Wallara's open employment program

0:00

Hi everyone, Phil Hayes Brown here - Wallara’s CEO. Today I want to talk about workforce participation for people with a disability. Now we've seen some great things happening in Australia under the NDIS, and lots of things are improving - from community access to choices all across the board. But one thing we haven't seen improving for about 20 years is workforce participation.

If you're aged between 15 and 64 and you don't have a disability, the workforce participation rate is about 85%. But if you do have a disability that drops to just over 50%.
We think that's pretty appalling, so we decided to do something about it. Wallara currently employs over 250 people with disabilities in supported employment across a range of jobs including Warehouse Services horticulture hospitality and media.

0:47

We're really proud of those jobs - and it's great to see those choices growing. But thanks to a generous Grant from a foundation, Wallara has been piloting a groundbreaking trial across the organisation to provide pathways into open employment as well. Out of 250 existing supported employees, 44 of them chose to be part of the program. Extensive interviews were conducted with each support employee to ascertain work goals and skills gaps and their personal interests. And then after further interviews 28 participants signed up.

1:20

After carefully matching the individual with the employer that suited them best, we then had 20 workplace tours, and that led to 25 actual [?work] sites. We now have eight participants thriving in their open employment jobs outside Wallara, and it's so cool to see. We've learnt a ton along the way. The main thing we've learned is that our clients wanted to take this step and try something in open employment, but they didn't want to walk away and lose the social contacts and their experience inside our organisation too - so the hybrid model has been really effective. This program has transformed the lives of the individuals involved and their host workplaces.

2:06

Frankston RSL is really proud to be engaged with Wallara for this project and we've had two employees to date come through and it's been successful for all parties. As an employer without the Wallara open Employment Program I wouldn't know where to start
to employ someone with a disability. I didn't have the confidence the knowledge or the skill set to be able to take that on, but this program has given us a proven model that really works.

2:32

The impact of this program is profound - every employer is so proud of their involvement that they are telling the story through their entire workforce, through their annual reports and all through their social media so the collective impact now is in the tens of thousands.
This program has also changed the way Wallara sees itself. We've always proudly offered supported employment and been ready to transfer clients on for anyone that wanted to try more. But having the chance to do it ourselves with employers we know and who trust us has made us realize we're really good at it.

3:10

It's great celebrating the successes of a placement, but seeing a supported employee try open employment and then decide that maybe it's not for them at the moment is just as important - because it shows choice.