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Accommodating workers with disabilities doesn't have to be daunting, this entrepreneur cum cookie maker discovered. Gimmee Jimmy's recipe: A batch of ingenuity and a sprinkling of money.
Jimmy Libman wasn't out to make a point. He wasn't bent on changing the face of the workforce or establishing a new standard for productivity. He wasn't even making accommodations to conform with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Indeed, when he opened his business in 1983, the law didn't exist.
All Libman wanted was to bake cookies. So when he launched Gimmee Jimmy's Cookies in West Orange, N.J., 15 years ago, he didn't consider the $3,000 he spent on a light system for the deaf to be an investment in productivity. For Libman, who has a congenital hearing loss, it was a simple necessity.
Libman, who employed two other deaf workers he'd hired through Vocational Rehab Services, an organization that trains the disabled and helps them find jobs, simply needed the lights to run his business. While hearing people rely on auditory cues such as telephone rings, door chimes, oven buzzers and smoke alarms, he and his hearing-impaired workers needed visual cues. Although the intricate set of lights - a common tool among the deaf - has been invaluable, it wasn't expensive. The investment comes to just $200 a year if you divide the cost over the 15 years it's been in place.
The system relies on multicolored lights that flash to attract the staff's attention. Orange announces the ringing of the TTY, a teletype machine that replaces a telephone by enabling both parties to type rather than speak their messages. Blue means a customer has entered the store. White indicates it's time to take cookies out of the oven, or that someone's at the back door. Red, the universal alarm color, is reserved for fire.
The success of the system is reflected in the cookie maker's phenomenal growth. Consider the stats: In 1995 Libman took over the second floor of the building in which he has his bakery, doubling the size of the Gimmee Jimmy's enterprise. This year he expects to sell a million cookies and do $1 million worth of business, well over three times the amount he was selling a decade ago. That's a considerable improvement for a man who began by equipping his mother's living room with commercial ovens and operating from there until the cookie maker's present home was completed.
Today Gimmee Jimmy's sells its wares to local country clubs, gourmet groceries and corporations that use the cookies as part of their gift and thank-you programs. (Libman makes 18 varieties of cookies, using his Mom's recipes for everything from oatmeal raisin to double chocolate walnut. The classic chocolate chip remains the most popular.) The company is in the process of setting up a web site, which it hopes to have on-line in time for this month's holiday season, when mail orders typically spike.
Libman has also gone from a seven to a 10-person staff, three of whom are deaf. The company swells to a 40-employee, double-shift operation at Christmastime. Three office workers take phone orders and handle corporate accounts as well as shipping and handling and order processing. In the downstairs bakery, three bakers and four packers work in tandem. When an oven timer beeps, hearing employees switch on the flashing white lights to let hearing-impaired bakers know that the cookies are done.
Although Libman's regular staff is almost equally divided between hearing and deaf employees, the use of the word "divided" is actually misleading. The staff is so integrated, he says, that distinguishing deaf workers from their hearing counterparts is a moot point.
"Everyone works well together," Libman asserts. "Some of the hearing people sign and some of the deaf lip read. Everyone tries to communicate with everyone else." Most of those with intact hearing picked up sign language simply by working side by side with the deaf. Office manager Fran Stack, who interned with Gimmee Jimmy's while earning an associate degree in American Sign Language from Union County College in Cranford, N.J., and later became a full-time employee, also acts as liaison when necessary.
Libman's business acumen isn't borne of an MBA or any other academic credentials: In 1983 he dropped out of New York University and abandoned the business administration degree he'd been pursuing. Rather, he says, his skill at managing a diverse workforce comes from this simple philosophy: "All the world is the same. It doesn't matter if you're deaf or hearing."
An integrated workplace has the additional benefit of being a pleasant place to work, Libman says, and that alone can have an enormous impact on productivity. "When people are happy at work the business does well," he asserts. "Everyone here knows his or her job and does it well. And because of the light system, everyone makes the effort to communicate clearly to make the day work. Sometimes there is a miscommunication, but it's always worked out."
While accommodating disabled workers can improve productivity, expanding the labor pool from which an employer can draw serves a greater societal function, Libman adds. In his experience, a diverse workforce boosts morale by breaking down stereotypes.
Employers need to "hire the deaf and treat them like anyone else," Libman the advocate advises. Although there may be certain positions that the hearing-impaired could not handle, firsthand experience has taught him that these workers do just fine in the vast majority of situations. And they respond with a heavy dose of loyalty.
If employers would give deaf people a chance to work, hearing people would realize that the deaf are no different than anyone else, he says.
