Included, not excluded: Pizza Hut lauded for hiring disabled

Hiring people with disabilities is a nice thing to do. But for it to really work, it needs to be right from a business standpoint and for other employees.

Fortunately the benefits of such a policy seem to multiply in wonderful and surprising ways for everyone involved, according to Corey Sinn.

Sinn, general manager of the Columbiana Pizza Hut, explained, “My boss is aware of everyone I have working. The business has to stay productive. I have to justify the labor and balance it with the community outreach.”

Sinn employs two young men their 20s who have developmental disabilities–one comes in one night a week, the other works three days a week.

He hoped and expected that they would prove to be good, dependable employees. He didn’t anticipate the joy and positive attitude they would bring to the workplace, nor how his other employees would respond in kind and take them under their wing.

“The attitude they bring to work is just great,”Sinn said. One young man especially “is so excited to come to work.”

Both of them live out of town, and come from families with working parents. Yet both always find a way to get to work.

“Half the time I don’t know how he gets here,”Sinn said of one young man. “Sometimes I’ll see him walking in from the center of town. He always shows.”

The manager said his other employees have become “very accepting” of co-workers with disabilities, citing the example that employees sometimes give them a lift home. “I think it has changed their perspective,” he said.

Sinn, too, has adjusted his thinking as a manager, realizing that creating make-work tasks for them is the wrong approach. “There are jobs that they can do,” he said. “I just have to think how I can utilize them for their strengths.”

For its willingness to hire individuals with disabilities, the Columbiana Pizza Hut has been honored with a plaque of recognition by the Columbiana County Board of Developmental Disabilities and its Reach 4 More employment program.

The restaurant previously hired a young woman with disabilities who interned there as a high school student.

“She did so well that I offered her a job,” said Sinn. “She stayed with us for over a year, working five days a week. She kept her mind on her work. Her focus was so evident.”

Paul Anthony, job developer for the Reach 4 More program, said a job means much more than a paycheck to these individuals. “They are being included instead of excluded,” he said.