A New Perspective on ROI: Cascade Engineering Creates a Workplace Community
Through Commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, B Corp Develops Innovative Employee Programs
In the United States and many other countries around the world, demographics are changing. According to The Competitive Advantage of Racial Equity, a report from PolicyLink and FSG, just more than 20 years from now the United States will become a majority people-of-color nation.
“Yet, there are enormous inequities that people of color face in health, wealth, employment opportunities, and so on,” the report says. “These twin forces of rising diversity amidst persistent exclusion form a core challenge that American businesses must address to remain competitive.”
Members of the Certified B Corporation community realize that creating equitable workplaces and businesses is crucial for the future. And while equity work isn’t easy, it is important and valuable for the economy, the planet and all people.
As the United States celebrates Black History Month this February, B the Change shares examples of B Corps working to build a more inclusive economy where people of all backgrounds and experiences can support themselves and their families, strengthen companies, and contribute to their communities.
From the start, founder Fred Keller wanted Cascade Engineering to be different — a business built on sustainability and driven by innovation that succeeds financially but also allows its workers to feel valued, empowered and safe.
Keller started Cascade in 1973 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, soon after the height of the 1960s civil rights movement and push for social justice for Black Americans. While launching his manufacturing company, Keller soon collaborated with other business leaders in Grand Rapids to start what is now the Institute for Healing Racism and began his work to create a workplace with equal opportunities for all employees.
In the decades since, Cascade has grown to employ 1,900 people in 14 U.S. locations and in Budapest, Hungary. The manufacturing company continues its push for racial equity and serves as an example for other companies while maintaining a strong and visible commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. Since Keller founded the company, Cascade has:
- Declared its status as an anti-racism organization that strives to provide a workplace where employees feel safe to discuss race and how that is important to the organization and to their lives, whether at work or at home.
- Collaborated with other Grand Rapids companies to shape the launch of a nonprofit agency that supports workers and employers through training, services and professional development.
- Been among the first companies to formally proclaim its commitment to the triple bottom line by becoming a Certified B Corporation in 2010.
- Launched a returning citizens policy for job applicants who have been incarcerated.
Cascade sees its equity work as a continual process, as noted on its website: “Being an anti-racism organization is a journey and it is the learning along the way that makes this work worth all of our efforts.”
Moving Welfare to a Long-Term Career
Cascade Engineering has nine business divisions that use innovative plastic technologies, including injection molding, to create products. But its innovative model goes way beyond technology. Through its corporate equity work over the last two decades, the B Corp has tested models, invented systems and learned lessons that other companies can use to create more inclusive, diverse workplaces.
Keith Maki, Cascade director of communications, says Keller was looking for new ways to find workers in the mid-1990s, when the national economy was strong, unemployment rates were low and talent was hard to find.
Wanting to provide employment opportunities for people who were unemployed or receiving welfare benefits, Keller worked with state officials to subsidize a van to transport workers from an urban Grand Rapids neighborhood to Cascade’s plant, about 30 miles away.
“The group came to work for a few days,” Maki says. “A week or two later, half were there. Two or three weeks after that, nobody showed up. That was a learning lesson.”
While that initial project was well-intentioned, Keller recognized that it would take more than transportation to bridge the transition to employment for people living in poverty, and he was determined to find a solution.
“Fred is an incredible human being and extremely tenacious when he believes something should be done and it’s the right thing to do,” Maki says.
In 1999, Cascade worked with the Michigan Department of Human Services to hire a state-certified case worker, Joyce Gutierrez-Marsh, who would work on-site and connect applicants with jobs and other government support, including transportation and safe housing.
“It was the absolute turnaround,” Maki says. “Joyce would do interviewing, screening and determine whether they were a viable candidate. She also was there to offer them support, as the human resources people didn’t understand everything about the state support system. She could ask questions that our HR people by law could not. That was instrumental in making the whole program a success.”
That was the start of what’s now known as the Welfare to Career program. By providing on-site support and connections to workers who had been receiving welfare services, Cascade has increased its monthly employee retention rate from around 30 percent to above an average of 96 percent in the last 10 years.
While reducing employee turnover saves the B Corp (and taxpayers) money, Welfare to Career adds other value that’s more important to Cascade’s overall mission: employee longevity, expertise and empowerment.
“The whole program was, over time, really designed and developed to take all of those factors into account,” Maki says. “We’ve put thousands through that program, and now there’s a second generation wanting to work at Cascade.”
