Disability and Work

I took part in Scope's research which culminated in their recently published report -  Let’s talk, Improving conversations about disability at work (PDF).

Obtaining employment as a disabled person is very difficult even when you can do the job easily. Having had a great many such experiences, I’d like to share them here in one place in the hope that the way I coped, managed and overcame them might help others.

Becoming redundant

Two weeks after returning to my work I was told I had “become redundant.” This made no sense and no-one else had been reviewed. I told them I was going to refer the matter to an Employment Tribunal. The company’s owner made an unusual visit and came to speak with me. He said “What is it going to cost me for you to go quietly?”

This was the beginning of my experiences of seeking work as a disabled person.

Seeking work as a disabled person

I found that smaller businesses tended to be less tolerant than larger ones. Also, disabled people are seen as liabilities and not just to the work but because they may play “the disabled card” on them! Even the public sector (schools, councils etc.), while claiming to have high values, proved to be no different.

After many unproductive applications I decided to stop mentioning my disabilities on them. Like it or not, I was in competition with many other applicants.

Recruiters don’t choose the best person, they work by eliminating people for many reasons until they are left with those they will interview.

Application forms can tell you a lot about an organisation. They can be rigid, preventing you from expressing yourself. Sometimes though they can show a much darker agenda that they are following. For instance, I was once given a form where one section was “state any medical conditions you have and any prescription medication you are taking.”

In the workplace,  race, religion, disability, gender and age must not be treated differently.
Collecting such details can have one of two intentions; either it is optional for diversity monitoring and the recruiter will never see it or it is compulsory and for the recruiter alone and they will use it for discrimination.

A separate, private equality questionnaire is probably above board. If questions or a form come from the recruiter then they probably discriminate.

My conditions started to deteriorate during this time but the bills still needed to be paid so I kept going. This meant that I now had to review what jobs I could actually go for in my more limited capacity. 

Interviews

I started getting interviews when not disclosing my disabilities in the application. At some point the employer will have to find out though. So I decided that once in an interview I could make a case for myself and the value of my skills on my terms. This way I could counter their concerns.  They could also see me being keen and committed.

Interviews can work both ways and I learned to look for any loss of interest in the interviewer when I told them everything. Also I could judge whether they were likely to be a decent employer by how they responded. If they weren’t decent then it’s better to find out before you start than learning the hard way.
 
Thankfully I’m not at all representative but I’ve had three Settlement Agreements and two Tribunal starts just in order to protect myself and achieve some justice. All went in my favour.

Finding an good employer

Things have worked out for me and I now have an employer who saw past the irrelevant physical problems and saw the opportunities I brought.

When every day is a battle with your own body, with getting around and with getting treated fairly by others it is easy to become totally absorbed by it. You can feel very isolated or even besieged by the world. This mind set is not very helpful but there is help out there and you can avoid this.

Through Scope’s work and their online community, you can share your experiences and see that you aren’t alone. There are others that have been through, or will go through, the same things. Help is out there and you might even be better off for joining in.

Do you have an experience about disability at work that you’d like to share whether it is good or bad?