Igniting accessible experiences podcast - episode 5

Podcast transcript

• Read the transcript

  [00:00:00] Bridie: Welcome to the Accessible Tourism in Queensland podcast, where you will hear from people with disability, tourism, operators, and experts in accessibility and disability inclusion. This podcast is supported by the Queensland Government.

  [00:00:20] Hello everyone, my name is Bridie McKim. I am one of your co-hosts today. And here with me is Ben.

  [00:00:25] Ben: My name is Ben Pettingill and today’s episode is focusing all about inclusive recruitment and the benefits of employing people with disability in your organisation.

  [00:00:34] Bridie: Steph Agnew. Thank you so much for being here today. Would you like to introduce yourself?

  [00:00:39] Steph: Thanks so much, Bridie. Yeah, sure. My name is Steph Agnew. I am a senior consultant at Get Skilled Access and I have a real passion around the inclusive recruitment of people with disability and work with organisations on a daily basis in that space. I'm also a person with disability myself. So when I was 19 years old, I was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition and I slowly lost my sight over 10 years, I'm now completely blind and use a guide dog called Rocky to navigate.

  [00:00:52] Ben: Is Rocky here with us today, Steph?

  [00:00:54] Steph: I have actually locked Rocky out of the room so that you don't hear too many crying and whinging [00:01:00] because he gets jealous when I give everybody else my attention and not him.

  [00:01:03] Ben: I'm sure Rocky loves travel just as much as you do, and I'd love to kick off with that question, which is, why is accessible travel important to you?

  [00:01:13] Steph: Rocky does absolutely love to travel. And for me, accessible tourism is really important to me because it's all about equality. I mentioned earlier that I was diagnosed at 19 with a degenerative eye condition. And so I have travelled both with and without disability. And it's really important for me to still be able to have those really same experiences that I had before I acquired my disability and afterwards. I have seen both sides of travel and really passionate about everybody being able to have those opportunities.

  [00:01:48] Ben: Steph, being a specialist in inclusive recruitment, I'd love to ask you why should people want to employ people with disability?

  [00:01:55] Steph: There are so many reasons why people should want to employ people with disability, but [00:02:00] I think before I answer that, I just wanna highlight something and why we are here today to talk about this is that the unemployment rate for people with disability, is more than double that of people without disability and it hasn't changed in over 20 years. And that really makes me sad, to be honest. Being a person without disability, I found it really easy myself to gain employment. But then when I lost all of my vision, I came up against many, many barriers, even though I knew that I could really do the job really well.

  [00:02:35] So when we talk about employing people with disability, there's actually so many benefits. There's been a lot of research done and organisations might not be aware of these. So 86% of people with disability have average or superior attendance rates. So there is a misconception around that, "oh, if I hire a person with disability, they're gonna take more sick days".

  [00:02:58] That's been proven to [00:03:00] be quite a misconception to be honest. There is also increased customer loyalty. So seeing people within organisations, within tourist destinations, tourism operators really creates that sense of inclusivity, not just for your staff, but for tourist visiting. And we see time and time again when you have inclusive businesses who are employing a diverse range of employees and representing Australians and all Australians, it creates that real customer loyalty. It increases staff morale. Again, for that sort of same reason. People with disability are four times more likely to stay in their role. So talking around, the lifespan of your employees and employee turnover, people with disability, once we, for me particularly if I use myself as an example, I have been in this role as senior consultant for four years and being in an inclusive [00:04:00] environment, having a job, it can be really hard for us to get jobs, once we have a job and it's, we are being treated really well, we are often more likely to stay in that role and be really loyal to that business.

  [00:04:13] Bridie: Absolutely. And Steph, you mentioned that it can be hard for people with disability to gain employment, that unemployment rate really speaks to that. Can you share with us what are some of the barriers that people with disability often come up against in trying to gain employment?

  [00:04:32] Steph: I think the biggest barrier, Bridie, is in misconceptions and people's mindsets around employing people with disability. As well as, the unknown and sometimes there's fear and we understand that, in the past, disability has been viewed through the medical model of disability, which is that the person with disability needs to be fixed or healed to be able to fully participate in society.

  [00:04:56] But that is a really outdated way for [00:05:00] disability to be viewed. And often it has been viewed that way in the employment space. But if we look at disability through the social model, it shows that people with disability are not the problem or the barrier. It's actually the environment and people's mindsets that are the barrier to people with disability fully participating in society.

