About 18 months ago, I experienced a complete turnaround in my career. I took a new position heading up the manufacturing, production and assembly arm of Northwest Center — and my outlook on the business world totally changed. Suddenly, I wasn’t working to turn profits into stockholder value; I was working to reinvest profit in human value.

This model was foreign to me because I had spent decades streamlining businesses in order to employ fewer people. Now I’m tasked with maximizing the potential of people — specifically, people with developmental disabilities — so they can build job skills and become more independent. The profits that are generated in the process go right back into programs for kids and adults with disabilities, so the impact is immediately doubled.

When I tell people about my work they wonder if the quality of our product is compromised or whether we can meet customer deadlines. The reality is exactly the opposite. I’m finding that through high expectations and the right training, people with disabilities are highly productive.

I’ve got a great example to prove this … Our assembly business recently landed a big job in which we were adding key rings to whistles, and we started with the traditional approach of prying open the rings with our fingers. Then I went to my manufacturing team in Everett and asked how we could do it better. They figured out that if we used a staple puller to open the rings, several of our workers could manage to do it — but not all of them, because of the manual dexterity that was required. So my team went back and built an ingenious apparatus that would hold the ring securely in place while a tool was inserted with just the right amount of tension to slide the whistle on.

Now we were in business. With this system, everyone — including people with severe disabilities — could work on the project. We leveled the playing field by working unconventionally, we had all the labor we needed, our job went out on time and the employees were jazzed to succeed at something new. Which brings me to my point: it wasn’t enough to just work with the few people who could do it easily. We needed to innovate so others could progress to the outer reaches of their experience.

In this process, my team and I found that we were the ones who needed to look at the task in a different way and remove our own assumptions and constructs about how things (and people) should work. I feel very fortunate that I’ve learned so much this deep into my career, and that in the process, I’ve learned to see people with disabilities in a different way. Before I took this job, I wouldn’t even have considered hiring someone with a disability, because that is all I saw. Now, disabilities are invisible to me and all I see is potential.

I want to challenge other businesses to look beyond the differences and recognize the benefits of hiring people with disabilities. Don’t look at it as taking a chance, because the realized gains will surprise you. You’ll find that you have a workforce of joyful, willing, loyal and hardworking people — which will benefit your business in ways you can’t yet envision.

If you want to see the evidence for yourself, I invite you to come and learn more. When you see this idea in action, you’ll get it. And when you get it, you’ll want to be a part of it.

This month, Mike Quinn is doing the Northwest Center guest column, which focuses on issues related to people with disabilities. Mike Quinn is a Vice President at Northwest Center. You can contact him by calling 206-285-9140 or e-mailing inside@nwcenter.org.