The Puget Sound Business Journal has selected Orion Industries as the 2017 Innovation award recipient in the nonprofit category.
Orion Industries is a social enterprise with a mission of helping those with barriers to employment, such as learning disabilities, low income and mental health barriers. Orion uses operations in its aerospace manufacturing division and award-winning contact center services division as platforms to teach people job skills through a combination of classroom instruction and on-the-job-training, including mentoring and internship programs.
Orion’s contact center is a 200 seat state-of-the-art facility that offers scalable solutions to meet inbound and outbound customer needs. Orion’s certified contact center provides support for companies including Microsoft, Multicare, the U.S. Army, and the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife.
Orion has successfully created an innovative service and technology model in its contact center division, and in so doing is helping to solve two difficult problems facing business, industry and government today – communicating with diverse populations and employing persons with disabilities or other barriers to employment.
Orion uses select contracts in its contact center business to provide training opportunities for those with disabilities or other barriers to employment. One such partner is MultiCare, a leader in health care services. Orion trains people to handle inbound customer service calls, specializing in the complex health care and technical support industries where jobs abound. These individuals become highly skilled and sought after. Because Orion develops this talent with a focus on persons with disabilities or other barriers, many companies have chosen to partner and use Orion’s transitional employment services as a way to develop their talent.
Since 2013, Orion employees have been providing technical support for users of Microsoft software and its accessibility features by staffing Microsoft’s Disability Answer Desk.
Learn more about the companies that were selected in the other categories online.