  [00:05:23] So one of those common, I think the biggest myth I hear around employing people with disability is that it's really expensive and it costs a lot more money to employ people with disability. And we know that's just not true. So in some cases there may be costs for workplace adjustments for a person with disability to work in that organisation.

  [00:05:46] However, if there are costs around that, not a lot of people are aware that there is a government program called Job Access that will fund those workplace adjustments. So it doesn't cost the organisation [00:06:00] because there is that job access fund there. The employee assistance fund, that will help but if I give you some examples around workplace adjustments, often people think, "oh, I've gotta put in a lift", or "thinking about those ramps and rails".

  [00:06:13] But there are so many different disabilities and different requirements. So for myself, my workplace adjustment is that I require a screen reader to use my laptop and my phone. However, that's actually built in so Apple have built in screen readers, so it hasn't cost my organisation anything to hire me because those are built in.

  [00:06:36] If that screen reader had have cost money, if I didn't have a computer that had one built in, then we could have gone to Job Access and Job Access would've funded that for me, going through their process. Another example that I really love that I've heard recently through an organisation that I was working with. They had an employee that had low vision and they were having [00:07:00] some trouble identifying the difference between the hot and cold taps in their kitchen at work, so in the staff kitchen.

  [00:07:08] And their manager said to them, "Okay, how can I help you? What do you need to make this accessible for you?" So that really important first back there is asking and not assuming. So that's one of the biggest things that we talk about when employing people with disabilities ask the questions, don't make those assumptions, ask around adjustments. They may not need them or a lot of the time we know exactly what we need as people with disabilities so we can help the employer to understand that. So the manager asked that question and the person said, "oh, all I need is a little piece of Velcro to go onto the hot tap".

  [00:07:46] And so they went out and bought a $2 piece of velcro, put it on the hot tap, and that was that was the workplace adjustment. It's really cheap, really simple. The other thing that I talk about with workplace [00:08:00] adjustments is often we think about those physical adjustments. So those really big things, but workplace adjustments can be as simple as adjusting someone's working hours and that's not just for people with disability. That can be for people with school-aged children, for instance, they might request to work school hours or flexible working arrangements, working from home a couple of days. Now I know in the tourism industry that might not be possible, but just having those conversations around adjustments and adjusting mindsets to understand that it really isn't a lot more expensive to hire a person with disability.

  [00:08:42] Bridie: Steph we've spoken a bit about how workplaces and recruitment places can be accessible for people with disability. How about within the onboarding process, once somebody has a job and they've taken on their role and they wanna flourish in their role and they want to [00:09:00] be the best employee they can be and do the best work they can do.

  [00:09:04] How can businesses and tourism operators best support people with disability within the workplace?

  [00:09:10] Steph: I think having regular check-ins like you do with all staff. So you know after somebody's been there for a month, we check in and then three months and then, you'll have 12 monthly reviews. I think making sure that is happening across every employee and all employee's life cycles.

  [00:09:28] But we often see there's another misconception around that people with disability can only do unskilled work. And that again, is another myth that I often bust around that there's lawyers, there's accountants, people with disability doing all sorts of different things, have degrees or, working in the tourism industry.

  [00:09:49] I actually started out doing my hotel and resort management degree when I left school. And I did decide that it wasn't quite for me and I [00:10:00] flipped my career path, but people with disability want to succeed and have careers just like everybody else. And so when we are looking at that you may have a person with disability that comes in straight into a senior leadership role, or you may have a person with disability that comes in who might not have been given the opportunity to work before, so they might go into an entry level role. However, supporting that person to reach their career goals, just like everybody else, is really important. So offering that professional development, offering the opportunity to work their way up that ladder in that tourism operator's business is really important. And just asking the questions around how you can best support them to do that, and what does that employee want, whether they have disability or not. For myself, whilst I didn't end up finishing my Uni degree, I still wanna succeed.

  [00:10:56] So I started in my role at Get Skilled Access [00:11:00] doing admin three days a week. And then I went to consultant and now I'm senior consultant. And I plan to continue growing that career. So it's about asking those questions to see what your staff members want, what people with disability want, and finding out how you can support them.

  [00:11:15] So again, it's coming back to that piece that we talked about earlier around asking and not assuming.

  [00:11:21] Ben: I know that there's this sort of quote, if, for want of a better word, that "there is no such thing as a disability specific role". Every single role within every single organisation is able to be done by a person with disability.

  [00:11:37] And I think sometimes that's where organisations get caught up is, "what role do we have that would be right for a person with disability?" Change your way of thinking. Every role can be right for a person with disability. Some things might be done slightly differently, some things might need adjusting, but it doesn't mean it's impossible.

  [00:11:53] It's a shift in mindset that's so important, don't you reckon?

  [00:11:56] Steph: Absolutely. And I think that's a really great point. Often [00:12:00] I hear, you know about that creation of roles specifically for people with disability and it just doesn't need to be done. If you have a role there, you advertise a role.

  [00:12:09] Think about what is the key, the key selection criteria, but what are the must haves and the nice to haves? So if you can split it into the must haves and the nice to haves of that role, then that allows you to have some flexibility there in the employment potentially of people with disability and asking that question around adjustments, for instance, when I was looking for roles, a lot of the roles I had to have a driver's license, and that precluded me from so many roles, but my question would've been to the organisation is do I need a driver's license or can I have an adjustment that I either catch taxis or Ubers, public transport or have a support worker drive me?

  [00:12:51] So opening up your minds to think about things a little bit differently and be flexible. Be curious and ask [00:13:00] questions is a really great leadership quality and will help you to employ more people with disability.

  [00:13:07] Ben: Absolutely. And in doing so, Steph, that would first and foremost, doing all the things that you've talked about so far today a lot of those things would attract and appeal to people with disability to want to work at that organisation. But I'd love to shift our focus a little bit if we can, to the business case more broadly and the benefits, because me sitting here as the host today, as someone with disability, if there was a tourism organisation or a tourism operator that employed people with disability showcase that.

  [00:13:44] That was transparent to me as a customer, I'd be more likely to engage with them hey?

  [00:13:49] Steph: Yeah, absolutely. The more inclusive a business is both internally and externally facing, so like you're saying, you're employing staff and having a [00:14:00] diverse range of staff, including people with disability, it creates that really inclusive culture internally, which then goes outwardly to your customer base. And the customer loyalty piece is huge, and particularly for people with disability. So if you think about the disability community, there is approximately 4.5 million people in Australia that have disability and over 1 billion in the world. We're talking about tourism in Queensland, but we don't just have tourists from Australia.

  [00:14:29] We have tourists coming from all over the world and the disability community talks a lot, and if we think about that inclusion piece, there's a really great example that if a store was selling a bottle of milk for a dollar, but it wasn't inclusive, and the store down the road was selling the same bottle of milk for $3, but it was really inclusive and accessible.

  [00:14:54] Then people with disability will go and buy that $3 bottle of milk rather than the $1 bottle of milk. [00:15:00] So it has such a broad effect across all levels of your business. And talking about the business case as well Ben, at the moment, in the current market, there are skill shortages in a lot of industries, and one of those industries is hospitality and tourism.

  [00:15:18] So there is a huge benefit here, there's an untapped market, a previously untapped market of 4.5 million people in Australia, that unemployment rate of people with disabilities double that of people without disability.

  [00:15:30] There's so many people with disability that want to work, and that market has previously been untapped really for 28 years. So those experiences, and if we think about people with disability, we have so many transferable skills. So some people may not have been given the opportunity to work. That doesn't mean that we don't have transferable skills in our lives.

  [00:15:55] We have to problem solve every day. You know, we've gotta be innovative problem [00:16:00] solvers, thinking about how to do things differently. So many transferable skills, really great things that often people look for in an employee. The people with disability pretty much already have inbuilt because we do that every day.

  [00:16:14] Bridie: We're full of so many skills, so many talents. Somebody just needs to employ us sometimes.

  [00:16:20] Ben: Steph, you've shared some awesome tips, but I'd love to finish by asking you if there is one thing that organisations can do tomorrow to start appealing to and attracting people with disability or one thing that they could change in their organisation.

  [00:16:37] What would your advice be to those organisations listening today?

  [00:16:41] Steph: Asking and not assuming is that really big one that I keep saying throughout this conversation is having that open mindset. Nearly 90% of people with disability actually have a non-visible disability. So often when we think about disability, we think about the physical disabilities or somebody in a [00:17:00] wheelchair, but there are so many more different disabilities .You may have a heritage listed site that you're unable to change and put a lift in or, those sorts of things.

  [00:17:11] That doesn't mean that you can't employ somebody with disability. There's a huge range of people with disability that may not have physical access requirements. It's from neurodiversity to mental ill health to myself, having sensory disability. There's so many. That you could be, you could still employ.

  [00:17:29] So I think just changing your mindset a little bit around those sort of physical spaces and really educating yourself and your staff and having that goal to be really inclusive across all of your employees.

  [00:17:42] Bridie: Steph, thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate your times and insights!

  [00:17:48] Steph: Thank you so much!