Last month, the Tech Accountability Coalition hosted quarterly meetings of our three working groups: Product Equity, Pathways Into Tech, and Inclusive Cultures.
As part of its yearlong focus on improving trust within the workplace at all levels, the Inclusive Cultures Working Group’s June convening focused specifically on building trust and inclusion in a hybrid work environment. Nicole Cuellar-Lopez, Director of DEI from Etsy and the Co-Chair of the Working Group, kicked off the discussion with key industry insights.
This was followed by an inspiring dialogue (listen below!) on the often unseen challenges facing employees with disabilities between Maria Town, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), and Beth Wiesendanger, the Senior Manager of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility at Etsy.
Watch Session on Trust in a Hybrid Workplace
This illuminating conversation was followed by a robust, off-the-record discussion among Working Group members. To learn more about how to participate in future Inclusive Cultures Working Group meetings as well as the work of the broader Tech Accountability Coalition, please reach out to us at techaccountabilitycoalition@aspeninstitute.org.
Get to Know the Experts
Nicole Cuellar-Lopez
Director of Diversity Equity & Inclusion, Etsy, Inc.
Nicole Cuellar-Lopez (she/her/hers) is Director of Diversity Equity & Inclusion at Etsy, Inc. Born in the Bronx, raised in Florida, and educated at Howard University. She’s a parent to two young children. Nicole held similar roles at high growth startups such as Peloton and Uber. Prior to that, Nicole worked at an international education non-profit. She lived and taught in a Siberian university on a Fulbright fellowship. Nicole earned her BA in Spanish and Russian. She’s passionate inclusion in all aspects of work life from the corporate level to investing and entrepreneurship.
Maria Town
President & CEO, American Association of People with Disabilities
Maria Town is the President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. Town previously served as Director of the City of Houston Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, advocating for citizens with disabilities. Town was also the senior associate director of the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, managing the disability community engagement and coordinating federal engagement.
Beth Wiesendanger
Senior Manager of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility, Etsy
Beth Wiesendanger, a passionate advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, is currently serving as the Senior Manager of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility at Etsy. As a double amputee and prosthetic user, Beth’s personal journey has shaped her commitment to ensuring that people with disabilities are seen, heard, and advocated for. With a successful career in corporate America, Beth is breaking barriers and leading the way for disabled individuals in the diversity and inclusion space. Her work emphasizes the importance of representation and the creation of inclusive spaces.
The rise of remote work has sparked a critical conversation about the future of employment and its impact on building trust and inclusion within a hybrid environment. This is particularly relevant for people with disabilities as they have often encountered obstacles to employment resulting from employers’ insufficient efforts to establish and nurture an inclusive work environment and as a result of widespread systemic inaccessibility of transit and housing which are often required to seek, get, and maintain employment. Many of the workplace policy advancements that were experienced during the pandemic incorporated accommodations that were originally designed and deployed for people with disabilities. These include remote work, regular use of captioning, and flexible workplace policies.
These accommodations were long requested and often denied to people with disabilities. However the widespread implementation of a variety of accommodations during the pandemic highlighted the curb-cut effects of so many tools and resources that are ubiquitous and essential to the ways of work today. This demonstrates the importance of building with people with disabilities to benefit all workers- especially given the rise in the number of people with disabilities since the pandemic.
In hasty return to office policies, some companies are reversing a lot of these policies to the detriment of those with disabilities and the trust employees had with their companies. This conversation examined the considerations that HR teams and strategic leadership could take when thinking about place of work policies to ensure that the innovation around accessibility made during the pandemic is not lost.
The conversation highlighted the importance of transparency when establishing or shifting place of work policies. When leadership openly shares goals, challenges, and successes with employees, it creates a sense of partnership, trust, and psychological safety. This trust is further bolstered by open communication channels that allow employees to provide feedback, raise concerns, and suggest improvements. However, fostering a genuinely inclusive hybrid work environment requires more than good intentions.
