7 March 2016
Over the last six months, City Disabilities has been involved with many Universities. We’ve contributed to training sessions for careers advisers, talks at careers fairs and employment Q&A events, as well as writing blogs and articles for student press. We’ve visited a number of Universities and had particularly interesting sessions at Aberdeen, Cambridge, Bath, KCL, Oxford, Lancaster and Kent. Most of our time is spent discussing how students can build a career in London while managing a disability or long term health condition, and how we can mentor students through their transition to working life. Whoever we are speaking to, whatever the disability, the same themes tend to come up. We’ve listed them below, along with brief thoughts on each subject:
Which employers are good with disability?
A very common question, this is also difficult to answer just from the employer’s own recruitment publicity. “Diversity and inclusion” are buzzwords in recruitment, and employers now have policies, web pages and specialist HR staff to demonstrate they are “good” with disability and to encourage applications from people with disabilities. For some employers this is a genuine attempt to widen the pool of talent from which they recruit. For others, while they appear to be saying the right things, attitudes on the shop floor are shocking.
For those who are in the second category, you should not assume that the recruitment and diversity staff are deliberately deceiving you. Very often they have no knowledge of or involvement in how staff are actually treated when they arrive, and assume that it must be as they would treat them themselves. Sometimes, they assume that because they are trained in diversity, they will know how to deal with disability. Yet very often, diversity training involves no real understanding of disability awareness.
Most employers think they are good ones and hardly anyone thinks themselves prejudiced. So how can you tell good and bad employers apart? The key is thorough research. Talk to staff at recruitment fairs. Find out what percentage of their staff have disabilities. Find out which of them are in senior positions and the extent of their disabilities. See if you can find one who is prepared to talk to you about what life is really like at that employer and get in touch with other people with disabilities who are there. Get it touch with us too – we have contacts with disabilities all over London and we may well know someone who can talk honestly and openly about your choice of career and employer.
A final warning: be circumspect about people referred to you by your prospective employer. They may be under some pressure to promote the firm and they may not have any other past employer to compare it with.
Discussing a disability with a prospective employer.
We have yet to attend an event where a student has not asked us whether or not they should tell a prospective employer about a disability. Employers will say that all candidates should tell them about a disability, so they can make reasonable adjustments at interview, and enable the prospective employee to do as well as possible. Again, for some employers this is true. For others it results in the candidate being turned down for interview. Very few students we meet want to discuss a disability at interview that they are in fact able to hide.
We never advise students to disclose or not to disclose. Blanket advice is unhelpful and in some cases can lead a person to damage their career chances. For some, discussing a disability will be the right course of action; for others it most definitely will not. You can see our detailed advice on the topic here. We continue to guide students through this choice depending on the reality of their employment choices.
How do I discuss my disability in an interview?
Linked to the question above is this one – if you decide to discuss a disability at interview, how should it be done? Often it has been drummed into students that they must be “honest and upfront” about a disability, to the extent that they begin to see it as a salient feature that will dominate their working lives. In fact, disability is most frequently just a practical problem to be overcome, and once it has been, there should be no difference between this employee and any other.
If a disability is discussed at interview as though it is a big problem, or a main feature, the tone and focus of the interview will not allow the candidate to perform to the best of their ability. They key question is this: If your disability does not affect the work you are doing, why are you discussing it? If it does affect your work, then raise it only in the context of adjustments you will need in order to work well. It should not dominate either the interview, or a candidates’ view of themselves as an employee. We wrote a blog for Bath University on this topic, that you can read here.
What solutions are available to me?
Students frequently feel they are “being cheeky”, “asking for special treatment” or “costing an employer too much money” if they ask for reasonable adjustments. Some of us at City Disabilities are employers ourselves and we have an eye to the bottom line. We know better.
Remember: see your disability in perspective. No amount of adjustment needed for a disability will equal the inconvenience of taking on an incompetent, unwise or over confident employee. A disability may be a personal matter, but it is not a guilty secret that has to be “disclosed”. The fact that you have got as far as you have with a disability means you have proven determination, commitment and resourcefulness that other students have not – the very characteristic most employers say they are looking for. If you remember anything before you attend an interview, make sure it is this.
We spend quite a lot of mentoring time building up confidence and helping candidates with disabilities to see that their requests are not presumptuous but rather a legally enshrined right to be put on a par with their non-disabled colleagues so that they can work to the best of their ability. Any employer who regards this as “cheeky” is not one that you would want to work for – or who understands their obligations to their workforce.
Once over this concern, students have lots of questions about what kinds of adjustments are offered by employers, and what it is reasonable to ask for. There are a huge variety of technological solutions available for some disabilities in terms of hearing aids, adjusted telephones, different sizes and styles of computer, software programmes and so on. There are also many different ways of working flexibly and a variety of access solutions. For our part, we do not like the idea of employers and employees analysing disability in terms of legal obligations. The ones who are best just sit down with the employee and discuss working solutions, as they would with any other teamwork issue.
Our advice is to do as much research as you can. Speak to your University about available solutions. Contact companies who specialise in providing equipment and see if you can get some free over the phone advice. Trial anything you are offered – and persevere – so you can work out what works for you. And lastly, get in touch. Our mentors and mentees have all been through this process too and may well have hints and tips for you.
If you would like City Disabilities to come and talk at your University about any of the topics above, and/or our free mentoring service, please do get it touch: info@citydisabilities.org.uk.