COPYRIGHT 1998 A Thomson Healthcare Company
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Accommodating workers with disabilities doesn't have to be daunting, this entrepreneur cum cookie maker discovered. Gimmee Jimmy's recipe: A batch of ingenuity and a sprinkling of money.
Jimmy Libman wasn't out to make a point. He wasn't bent on changing the face of the workforce or establishing a new standard for productivity. He wasn't even making accommodations to conform with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Indeed, when he opened his business in 1983, the law didn't exist.
All Libman wanted was to bake cookies. So when he launched Gimmee Jimmy's Cookies in West Orange, N.J., 15 years ago, he didn't consider the $3,000 he spent on a light system for the deaf to be an investment in productivity. For Libman, who has a congenital hearing loss, it was a simple necessity.
Libman, who employed two other deaf workers he'd hired through Vocational Rehab Services, an organization that trains the disabled and helps them find jobs, simply needed the lights to run his business. While hearing people rely on auditory cues such as telephone rings, door chimes, oven buzzers and smoke alarms, he and his hearing-impaired workers needed visual cues. Although the intricate set of lights - a common tool among the deaf - has been invaluable, it wasn't expensive. The investment comes to just $200 a year if you divide the cost over the 15 years it's been in place.
The system relies on multicolored lights that flash to attract the staff's attention. Orange announces the ringing of the TTY, a teletype machine that replaces a telephone by enabling both parties to type rather than speak their messages. Blue means a customer has entered the store. White indicates it's time to take cookies out of the oven, or that someone's at the back door. Red, the universal alarm color, is reserved for fire.
The success of the system is reflected in the cookie maker's phenomenal growth. Consider the stats: In 1995 Libman took over the second floor of the building in which he has his bakery, doubling the size of the Gimmee Jimmy's enterprise. This year he expects to sell a million cookies and do $1 million worth of business, well over three times the amount he was selling a decade ago. That's a considerable improvement for a man who began by equipping his mother's living room with commercial ovens and operating from there until the cookie maker's present home was completed.
Today Gimmee Jimmy's sells its wares to local country clubs, gourmet groceries and corporations that use the cookies as part of their gift and thank-you programs. (Libman makes 18 varieties of cookies, using his Mom's recipes for everything from oatmeal raisin to double chocolate walnut. The classic chocolate chip remains the most popular.) The company is in the process of setting up a web site, which it hopes to have on-line in time for this month's holiday season, when mail orders typically spike.
Libman has also gone from a seven to a 10-person staff, three of whom are deaf. The company swells to a 40-employee, double-shift operation at Christmastime. Three office workers take phone orders and handle corporate accounts as well as shipping and handling and order processing. In the downstairs bakery, three bakers and four packers work in tandem. When an oven timer beeps, hearing employees switch on the flashing white lights to let hearing-impaired bakers know that the cookies are done.
Although Libman's regular staff is almost equally divided between hearing and deaf employees, the use of the word "divided" is actually misleading. The staff is so integrated, he says, that distinguishing deaf workers from their hearing counterparts is a moot point.
"Everyone works well together," Libman asserts. "Some of the hearing people sign and some of the deaf lip read. Everyone tries to communicate with everyone else." Most of those with intact hearing picked up sign language simply by working side by side with the deaf. Office manager Fran Stack, who interned with Gimmee Jimmy's while earning an associate degree in American Sign Language from Union County College in Cranford, N.J., and later became a full-time employee, also acts as liaison when necessary.
Libman's business acumen isn't borne of an MBA or any other academic credentials: In 1983 he dropped out of New York University and abandoned the business administration degree he'd been pursuing. Rather, he says, his skill at managing a diverse workforce comes from this simple philosophy: "All the world is the same. It doesn't matter if you're deaf or hearing."
An integrated workplace has the additional benefit of being a pleasant place to work, Libman says, and that alone can have an enormous impact on productivity. "When people are happy at work the business does well," he asserts. "Everyone here knows his or her job and does it well. And because of the light system, everyone makes the effort to communicate clearly to make the day work. Sometimes there is a miscommunication, but it's always worked out."
While accommodating disabled workers can improve productivity, expanding the labor pool from which an employer can draw serves a greater societal function, Libman adds. In his experience, a diverse workforce boosts morale by breaking down stereotypes.
Employers need to "hire the deaf and treat them like anyone else," Libman the advocate advises. Although there may be certain positions that the hearing-impaired could not handle, firsthand experience has taught him that these workers do just fine in the vast majority of situations. And they respond with a heavy dose of loyalty.
If employers would give deaf people a chance to work, hearing people would realize that the deaf are no different than anyone else, he says.
COPYRIGHT 1998 A Thomson Healthcare Company
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