Q&A with Corliss Garner on Old National Bank making Leading Disability Employers list
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Two Indiana-based companies made the National Organization on Disability’s Leading Disability Employers list in 2024. Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. and Evansville-based Old National Bank were among nearly 60 businesses to receive the distinction.
The unranked list was derived from an evaluation of business practices concerning the hiring, retention, and advancement of people with disabilities. Corliss Garner, ONB’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, spoke with Inside INdiana Business about the honor.
Describe your role as chief DEI officer at Old National Bank.
My role is to think about how do we embed and integrate DEI in everything that we do across our organization. That includes what we do in our people space around talent, attraction, development, retention. That includes what we do from a culture perspective.
How do we create a culture of inclusion that ensures that we have team members that want to be here and want to work hard to support our clients in our communities? What’s our lens of inclusion for the work that we do outside of our organization, for our communities, clients and other stakeholders? And how do we leverage our assets to build our brand and to build communities that we work with?
And also from a business perspective, how do we look inward to our policies, practices and processes to ensure that we have that lens of inclusion? It’s an interesting role. It’s a fun role in that I get an opportunity to look across our entire business and think about ways for us to advance diversity, equity and inclusion.
What are ONB’s business practices and policies related to hiring, retention and advancement outcomes for people with disabilities?
We believe that creating an environment where all team members are engaged and their unique identities are welcomed and celebrated is the way for us to be successful as an institution.
When it comes to working and supporting outcomes for people with disabilities, we do it in a couple of ways. Regularly reviewing our process for accommodations and support for team members with disabilities to ensure that they have what they need to be successful at our organization. And also thinking about ways to connect and support team members with disabilities so that they have a community.
One way that we do that is through Impact Networks. You may have heard them referred to as employee resource groups, but we have one that connects team members with disabilities to ensure that they have a community of support within each other but also have an opportunity to elevate their voice of concerns to our organization so that we can ensure that we’re continually supporting them.
We also have an opportunity to mentor individuals with disabilities, connecting them with their our leaders, so that they understand our organization better and provide those opportunities for them to think about career advancement within our organization.
How does ONB measure the effectiveness of its disability inclusion initiatives?
One way is particularly around advancement in recruiting of people. How are we hiring folks? How are we advancing people within the organization?
And also hearing from team members. We do an annual team member engagement survey. We can slice that data by a number of different demographics and are able to hear directly from our team members what’s working, what’s not, what we can do better and where we can lean in a little bit more.
And then the Impact Network, it’s called Abilities First. Regularly spending time with them to understand how effective our efforts are.
Why does ONB feel it’s important to implement disability inclusion practices and policies?
When you look at the data, one recent statistic I read was that one in four people have an apparent or non-apparent disability. We understand that there are things that we can see and things that we don’t see. I would argue that it could be more than that because what we do know is oftentimes people with disabilities may not disclose.
So to have that amount of people who are living with a disability, we need to think about how to access that talent and think about ways to create an environment where barriers are removed so that talent can come to us and do great work and have great experiences and great careers at Old National.
What challenges does ONB face in implementing disability inclusion initiatives?
One of the challenges is getting people comfortable with disclosing. How do we create that environment where people do feel comfortable disclosing? That way, we understand our population better, and we can better support our population.
What role does the ONB leadership team play in promoting a disability-inclusive culture?
Our leadership team is critically important not only in promoting the disability inclusive culture but inclusive culture overall. Having a voice from the top, starting with our CEO [Jim Ryan], and sharing why DEI, in this case, disability inclusion, is important for him personally and for us as an organization.
We engage our executive leadership team in a number of different ways. The mentoring program, we call it Achieve Ability. We have one of our executive leaders who’s the executive sponsor of that program. He is highly engaged. He’s a voice from the top. That really underscores why we do this work, why it’s important for us as an organization.
And also our Impact Network, our employee group, we have two ELT members that are executive champions of that group. They regularly spend time with our team members, who are volunteers, by the way, who lead that Impact Network and help them with strategy and leading the group and advising and being that visible champion for it.
How does it feel for ONB to be named one of the leading disability employers in the country?
It’s always nice to be recognized for what we do. We do this because we believe in people. We believe in building people up, giving them opportunity, creating opportunity. Because we know that when we have people who are engaged, who are empowered, they do their best work for our customers. While it’s nice to be recognized, we don’t do it for the recognition. We do it for the people that we believe in who ultimately will serve our customers and our communities.
How does this recognition benefit the city of Evansville?
By showcasing Old National as an employer of choice, as an an employer that understands what’s needed and what we can do as a corporation to create an environment for people with disabilities to thrive in our organization. As one of the premier banking institutions in Evansville, it continues to uplift our brand in that way.
I’ve read articles about companies downsizing or eliminating DEI programs this year. What are your thoughts on that?
At Old National, we have always been focused on diversity, equity and inclusion for the reasons that we believe that are important. It supports our people. It supports our culture. It supports who we are as a business. We continue to lean into that. We understand that DEI is and can be a differentiator in how business is done, and we’re committed to it.