Physical Disabilities in the Workplace: Find a More Sustainable and Supportive Way to Keep Amazing People

Talk Description

Elevator Pitch

I want people with physical disabilities to understand how they can use my experiences to become more employable and know what support is available. I want hiring managers to create an enabling culture for people with disabilities.

Abstract

How many people do you know with a physical disability who work in the tech space? 

Why do you think there are so few when we have a massive skills shortage in the tech and testing space? 

Untapped potential you say? Where do I sign up? 

I wish it was that easy! 

As most of you have experienced, and the youngsters amongst us won’t be aware, us older folk fell into testing. Why don’t we as the leaders of our community open our minds to people who have not even heard of testing, a diversity we haven’t tapped into. Those who can give us a wider perspective of the world as it is, rather than as we assume it to be, which in turn makes all of our products better and more accessible.

As a person living with disabilities and chronic health conditions, I have had the chance to do some trial and error on things that do and definitely don’t work.

Proactive management:

The good:

• Using local arrangements to make the employee’s contract more supportive
• Annualised hours 
• Story points for effort instead of monitoring hours.
• Touching base frequently - offering little ways to support
• Explanation of what my managers have done that made working in their teams better.

The bad:

• Not separating disability time off from sick leave

The ugly:

• Clock Watching is the worst!
• Bradford Score/ Bradford Factor

Proactive recruitment:

• Offering to give real-life experience of our jobs to groups at job fair/the job centre
• Encouraging people to reach out to online communities. Storytelling how I have approached my online communities and how two individuals were inspired to approach me.

Conclusion

As people who have disabilities, we want you to understand what proactive management and recruitment can do, when it’s done with support and care in mind:

• Tell the success story of my two recruits and how they now earn more money than I do.
• Even now I am growing and becoming even more awesome. In the past six months, I have realised:
  • I am not on the chopping block every day 
  • I want to support those who support me
  • That I can take some time to learn
  • That I don’t need to do every “extra” and I can say NO! 
  • Not losing amazing people due to bad health.
  • Support makes the employee relax and not hit burnout 
  • Support allows the employee to manage their own health and expectations of you as a manager 
  • Retaining important people with experiences and knowledge no one else has 
  • Reduce sickness absence levels and early ill-health retirements

What you’ll learn

By the end of this talk, you'll be able to: