Walt Green's is one of the most recognized names in the United States. It's the largest drugstore chain with over 8,300 stores in all 50 states. Here in Anderson, South Carolina, nearly 800 of those stores are fed every day using a unique combination of a high degree of technology and a very diverse workforce. It results in what many consider to be the coolest job in the world. From the outside, Anderson looks like any other distribution facility.
700,000 square an attractive exterior for a warehouse. But inside it is quite different. Here are some of the workers at Anderson.
Notice anything different about them? Would you be surprised to learn that over 40% of the staff here have a physical or mental disability? Well that's the idea. You shouldn't be able to notice any difference. That's because Walgreens, along with the company's warehouse design partner Schaefer Systems, built this facility to allow both disabled and non-disabled workers to work.
team members to do their work side by side with everyone meeting very high standards of performance. Meet Angela Mackey. Angela has cerebral palsy.
It is her job to recruit the disabled workforce here. I don't think people understand how hard it is for individuals with disabilities to get a job. I have a master's degree and 4.0 GPA. I'm a very good person.
Walgreens can make a level playing field. We have changed our ability. We're given an opportunity to prove what we can do before we change. The idea for hiring the disabled was the brainchild of Randy Lewis. He is retiring now as the man in charge of Walgreens distribution, and he's also the father of a child with autism.
He's a great man. But as a father, I saw these kids in these special ed programs growing up with all kinds of disabilities, not just autism, but CP and all different types of disabilities, and started thinking about what's going to happen to these kids after they get out of school. People with disabilities die a death of a thousand cuts.
That's something I know as an employer, something I know as a parent. We went through a phase of building a lot of distribution centers, and we had a little bit of extra time to design a whole new generation. And we got the idea to say we've used automation successfully, why don't we use it to enable a group of people who have never had a job before, people with disabilities. Since this program started, Walgreens has become a model that others are now copying. Lowe's, Procter & Gamble and Best Buy are just some of the companies that have either opened or plan to open facilities designed to accommodate disabled workforces.
As a parent with a child with a disability, the first thing you're aware of is that you're limited in your time on your own. on earth. What am I going to do after I'm gone?
That's a clock that keeps on ticking in a parent's mind. When they hear about this, that this is an inclusive environment, here's a future for my child that I never would have envisioned otherwise. People have moved across the country.
Desiree Neff is one of those people. She and her son moved from California to work at Walgreens. She has a muscular disease that causes her to lose her balance, and her son is legally blind. We used to live in San Diego and we were sent a newspaper article about the groundbreaking of this building and what it was doing, the pilot program. And both my son and myself have disabilities.
We decided to come out here and give it a shot, and it's been life-changing. Here, the sky's the limit, and he's made so much progress. He's actually married.
He got a home. He bought a home. He's got a driver's license. He's got a car. I mean, it's just meant him being completely independent.
The chance to earn a living and be self-sufficient is something most of us take for granted. For those who work here, it is life-changing. And the enthusiasm is infectious. They love their job.
They're happy to be here. They actually help motivate me. Monday mornings, I'm not a morning person.
I hate Mondays. But when team members walk up to you and they're happy just to be here to have a job, it changes you. Just because many of the workers are disabled does not mean that their jobs are any easier than for non-disabled people.
This is a fast-paced, productive distribution center where high performance is expected of all workers. Everyone contributes to the team here. So in this building, we started off saying, there is no them.
It's just us. And so we made that sign, and we put it in every building to remind us that we're more alike, a lot more than we are different. When Moobit returns in a moment, we will take a look at the sophisticated automation at Walgreens that helps make high levels of achievement possible.
for all workers.