Toshiba Helps Military Spouses Find Jobs – Orange County Business Journal

Toshiba America Business Solutions is teaming up with the U.S. military to help find jobs for military spouses, who are often transferred from one outpost to another, disrupting career momentum.

“The goal of this program is to make opportunities available to military spouses who have a difficult time finding employment based on the amount of times they have to relocate,” said Kim Jones, the human resources vice president for the Lake Forest-based company.

She said 90% and above are women, a group where the unemployment rate within the military community runs from 20% to 25%.

“They struggle quite a bit with finding meaningful, sustainable employment,” Jones told the Business Journal on July 9.

“The MSEP (Military Spouse Employment Partnership) program is run by the Department of Defense, and Toshiba had to go through a long application and vetting process to be accepted,” Jones said.

Toshiba America Business Solutions, with a parent company in Japan, provides printers, scanners, supplies and digital signage as well as various business services.

Open Positions

The company formally signed on as a partner in October of last year and then began work to become involved in the program.

“We post our open positions — Toshiba jobs — with MSEP to help make opportunities available to military spouses.  Other companies also post their jobs with MSEP as well. The roles we post with them have included sales, service, administrative and other professional roles,” Jones said.

The program includes dealing with gaps in a prospective employee’s resume. It operates nationwide in all 80 Toshiba offices.

“It opens up our applicant pools to a much more diverse population,” according to the HR chief.

‘Blind Recruiting’

In another DEI move, Toshiba several years ago implemented what it calls a “blind recruiting program” for job applicants.

“We remove all of their information that could potentially lead to unconscious bias,” according to Jones.

A software tool takes out names, address and “anything that could lead to some form of unconscious bias.”

Managers are “truly only considering the qualifications of a person without any extraneous information in there” such as the applicant’s gender, race, ethnicity and age.

‘Be the Difference’

She said a Toshiba employee newsletter “focuses on providing information about individual employees, celebrating them, talking about what makes them unique.”

The company is rolling out a “culture training program” called “Be the Difference.”

Jones said it’s a “nationwide, in-person training. Everyone’s going through it to celebrate our differences, to learn how to work with people who are not the same as us.”

“We’re really trying to focus on celebrating all people. We’re including everyone in that,” according to the Toshiba America human resources VP.