Naples Daily News Article

J.Lodge Aims To Help Disabled Professionals Get Back Into The Work Force

By lllayden@naplesnews.com
Publication: Naples Daily News (Florida)
Date: Monday, October 5 2009

In 1995, Michael Schrider met a disabled man he would never forget. His name was Jackie Lodge and he suffered from cerebral palsy. He’s the inspiration behind J.Lodge LLC, a quality assurance company Schrider co-founded in 1999. At J.Lodge, the employees are almost entirely disabled professionals.

Although Lodge could never work because of the seriousness of his disease, he was very smart. That led Schrider to think of a way to tap into the intelligence of disabled people who can work, but who are physically limited in what they can do because of injury or illness. “It’s impossible for them to find a job,” Schrider said. The company got its start in call monitoring. Its employees are the ones who listen in when you hear “your call may be recorded or monitored for quality purposes.” You might be calling your cable company to change your service or your phone company to dispute charges or fees.

The company’s headquarters are in Fort Myers at the Gateway Business Park off Daniels Road. It got its start in New Jersey and relocated to Lee County two years ago. Started with 11 people, the company now has more than 200 employees. It continues to grow. J.Lodge recently added two new divisions. It now offers call center services and a contract service providing disabled workers to other businesses that can use people who work from home. “The number of people we employ will grow dramatically – even here,” Schrider said, motioning around his offices.

Only about 20 of the employees work in Fort Myers. They are in central operations, which include human resources and finance. The company hires college-educated professionals with five to seven years of experience. Most of them work from home. They live all over the country. “We never get to meet most of these folks,” Schrider said.

The company works with 600 vocational rehabilitation counselors in more than 30 states to recruit employees. There are more than 50 million disabled Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About two-thirds of those people have been in the work force before so there is a big population to draw from, Schrider said. “It’s the fastest way to fight the high unemployment numbers,” said Andy Schrider, Michael’s son, an executive vice president of the company.

Many of the workers the company employs are stuck at home and may otherwise be watching TV all day because of their physical limitations. “It returns them to normalcy,” Michael Schrider said. He said the workers are grateful for their jobs so they work harder and with their experience comes professionalism. “The real key to what we do are these folks,” Schrider said. “The work they do for customers is just extraordinary.”

He said the reports they turn out on the calls they monitor are almost like “white papers,” meaning they are very detailed and come filled with recommendations for how to improve service. Tape recordings of calls are usually listened to within 24 hours. Many of the company’s employees were nurses, who have become ill or were injured on the job, Schrider said. Others have worked as network administrators, bankers and store managers.

The pay isn’t high for call monitors or call center agents so it would be hard otherwise to get quality workers who will stay on the job. “Most of the call centers in the United States are typically employing high school graduates or entry-level employees,” Michael Schrider said. The company has virtually no turnover, he said. “The only reason we lose anybody is for health reasons,” he said. “Most of the time it’s a leave of absence. They need surgery or a transplant.”

There are opportunities to move up at J.Lodge. Sean Rogers, 36, started out as a part-timer monitoring calls. He became a team leader overseeing other call monitors. Now he’s moved up to a quality service delivery manager, reporting the findings from calls and relaying recommendations to J.Lodge’s clients. He’s now working full-time. He can do it because his health has improved. A brain injury forced him out of his last job as the manager of a computer store, he said. He said finding a job with J.Lodge was a blessing. He has a wife and daughter to help support. His disability income from Social Security has been minimal, he said. “Work has been a godsend,” he said. He plans to move from Virginia to Fort Myers for the new job. He didn’t have to move, but he wanted to. “Everybody in the office there has been so great and supportive,” Rogers said. “It’s like having an extended family. I want to interact with these people on a face-to-face basis.”

With the new call center operations, J.Lodge employees will now be the ones answering service calls and resolving the problems for the customers of other companies. With the new contract service, employees will do similar jobs but won’t be on J.Lodge’s payroll. When it first opened in Fort Myers, J.Lodge took up 1,200 square feet. Its offices soon doubled in size. The company has now expanded to about 6,000 square feet to support its two new divisions.

Time-Warner Cable has been one of the company’s largest customers over the years. J.Lodge employees have even posed as mystery callers, dialing into the cable company’s call center to monitor how their agents are doing with customers. J.Lodge wants to return call-center jobs to the U.S. Many have gone to India, where wages are lower. “If our dream came true, all of our call center jobs would come back to the U.S.,” Michael Schrider said.

Most of his employees work four hours a day. The company has been unable to employ disabled veterans because they don’t have the same income limits. The disabled workers J.Lodge employs have an income cap because they receive Social Security benefits. Schrider wouldn’t disclose what his employees are making, saying only that it’s “way above minimum wage.” They are paid per call and for their training time. He hopes more companies will adopt his employee model. He said he’s meeting with a company next week on Long Island, N.Y., to try to convince its executives to go with it. J.Lodge has been profitable since day one, Schrider said.

He met Jackie Lodge on a missionary assignment for his church. The assignment took him to a mental institution, where Lodge lived much of his life. He was 60 when the Schriders met him. Jackie Lodge became a family friend. For many years, the Schriders would visit Lodge weekly. As a kid, Lodge was put in a mental institution after both of his parents died and there was no one else to take care of him. “He was a shrunken-up guy,” Schrider recalls. “He was so intelligent,” added Andy Schrider. “But it was wasted, him just sitting there.” The only part of Lodge’s body that moved was his mouth. But he wrote e-mails with a stick that he moved with his tongue.

“He got to see our first office,” Andy Schrider said. “He saw it before he died. He’s a constant reminder of what the company is about.”

Reference: J.Lodge Aims To Help The Disabled