Bridging the gap: creating opportunities for all abilities

What are the career prospects for our young disabled people, and how can we work to improve the inequities? A new pilot program aims to address this.

What was your first job? Babysitting, newspaper delivery, cutting lawns? More than likely you were paid at a rate that wouldn’t touch the national minimum of the time (it’s currently $23.23), but it’s usually seen as a rite of passage while you’re learning the ropes, or doing what others might think of as a low-skill job. While it’s debatable whether it really is okay to underpay kids, for a long time, society has deemed it perfectly acceptable to continue to pay entry-level (or less) wages to many disabled young people and adults.

“Open” employment options with award wages are theoretically open to everyone, but many disabled people, particularly those with intellectual disabilities, are
in “closed” employment like ADEs. “ADE” stands for “Australian Disability Enterprises” and its intention is to provide support for disabled people who need it in order to work.

ADEs might sound sensible and even helpful – they’re even funded by NDIS – and they are valuable to many, but the down side is that people who have them are typically paid far less than the national minimum wage. ADEs also tend not to provide advancement opportunities or a chance for disabled workers to develop their skills beyond learning a very specific task. While there are some new NDIS rules around how ADEs can be more flexible while helping disabled people find open employment roles, the disconnect has been around the availability of these roles in the first place. Anecdotally, employers still shy away from hiring disabled employees, or investing the time and resource into creating or modifying roles to be disability accessible.

“There is an over-representation of people with disability in entry-level roles and a lack of career advancement opportunities for people with disability into leadership roles, as well as a lack of representation of people with disability on company boards,” says Amber O’Shea, Head of Strategy for the Australian Disability Network.

Her organisation, in partnership with the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and the Department of Social Services has recently launched the Career Pathways Pilot 2023-2025, funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services. And perhaps most impressively, the Australian Disability Network will run this pilot program in conjunction with BCA members who are among our largest and most visible businesses – Coles Group, Compass Group Australia, Kmart & Target Australia, and Woolworths Group.

“The Career Pathways Pilot is entirely co-designed and led by people with disability and focuses on career progression which challenges middle managers’ and senior leaders’ pre-existing biases and perceptions that people with disability are only suited to entry level roles,” O’Shea says. “Through the 18-month pilot we will work with some of Australia’s leading employers to create opportunities that recognise the depth of experience and skills of people with disability that have been overlooked in the past.”

The major employers who have come on board for the initiative are not only enthusiastic about their participation, they also all have a history of employing disabled people – so their commitment to the pilot programme isn’t just lip service. Martin Smithson, General Manager: Meat, Deli and Seafood, and the chair of Coles’ Accessibility Steering Committee, said disability inclusion is an integral part of the Coles Group strategy – in fact, 7.6% of Coles’ team members identify as disabled. “Coles is proud to have many leaders in our team who live with disability. Often disability employment is stereotyped as an ‘entry level’ opportunity,” he says.

“We are committed to continuously supporting the development of our talent and providing them with tools to progress their careers at Coles.”

Overall, the pilot aims to embed access and inclusion into business-as-usual practice. It’s not just about increasing the number of disabled people in the workforce being paid an equitable wage, it’s also about lifting the visibility of disabled employees as leaders and role models, and removing structural barriers to their career advancement.

“Boosting disability employment shouldn’t just be about any job, it should provide pathways to career progression too,” says Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth. “And we know that disability inclusive businesses grow profits more than four times faster than their peers.”

Building a truly inclusive workplace culture might not be so far in the future after all.

Stats on disability employment

ACCORDING TO THE AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS:

• Working-age people with disability have a lower employment rate (48%) than those without disability (80%).
• 41% of employed working-age people with disability work part-time, compared with 32% of those without disability.
• 54% of employed working-age females with disability work part-time, compared with 28% of their male counterparts.