This is one of the blog posts we have from our Micro-Interns. These are students from Oxford University who took part in a 5-day internship with Avalis to find out more about disability employment, research issues and possible solutions and then produce things that we can take into our work to help create positive change.
This post is from Meiyi who was focused on Business Operations, we hope you enjoy this and if you'd like to read more of these please click on the tag "micro-interns":
Joining Avalis as a business operations intern was one of the best decisions I have made. I was empowered by the commitment Avalis has in redefining disability employment as a social enterprise, a problem that has persisted long enough yet is still not well addressed, and its plans that could really produce a lasting impact on the career paths of those qualified but dispirited disabled job seekers. Working on this one-week project has enabled me to know so much more about the disability employment gap, and how unsupported disabled people are to be employed in a position they have the skill and potential for.
Only when I received the articles from Avalis about people’s stories on their day-to-day challenges due to inaccessibility, did I have a quantitative picture of the seriousness of the problem, and the importance of getting more of the disabled people who are in the right place to work the opportunity for industry placements and career advancement. I could feel the social value that my work may lead to even more strongly when I started reading reports on disability employment to help me to identify the barriers that hinder disability employment. It was striking to see how only 53.2% of disabled people were employed in 2019, and of which 34.1% was working part-time. Additionally, they received 12.2% less pay than people without impairment, not to mention the government-mandated working hour limit and an income cap of £7,000 per year. Yet, they were paying an average of £582 more per month for living costs. I could see the struggles disabled people are living on straight out from these data.
There are numerous reasons I can think of for causing this gap. From the company side, most of the diversity initiatives are centred around race and gender. Possible reasons for not initiating disability inclusiveness could stem from the employers not knowing how skilled disabled employees can be and whether there are enough applicants that would satisfy their selection criteria, the uncertainty of benefit and cost balance for investing in the installation of reasonable adjustments in the workplace, and a lack of knowledge on how to interact with disabled people in the right manner to avoid awkwardness and strategies to make the best use of their talents. From the disabled employee side, a lot of them are intimidated and dropped off from even pre-application, due to working hour restriction, pay cap and access to assistive technologies. Spirited candidates progressing to the application and interview stages could also get discouraged by their lack of experience. Their lack of confidence also prevented them to move forward. Therefore, the task I was assigned, to identify possible gaps in the market where Avalis could offer a service, is extremely valuable.
As an intern, the level of freedom Avalis’ management team has given me was phenomenal. I had the opportunity to explore the problems that result in the disability employment gap from different facets, and I could make the call in deciding the market segment that I want my service proposal to target at. Manoeuvring my way from initial idea formation and research to analysis and evaluation that serve to shortlist the best service to offer to the market honed my organisation and independent thinking skills and was valuable for me to go bold and be creative in formulating the service content. I had to be more organised in planning what I need to do in each stage, as well as grouping information and relevant thoughts so that I have something to reflect on and assess regularly. Pushing myself for better planning also allowed things that need to be done later to come more naturally. Having a more logical approach to the problem and a better organisation of materials I have looked into made it clear to Dave my thought process and methodologies I have used to reach the conclusions so that more useful feedback and more effective amendments were made. Moreover, doing more independent work stretched me to think more. I had to evaluate from the perspectives of different stakeholder groups about their expectations and displeasing factors along with the service delivery and self-assess whether I have covered all the necessary points.
I was also given first-hand stories for the experiences disabled employees have in work that allowed me to quickly locate the focus of my research. In addition, I was supported with introductions to useful methodologies that I have never used before. Learning to make use of them allowed me to check if my service proposal would meet the key purchasing criteria of existing and potential clients, to evaluate the costs and benefits for Avalis to deliver the service, and to design experiments that could test the assumptions I have made for the market for the service to have a market presence and a satisfying user experience.
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