“What I know for myself, and so many other people with disability, is that we’re problem-solvers. We have to work around a world that is still quite inaccessible to us,” Agnew says.
Luckily for Agnew, things turned around with her next job – a consultancy position at Get Skilled Access, an organisation founded by 2022 Australian of the Year, Dylan Alcott.
Now, she’s playing a key role designing training for a new recruitment program called Recruitable: a partnership between Get Skilled Access and recruitment company Randstad that aims to transform employment opportunities for people with disability.
A number of employers, including Coles, Tennis Australia and Bendigo Bank, are joining Randstad in the two-year pilot that includes staff training, an “inclusive culture health check” and a focus on ensuring jobs for the long term.
“We do a recruitment review and check all their systems and processes hiring and employment. We highlight areas where they’re doing really well and other areas where they may be able to find opportunities for improvement to be more accessible and inclusive,” Agnew says.
In 2019, the Australian Bureau of Statistics noted people aged between 15 and 64 with disability experienced higher unemployment rates (10.3 per cent versus 4.6 per cent at the time Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia 2018 was published). They also had lower overall labour force participation – 53.4 per cent versus the 84.1 per cent for people without disability.
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Madeline Hill, manager of equity, diversity and inclusion at Randstad, says that for people with a disability, barriers to employment often start before the recruitment process begins.
“A lot of the time the feedback we hear from consultants is that they don’t want to do the wrong thing or to say the wrong thing. So, there is a hesitancy there,” she says.
Once the training component of the program is complete, the Recruitable team will work with partner employers to open up roles via the Recruitable platform. Anyone with a disability will be able to apply.