JOHN COFFELTEditor

The Manchester Coffee County Conference Center was recently chosen as a 2023 Tennessee Employment First Inclusive Employer Award Recipient.

According to state the Employment First Task Force, the state feels “fortunate to have the conference center as part of the community supporting the employment of people with disabilities.”

General Manager Rebecca French said that while honored to be able to participate, she hopes to inspire other workplaces in the community to participate.

“Even if it’s just to hire three people,” French said. “There’s a huge amount of people in our community that would like to go to work…but they find it scary to go in and ask for accommodations.”

Employment First is a state program coordinated through the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, that seeks to enable individuals with disabilities receiving assistance from publicly funded systems real employment in the general workforce.

To accomplish that goal at the ground level, participating workplaces are given the tools and training to help make that happen. Those can include classes on what are reasonable accommodations, how to create an inclusive workplace environment and workshops that explore the types of instruction that employees can best comprehend their job training.

French said that the conference center has helped introduce into the workforce people with disabilities, local students wanting to learn a career and people who need to do community service.

For some that can mean offering a part-time job that can fall below fulltime as not to interfere with their benefits.

“Gainful employee for somebody is 16-30 hours,” French said. “For others it’s a fulltime job and that person is going to be able to cover their health insurance.”

In vocational rehab, each plan is individualized to the person, but overall it’s a plan to teach job skills to people who want to work.

The conference center started participation in 2017. French brought the program with her from a former job.

“It’s grown over the years and improved as our staff has improved,” she said. “It’s helped all of our staff become better trainers, more empathetic leaders and understands appropriate workplace etiquette.”

Some the tasks that employees are asked to do include laundering linens, heat shining silverware, custodial work and culinary tasks.

Some people can go on to enroll in Tennessee Rehabilitation Center-Smyrna in the school’s culinary program. French said that the staff visited TRC and implemented their training material to create a cohesive training processes.

“It made sure that if you have abled-bodied, differently abled, everyone learn the same way to train and do a task,” French said. “All of our leadership staff took Windmill Training…modules to help employers who work with employees with disabilities.”

The Windmill program instructs employers with potential issues like reasonable accommodations, etiquette and myths.

“It addresses everything involved in working with someone with a disability and not knowing the gray area and addresses those,” French said.

It also included quizzes that help identify each staff member’s best learning style.

In the hall outside the conference center kitchen a chart is listed with each employee’s name and best communication style.

If there’s a communication breakdown, a supervisor can review the communication style best suited for that employee and find how best to make that person understand what is required.

French stressed that there are people in the community who want to work.

“It’s intimidating to try to explain to a stranger what your limitations are, what you can do – be vulnerable, but still say I want you to take a chance on me…” she said. “This kind of gets all those issues out and shows that (employers) can work with anybody.”

To learn more about implementing a similar program go to Vocational Rehabilitation’s website at www.tn.gov/humanservices/ds/vocational-rehabilitation.html.

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.