Nerida Sleaman said she has the best job in the world. She’s the project manager of Employing 100 at Australian Disability Network (ADN), an employer demand-led inclusion framework. Over the past week, the program has celebrated a milestone as it concluded, having successfully secured jobs for almost 240 people with disability – over and above its initial goal of 100.
It was funded by the Department of Social Services and saw ADN work with employers – including CSL Limited, Marriott International, McDonald’s Australia and the Salvation Army – to see what vacant roles they had, what their culture was like, what their inclusion strategies were, and how these could be made more inclusive for people with disability.
Importantly, it ensured inclusion was truly “embedded into the system, rather than a separate way of doing things for people with disability”, Sleeman said.
A major focus was ensuring that the jobs were meaningful – roles where people could use their skills and fulfilled – open employment and paid at full wages.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
Sleaman said when designing Employing 100, ADN looked for industries that had high vacancy rates and that were growing. They also looked for employers that had the potential to scale their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
She said the businesses appreciated having extra support to create and strengthen pipelines for employees with disability.
“We met them at their appetite and provided that support, whether it was creating new policies like a workplace adjustment process and policy or whether we were reviewing current documents because they’d already taken big steps,” she said.
The program began with ADN asking for buy-in from senior leadership teams. The organisation also worked with the businesses’ recruitment teams and other managers to ensure there was the same level of commitment across all levels of staff.
High levels of retention
The results, she said, were clear, with an 82.7 per cent retention rate.
“It is very clear that employers are simply after non-judgemental support that focuses on their needs and their vacancies and then matching suitably skilled jobseekers with disability to those roles,” Sleaman said.
“We’ve helped them remove barriers by refining their recruitment processes, looking at all touch points along the way. We’ve helped them with the workplace adjustment piece, which we know is a real gamechanger in the office for people with disability. We also looked at their physical premises and gave them support and guidance around… is it dignified, is it inclusive for all? We were able to help them remove some barriers there,” she said.
Sleaman, who is a proud woman with disability, said the program was co-designed with people with disability who explained what they needed to feel comfortable in the workplace. The end of the program provided a good time to do a “sense check” as to how employees and employers were feeling and adjust conditions if needed – whether any other reasonable adjustments were needed or whether any issues had come up.
Looking to the future
Now with strong success under their belt, Sleaman said ADN hopes to share the lessons learned and the framework that made the program so successful.
“We have developed an employer enablement framework over 10 years’ worth of research, and we’ve tried and tested it, so we know this model works. We can see that with the retention. So now we’re going to share those stories… and any key themes that we can learn from in future,” she said.
“We’re also going to share the framework so other organisations can take it and replicate what we’ve done here. We’ve created it so it’s sustainable, is easy to scale and can be used in any industry.”
ADN is also currently focused on its Career Pathways pilot, working with four other employers to teach them how to help create pipelines for career growth for employees with disability.
Employing 100’s success is all the more important given the current debate over DEI.
In positive news, Sleaman said ADN has spoken to many of its member organisations and none have indicated that they would be scaling back their DEI initiatives.
“From Australian employers, we’re certainly seeing a renewed focus on disability inclusion because it just makes good business sense,” she said.
Caption: Fiona Pereira – director of talent acquisition & talent management – ANZ & Pacific Islands, Mariott International; Sophie Saba – talent acquisition lead, ANZ, CSL; Amanda Belz – diversity, equity & inclusion specialist, McDonald’s Australia; Ellie Knight – group talent and transition manager, The Salvation Army and Nerida Sleaman – project manager, Employing 100, Australian Disability Network.