Orpheus – our Disability Confident Journey

The Disability Confident scheme is a great way to enable neurodivergent employees to find their way in the workplace. Creating inclusive and accessible recruitment and retention policies and practices to help your employees navigate their employee journey, experience fewer barriers, and feel psychologically safe. We were lucky to work with The Orpheus Centre on their Disability Validation Level 3 Leader. We sat down with them after to discuss their journey.

Why did you want to become Disability Confident?

As an organisation, we believe that life opportunities should be the same for disabled people as they are for non-disabled peers. An important part of that is to raise awareness of the challenges faced in gaining employment.

The students recently made a fantastic film Where’s Our Jobs? to highlight the issues disabled people must overcome to be employed and we focus on preparing the students to leave with the skills they need to pursue their careers. It is part of our vision and strategy to enable more disabled people to gain meaningful employment.

Therefore it is essential that we ourselves are positioned as a credible example for employing people with disabilities too.

The Disability Confident scheme gave us the guidance to actively recruit, retain and develop people with disabilities. It gave us a platform and voice to tell our staff, potential recruits and the wider community, that we are committed to ensuring that people with disabilities have a fair opportunity within our business and that we are confident in how we can support and develop them.

It has now allowed us to show other employers the importance and value in employing people with disabilities and to demonstrate the success this has bought to our business.

Why did you choose neurobox to support with your Level 3?

During our Disability Confident journey, we encouraged new and current staff to make Access to Work applications to support them in their role and to enhance the workplace adjustments that we were putting into place for them.

We found neurobox during this part of the process and they were incredibly helpful in advising and supporting with accessibility aids to support our staff.

Their knowledge on the software and services available was second to none, and they were very patient in supporting me. When it was time for us to think about our leadership accreditation in the Disability Confident scheme, neurobox was an easy choice for us. Firstly because of experience I had already had from them during our journey, but also, because of their own clear goal of creating an inclusive and accessible workplace for all, which aligns beautifully with our own vision. And as a Disability Confident Leader themselves, they were a great choice for us.

How did neurobox support you?

Working with Deborah and Mark was a fabulous experience. We wanted to make sure we had completed our Disability Confident Leadership validation to a high standard and to make sure it was analysed by people who were able to give us advice and tools to make sure it was excellent. Deborah and Mark did just that. They advised on policy and practice and how to ensure we have a voice within the Disability Confident community. They are knowledgeable, professional and extremely easy to work with. Once we had completed the validation template, they then supported us to make our leadership application. We enjoyed working with neurobox enormously, and we look forward to working with them again in the future.

What’s next for Orpheus?

We want to be a prominent voice for disability employment and to support other employers in being Disability Confident. We are dedicated to sharing our story and promoting the Orpheus Centre as a Disability Confident Leader, something of which we are very proud.

We now have a growing 22% of our workforce who have a disability or long-term health condition. This award motivates us to move ahead with raising these numbers even further.

We will be developing our employer events within our organisation which focus on campaigning for employment for people with disabilities and we will also be taking part in more external recruitment events to showcase the work do.

We will share the stories of our wonderful staff team, to show the value that the Disability Confident scheme has given our organisation by actively recruiting, retaining and developing people with disabilities. We will offer our experienced staff as mentors, coaches and peer support to other organisations wanting to start their journey to becoming Disability Confident, and through this, we will also provide validation services to other employers.