Training for supervisors has included a poverty simulation that tasks them with managing a family of four on welfare recipient funding. Maki says this helps them see why people living in generational poverty — when what seems like small challenges, like a missed ride to work, have large consequences — often adopt a survival mode for everyday life. Supervisors also can contact Gutierrez-Marsh with more specific concerns about employees.
After seeing the success of Welfare to Career at Cascade, other businesses wanted to offer the same program. So a group of eight Grand Rapids companies collaborated to establish a nonprofit called the SOURCE, which adapted some of Cascade’s Welfare to Career initiatives. Through SOURCE, the eight companies have on-site case workers who have helped expand recruiting and hiring, and a total of 20 companies are active members of the organization. The model has been replicated in other communities, too.
Opening Opportunities
Cascade continues to seek new ways to provide opportunities for people who often face barriers to employment. It changed its employment applications to remove a question asking if applicants have been convicted of a crime, a policy that advocates call “Ban the Box,” and created a Returning Citizens program to support people who have been incarcerated when they are hired at Cascade.
An estimated 70 million people in the United States — nearly one in three adults — have a prior arrest or conviction record, according to the National Employment Law Project. While the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, it has 21 percent of the world’s prisoners, according to the NAACP, and though Blacks and Hispanics make up approximately 32 percent of the U.S. population, they comprised 56 percent of all incarcerated people in 2015.
“It’s another untapped talent source,” Maki says. “It’s difficult for people leaving prison to get a job. They have to reforge their identity. We believe a person should be considered for a job based on their skills and desire, not necessarily their history.”
Cascade works to spread the word about its Returning Citizens program to people who are exiting prison so they’re aware of the opportunity.
“We have people in our Returning Citizens program who are willing to speak to the prison population and tell their story,” Maki says. “They can have complete anonymity if they want. But many are overjoyed and actually want to tell their story.”
Workers sharing their own stories makes up a strong component of Cascade’s racial equity program. The B Corp encourages conversations about race through dialogue, when Cascade workers come together to talk honestly about their experiences and opinions. (Kenyatta Brame, Cascade’s chief administrative officer, shared more about the value of an inclusive business and how Cascade allows him to be his authentic self at the 2016 Champions Retreat.)
That dialogue is also part of Cascade’s declaration as an anti-racism organization. Similar to B Corp certification, it’s a public declaration — for workers, consumers and partners — of the company’s values. At Cascade, being an anti-racism organization means the company strives to provide a workplace where employees feel safe to discuss race and how that is important to the organization and to their lives, whether at work or at home.
Cascade decided to become an anti-racism organization, through work with the nonprofit Partners for a Racism-Free Community, to deepen discussions of race and color and how they affect the organization, and to challenge the B Corp to identify and correct inequities as it continues its racial equity focus.
While these conversations can be uncomfortable at times, Maki says, they ultimately spur progress and understanding.
“We believe that when people know they’re valued, they transform their own lives. They also know that their opinions are valued,” he says.
Supporting Workers
Becoming a B Corp was a natural fit for Cascade.
“Fred is really the impetus behind most of these things,” Maki says. “When he started the company, he wanted to have a business that was financially successful but also create a place where people like coming to work and enjoy what they do.”
That initial idea guided the company toward a triple-bottom-line model for business: measuring success through people, planet and profit.
“B Corp certification readily identifies us as an organization that believes business can be a force for good,” Maki says. “The beauty of the B Corp assessment is the data and evidence required to prove your company is doing what it claims. We also know any other certified B Corp has the same desire — to make our world a better place.”
When other companies contact Cascade to learn more about Welfare to Career and other programs, Maki encourages them to visit and see the difference.
“When you walk into a store, manufacturing plant or other workplace, you can tell within seconds the attitude of that employee: whether it’s a safe environment, whether they’re concerned about helping you,” he says. “Are they happy, helpful? When you have a business that is not supportive of its employees, that’s readily seen.”
Because most businesses are driven primarily by the bottom line, Maki says, programs like Welfare to Career must make financial sense because the return on investment is critical to the success of the business.
“You can’t calculate the ROI on a program like Welfare to Career,” he says. “A positive ROI is when people like coming to work, are supportive of each other, know they are valued — when a company has low turnover and dedicated people who truly enjoy working together.”
It goes back to Keller’s goals when establishing Cascade nearly 50 years ago: creating a business where employees feel comfortable sharing their suggestions to improve the workplace, no matter their age, experience or color.
“The idea is when you have employees who are valued and know you’re interested in hearing from them, they’ll share their opinions,” Maki says. “All those things are intangibles that you can’t calculate. They’re the right thing to do.
“You can’t calculate it, but you can feel it.”
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
