, Morris points to one of the tenets of The Noble Eightfold Path, as outlined by The Buddha. “Right Livelihood,” he says, simply means making a living with purpose and helping your co-workers do the same. “You spend a lot of your day working. If you do it with passion and pride and you’re doing it for the right reasons, then everyone around you is going to be more heartful and happy. And you’re going to create an environment that’s not only going to give you purpose, but give everyone else their purpose. I don’t understand how you can run a company otherwise.”
Morris also believes in paying his workers well (many now earn far above the industry average) and sharing the profits. He often hosts employee-recognition parties, takes them to ballgames, and gives hefty year-end bonuses to his disadvantaged workers, many of whom have never seen such generosity. For Morris, it’s simply the right thing to do.
“If I eat a lot today and my stomach is full when I go to bed, the food will rot in my stomach. And I’ll toss and turn all night,” he says. “I look at money the same way. Money has to go in a circle, a cycle. We can’t just sit on the money and build an empire. By investing in our people, we create a much better workplace. I believe in karma. What you sow, you reap.”
Nancy Henderson’s new book, Able! How One Company’s Disabled Workforce Became the Key to Extraordinary Success (BenBella Books, 2005), tells the story of Habitat International.
Fear of working with someone who is “different” could hold you back from your true potential, says David Morris, CEO of Habitat International, Inc., a leading indoor-outdoor rug company where most of the workforce is disabled. Alter the way you think about people with “distractions,” he urges, and you’ll be the one who benefits most. Morris’ advice on building a diverse workforce:
