Evenbreak has been featured in the daily business newspaper, Australian Financial Review. The article, entitled “Closing disability job gap can yield benefits”, talks about the differences between inclusion in the UK and in Australia.
Read the full article…
A leading expert on inclusive recruitment says companies failing to consider candidates with a disability are ignoring large parts of the marketplace, and risk being left behind by smarter
competitors.
Jane Hatton, a UK-based disability specialist and the founder of Evenbreak employment service, said firms seeking out disabled candidates for employment opportunities had more well-rounded teams and a better understanding of potential customers.
The comments come as Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth pushes ahead with an overhaul of disability employment services in Australia, introducing quality standards designed to tackle national labour shortages and promote workers with a
disability.
‘‘If you have people with disabilities within your staff team, you will have a better internal understanding of how to market to, how to design products or services for people with disabilities in the community,’’ Ms Hatton told The Australian Financial Review during a
visit from Britain.
‘‘That’s a huge market to be ignoring. And I think that that’s beginning to become more of a realisation to some, certainly some of the larger companies.’’
The federal government’s existing disability employment services program is due to be reformed by mid-2025, and on Monday, Ms Rishworth will announce moves to better integrate the experience of workers into the current system from next year.
About 4.4 million or one in six Australians live with a disability. Among the group are about 2.1 million people of working age.
After talks at the September jobs summit, Ms Rishworth said embedding the views and feedback of participants was a key priority for the government.
The new framework will consider the experience and legal rights of workers with a disability, assurance, feedback and complaint mechanisms.
‘‘The unemployment rate of Australians living with a disability is more than double that of the national average. We need to close that gap,’’ she said.
‘‘We know that 88 per cent of employed working-age people with disability do not require any specific arrangements from their employer to work, so for businesses experiencing skills shortages and crying out for workers, there’s no better time than now to look to hire people living with a disability.’’
Ms Rishworth said disability employment worked for business leaders. Disabled candidates often had equal or greater productivity than nondisabled colleagues, and were also
more likely to stay in their jobs long-term.
‘‘There are businesses starting to realise this and tapping into this pool of talent,’’ she said.
Ms Hatton said disability equality was often forgotten in workplaces. She welcomed renewed attention from Ms Rishworth and said employers including financial institutions and big four
consulting firms were leading the way.
Evenbreak runs an online employment service, which has helped major British employers recruit thousands of candidates. In Australia,Ms Hatton has held talks with big firms looking to
reach into the largely untapped talent pool.
‘‘I think there’s been quite a lot of work on race and gender, and on the inclusion of Indigenous people, but I think disability, like in most places, has been quite a way down the list of priorities,’’ she said.
‘‘I sense among the support organisations that I’ve spoken to a kind of relief that this relatively new government is going to be much more receptive to looking at disability equality and
to doing things differently, also involving people with disabilities in that debate.
‘‘I think there’s been a whole history, in every country, of non-disabled people telling other non-disabled people what disabled people need.”