Technology as a Tool for Empowerment
“I think one of the essential things that we should start with is that disabled people have always been [early] users and adapters of technology. I’ll share that I would not be here without technology.”
– Maria Town, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities
Technology can be a powerful tool for workers with disabilities – and all workers – enabling them to perform their jobs effectively. Companies should invest in accessible technologies and provide training to ensure everyone has the tools to succeed. Technologies, shifts, and resources built with people with disabilities often result in positive externalities for many other groups, as demonstrated by “the Curb-Cut effect.”
Many technologies that are part of everyday lives today, from voice recognition and audio books to closed captions, were originally assistive technology built due to years of advocacy from people with disabilities.
The lessons from the pandemic’s start are another testament to the importance of centering people with disabilities when co-designing workplace policies, products, and company cultures.
The Power of Remote Work for Disability Inclusion
“While remote work is extremely beneficial to people with disabilities, we have seen improvements in disability employment that have never happened before, and many attribute that to the greater availability of remote work.”
– Maria Town, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities
Town highlighted the unprecedented improvements in disability employment due to remote work. Remote work eliminates the need for commuting, a significant challenge for many with physical disabilities. Town also shared the pre-pandemic struggles faced by individuals who requested remote work as an accommodation, often met with structural resistance, reluctance to try something new, or rationalizations for why the accommodation would not be logistically or budgetarily possible.
The mass adoption of individualized virtual conference systems like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet after the start of the pandemic showed what had been possible all along. Personal video conferencing allowed for an expansion of the physical geography of where workers reside. It allowed for immediate auto-captions- a benefit not only for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing but also for people who are not native speakers of the majority language. It allowed caregivers and parents to cut out hours of transit and the labor of logistics to manage all of life’s responsibilities. These positive externalities were all made possible by a solution people with disabilities were denied for years.
It is important to note, however, that remote work should not be the only option available for people with disabilities. Seeing remote work as the primary or only option for disability accommodation may create less of an incentive to invest in updating physical spaces to be more inclusive of people with disabilities. The goal is to create both in-person and online spaces that are inclusive of people with a diversity of disabilities.
Town shares how using remote work as an accommodation exclusively for people with disabilities creates an artificial segregation of people with disabilities and plays into the proximity bias. Research has shown proximity bias, if unrecognized and unmitigated, results in fewer opportunities for facetime with peers and higher-ups: “SHRM reported two-thirds (67%) of supervisors overseeing remote workers admitted to believing remote workers are more replaceable than onsite workers. Forty-two percent said they sometimes forget about remote workers when assigning tasks. This may explain why remote workers get promoted less often than their peers, despite being 15% more productive on average.”
Some companies have also layered performance metrics with in-office time as a codification of proximity bias into their workplace policies, where remote work is allowed but bars employees from promotions. Other companies have opted for other “carrot” style incentives to get workers into the office. Some companies have embraced remote-first work as the future and are seeing overwhelming interest from applicants in their open roles. Some companies have shown year-over-year benefits of work-from-anywhere policies on both their company culture and their bottom lines and productivity having remote work norms in place from even before the pandemic.
In a 2023 interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered,” AirBnb’s Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson reassures that remote work options and productivity go hand in hand when employees are given the opportunity to choose for themselves: “it’s been one year since Airbnb shared our design to Live & Work Anywhere which offers employees the flexibility to work from an Airbnb office, or remotely in over 170 countries. And it’s working great for us. By offering employees flexibility and gathering in-person intentionally, we’re improving employee diversity and retention while increasing our productivity as a company.”
“Demand for remote work continues to outstrip supply heading into 2024,” LinkedIn’s Chief Economist, Karin Kimbrough, reports in the 2024 Global State of Remote and Hybrid Work. “Just 10% of U.S. job postings on LinkedIn in December were for remote jobs — and those postings received 46% of all applications. That translates to remote roles receiving five times the share of applications compared to jobs available.” Attracting top talent is a key performance metric for many Chief Human Resources Officers and crucial to a company’s success.
Lastly, for workers with disabilities getting in the door at a company is essential, but Town flags that visibility is a critical component of belonging. She gives her own experience as a wheelchair user as an example: appearing on a video call often hides her disability in a workspace even though it is a component of her experience in the world.
Beyond Accommodation: A Human-Centered Approach
Building a genuinely inclusive environment goes beyond simply offering flexible work options. Nicole Cuellar-Lopez, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Etsy, emphasized the importance of keeping work human and celebrating differences. Flexible work fosters inclusivity by focusing on individual strengths and contributions rather than physical limitations.
Self-Identification and Trust-Building for Inclusive Datasets
Creating a safe space for self-identification of disabilities is crucial. Experts say that the data we have on disabilities at work are far underreported, and a deficit of trust in the workplace is to blame. Companies can achieve more trust by encouraging open communication between employees and managers regarding accommodations and best practices for remote work with disabilities. What data is being collected, who will have access to it, and how the employees will be able to benefit from the data are critical parts of the communication about data collection and self-ID internally.
Ensuring the data reflects the experiences of employees is crucial in demonstrating shared values. This could look like allowing for a level of disaggregation and breadth of options: the Tech Accountability Coalition’s equity framework gives a starting point for this work. Finally, employees must be clear on the follow-up actions from the data collected to avoid compounding survey fatigue. Employees want to know the time it takes to give their input will not be used against them, will be stewarded responsibly, and will create the change they seek. This fosters trust and allows for a collaborative approach to building a successful work environment.
“When we look at self-identification in disability hiring, the statistics are usually pretty bad, if they exist at all. And so I’m thrilled to see that Etsy actually does include disability in demographic surveys of employees.
That is not the standard.”
– Maria Town, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities
Shifting from Compliance to Belonging
Beth Wiesendanger highlighted the need to shift focus from simply meeting ADA compliance requirements to a more human-centered approach to disability inclusion. Flexible work options present an opportunity to move beyond legal requirements and foster a culture of belonging and trust.
“Historically, when organizations think about disability inclusion, trust building, or belonging, the approach has really been risk mitigation. It’s been that compliance mindset.
We’re just starting to see a more human-centered approach to what disability inclusion can really look like.”
– Beth Wiesendanger, Senior Manager of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility at Etsy
Shifting from the bare minimum of ADA compliance to the human-centered approach that Wiesendanger discusses can put disability inclusion at the forefront of innovation and workplace culture instead of as an afterthought. Leading with disability inclusion ensures that workers with disabilities are not seen as edge cases and that a company is truly building for everyone from the inside out.
Considering disability accommodations creates an opportunity to move beyond just legal requirements and foster a culture of belonging and trust.
“Etsy’s mission is to keep commerce human. Where I sit on the people team, we’re often saying, keep work human, keep management human, really centering the humanity of the people that we work to serve in everything that we do.”
– Nicole Cuellar-Lopez, Director of Diversity Equity & Inclusion at Etsy
A Call to Action
The current moment has the potential to revolutionize disability inclusion and belonging in general in the workplace. If we collectively return to “pre-pandemic” business practices, we may lose all of the innovation that was born of necessity and miss out on massive progress, productivity, and profit as a result.
Companies can create a truly inclusive hybrid work environment by fostering open communication, embracing advances in assistive technology, and prioritizing a human-centered approach. Continuous learning and improvement are essential, but the positive impact of remote work and other technological and cultural accommodations on disability inclusion is undeniable. We encourage all companies to consider their place of work policies as tools for building a more inclusive and equitable future of work for everyone.
The bottom line is that transparency and clear communication are crucial for building trust with employees with disabilities. By incorporating their needs and concerns from the beginning, companies can create a truly inclusive hybrid work environment. This doesn’t just remove barriers, it unlocks the full potential of a diverse and talented workforce. The lessons learned during the pandemic can be a springboard for building a better, more inclusive future of work for everyone.
To learn more about our work, get in touch and please attend our next event.
