Disabilities | Free Full-Text | The Role of Shared Resilience in Building Employment Pathways with People with a Disability

3.1. ‘Don’t Worry, Mate, Get on with Your Job’: Social Stigma, Employer Confidence, and Open Employment Funding Challenges

I don’t want to stay here the rest of my life. I want to go out there in employment and socialise and talk to people.

(Patrice, November 2021)

The organisation where this research was conducted has experience supporting people living with a disability to work in-house at the WISE and to find work in open employment. The supported employees we spoke to identified key challenges in open employment, including stigma and discrimination, employer knowledge and confidence barriers, lack of support and preparation/training, and funding disincentives. In this section, we discuss these challenges to bring to light the spaces where a shared resilience approach can be beneficial.

Experiences of stigma and discrimination are all too common in open employment. Max is a young man with an intellectual disability working at the WISE. We asked him what it is like to work in open employment and if there are any challenges. Max describes an experience in open employment shaped by a number of pressure points, including poor customer attitudes, employer confidence and knowledge, and training and preparation for employment. Max says that customers, often in a hurry, would ask him a question, and if he was unable to immediately answer, customers would just walk away or get angry or even swear at him. He had discussed some of these issues with his manager in the past but felt unsure how to handle these interactions with customers and, in this case, felt ill-equipped to approach a manager to discuss the issues further; he says:

In open employment I feel like I’d be on my own a little bit with a situation like that. Like, I could talk to my boss, but most bosses would say, “Don’t worry, mate, get on with your job”, or something like that. I think he would say, “It’s your own issue, deal with it in your own time”, or something like that.

(Max, November 2021)

Max’s concerns about customer attitudes, limited support, and understanding are commonly experienced. For many in the disability sector, this lack of support is grounds for concern. Disability support worker Jean (support worker, November 2021) believes that prospective employers must make reasonable accommodations when employing people who live with disabilities. The benefits for organisations in developing an inclusive workplace culture can be significant:

For any employer that wants to employ a person with a disability, they’ve got to be on board in regards to a cultural perspective. Absolutely has to be critical that they want to make a difference and be a positive influence on this person’s life and have empathy.

(Jean, support worker, November 2021)

This inclusivity must filter from the top to every facet of an organization. Trainer Grace says:

Success really does rely on the other staff and the culture of the organisation or company and that’s why sometimes those smaller companies are really good, because it might be an owner operator, which is less likely to sort of turn over [staff]. Or if it’s a bigger company—it really needs to be embedded into the culture.

(Grace, training staff, October 2021)

Patrice, a supported employee with an intellectual disability, describes the intersection of inadequate planning and customising of the employment role, a lack of appropriate supports, and social stigma. This was her experience before joining the WISE and receiving support to carve out a pathway to open employment:

I think the problem is when people with disability go out into open employment, I think they’re scared. Because when they go out there, people with disability, “oh, they can’t do this, and they can’t do that”. And they get really nervous. But once they’re here [supported work], they’ve got people to help them too. I’ve been watching, and since I’ve got my confidence up, and then when you go out in employment, they get all timid. I thought, “Oh, shivers, when I go in employment, where do I go?” I thought, “With a disability, what do I do?”.

(Patrice, November 2021)

Lack of preparation is a key challenge. Kelly, a supported employee, describes feeling like she was ‘thrown in the deep end’. She was working during a busy time of the year and says she was not offered training or support in her customer service role:

I thought I was selling the products but I was on cashier, which is not my strength, with money. And I was only working there for two weeks. They’d showed me one time how to use the till, but… I work by being shown things a couple of times. They walked in front of me and did it themselves, didn’t explain what they were doing or anything… they didn’t give me a chance, so I was only working there for two weeks…

I wasn’t really comfortable with that and I was always calling and asking, “How do I do this, how do I do that?”.

(Kelly, December 2021)

The support available in the workplace is shaped by employers’ own knowledge and confidence in employing someone with a disability. The challenge here is that many employers have limited experience in working with people with a disability and, as such, have limited opportunities to develop knowledge and confidence in this area. As one employer tells us:

I think… for us as a business… we have to acknowledge that our warehouse workers… are basic trained warehouse staff. They are not trained in dealing with any challenges [in employee behaviours].

(Jacqui, employer, January 2022)

Organisations employing people with a disability should allow for the time needed to provide appropriate support and training in the new environment. There can be particular areas where people face challenges and require some additional support, including

Time management. Dealing with difficult other employees or customers. Being punctual. Being consistent in the work they do. Good hygiene. Having a work/life balance and not relying on others to assist. Expectations. Obligations. Working to a deadline, or working to a budget.

(Jean, support worker, October 2021)

…There is a lot of conversation about holistic supports and all of the extra things that they [NDIS] could be doing… but the way that [NDIS] are often modelled limits the amount of support they can provide each jobseeker. Our supported employees moving into open employment and their new employer often require intensive supports, and within the workplace, particularly at the start. This is often outside of the scope of what a DES [disability employment services] provider can assist with.

(Grace, training provider, October 2021)

For Grace, some support structures and funding should be devoted towards supporting a business or organisation to employ, support, and retain people living with a disability in open employment. Yet, the opposite is often true.

The challenges our participants described range from dealing with social discrimination to a lack of employer knowledge, support, and inadequate preparation for employment roles. Entering open employment renders someone living with a disability more capable and more able in the minds of people employed by regulatory authorities who manage disability supports and disability pensions (DSP). People who are able to attempt open employment are eligible to receive some supports; however, this support is often not intensive enough for moderate- and high-need individuals, and it may be reduced over time. The concern is that individuals requiring ongoing support enter open employment and have their financial and employment supports (like DSP) significantly decreased. This limits individual capacity and choices. The danger is that individuals are left with reduced funding and unable to maintain participation in a WISE or open employment.

3.2. ‘It’s a Step-by-Step Process’: Shared Resilience, Support, and Customisation in Employment

The WISE was able to provide appropriate workplace conditions and supports for people with a disability in-house at their WISEs and in open employment settings. The challenge, in many respects, is translating those aspects of this organisational setting and approach in the open labour market. Uniquely, the organisation operates an outward-facing employment services division that focuses on securing open employment opportunities for people with a disability. Many disability-focused WISEs in Australia do not have this organisational advantage. While the employment services division undertakes much of the external-facing communication and set-up work by coaching employers and brokering tailored positions, creating the right conditions for work also relies on the labour of the individual person with a disability and their individual support worker/coordinator. In order to generate a sense of ‘shared resilience’, responsibility and accountability must be held (or shared) by the individual and a number of actors in the individual’s life. As new actors (open employers) are embedded in an individual’s network and employment journey, there is potential for a stronger intervention into the conditions that render open employment individualistic and competitive. In what follows, this sense of shared resilience is described by our interviewees, supported by mechanisms such as customised employment, job matching, job carving, and tailored employment.

Interviewees reported that their best chance to thrive in open employment was if they worked with friendly and helpful colleagues and managers, were provided opportunities to engage in balanced teamwork, and received on-the-job assistance (i.e., from support workers) in an appropriately accessible work setting. Supportive employers were those who could provide accessibility resources and tools that help with understanding the role, incorporate flexibility (i.e., time allowances for breaks), and a “go-to” person or buddy who could be asked questions about the role. In this section, we explore these modes of support and the client/employee and employer relationship.