Natalie: Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you work with Mencap?
Jenny: I'm the emerging talent manager at Evri. My role is to support our emerging talent programme and early careers programmers. I oversee anything to do with work experience Work experience Experience is when you have learned or tried something before. is when you try out a job to help you learn new skills. and internships which is how I’ve come to work with Mencap. My role working with Mencap is at a more strategic level. I work to identify sites ran by Evri where we can work with Mencap and their supported internship programme, helping to implement the programme at our sites and then acting as a go-between for our site managers and Mencap staff to really support us getting work experience placements up and running at our sites. I also support with setting up training for our staff to prepare them for working with interns, as well as monitoring how placements are going and what outcomes are being achieved.
N: Did you know much about Mencap and learning disability before you started to work with us?
J: I didn’t know very much to be honest. I hadn't heard of Mencap before I was introduced to you by our HR Director. Our team has been working on a strategy A strategy is a plan to show what an organisation An organisation are a group of people who work together. , or a person, wants to do and how they are going to do it. around inclusion and how we can support more people from under-represented groups to access opportunities and have careers with Evri. One of the things that we were looking at as part of this was going through the process to become a disability confident employer. Working with Mencap then, and their supported internship learners really supports this work.
I was already aware of learning disabilities, but working with people with a learning disability day-to-day wasn't something that I was used to doing. I've worked in education Education is when you learn things. When you fill in a form to get a job, education means you write where you went to school, college or university. previously, so, I was already aware of some of the things that we might need to put in place as an employer, but I wouldn’t have said I was an expert. But it’s like anything else, once you start interacting with people with a learning disability, your understanding starts to improve. One of the things I’d say I’ve realised is that a learning disability comes in many different forms. I think it’s a much broader topic than what a lot of people maybe assume.
The two interns we took on last year in Birmingham who both got jobs with Evri - Hakeem and Ty- needed fairly minimal support from us in the end. They were able to get started very quickly and do a really good job. We didn’t need to provide the sort of support that I think a lot of employers might worry they’d need to provide, like buying additional equipment. It was more about ensuring we had a supportive environment and people around the interns that could help them if they needed it. Of course, we want to work with people with all types of needs at Evri and are willing to look at providing whatever support different people may need, but I think it’s important to understand that people’s needs will vary so you can be ready to respond to different needs.
N: What kind of work are people with a learning disability doing at Evri?
J: At the moment, we're mostly looking at roles in our warehouses. We move parcels, so I would say about 80% of roles in Evri are within our warehouses helping to sort everything. We need warehouse operatives all the time and we’re willing to consider anyone for these roles, so having an additional talent pipeline of people from Mencap and your supported internship programme that we maybe wouldn’t usually receive applications from is a big bonus for us. It’s a win win situation - we need people to fill these roles, while Mencap are looking to place people in work experience opportunities and you have a lot of learners that are interested in this type of work.
This doesn't mean that the only type of work we're ever going to offer will be in our warehouses. There are lots of different roles we can offer to people like administrative roles, for example, and we’d be happy to explore setting up work experience placements for supported internship learners in these types of roles in the future.
N: We often find that roles in logistics and warehouses are a really good fit for people with a learning disability and we get some really great outcomes from working with companies in this sector. Why do you think this is?
J: I think it’s partly to do with the kind of work that these roles involve. We have very clear processes for people to follow when moving parcels around our warehouses and if that’s what you’re doing, you’ll be doing it all day. So there’s a really clear structure to a lot of our roles which I think some people appreciate. At the same time, however, we do have a bit of chopping and change, and we vary the type of work people do. The supported internship learners we’ve had in placements have had the chance to try working on all the different processes that we follow within our warehouses, and we’ve put plans in place to make sure this happens.
There are also progression opportunities. We're currently putting a Mencap supported internship learner into a placement at our Heathrow warehouse, for example, and there's an opportunity to potentially move them into a customs-related role. This would cover when we’re sending items out of the country which means we have to do more stringent checks before they’re shipped out. We're going to start them off in a more traditional warehouse role, but then try to progress them to this slightly more complex role. We're really trying to give people opportunities to progress and learn different things as part of their placements with us.
N: How has Mencap supported you to create opportunities for people with a learning disability and how have you found working with us?
J: At each site we start by arranging a meeting with Mencap’s local employer engagement officer who comes and does a site visit to understand the site and the different types of roles available there. And then Mencap goes and finds a supported internship learner or learners that they think would like to do a placement with us and could be successful in the role. We then arrange an introductory day for the learners to come and visit us for a couple of hours, just to make sure that the site and the role is the right fit for them, that they like the type of work involved Involved is being included in something or taking part in something. , feel comfortable there and don’t find it too difficult to travel to the site.
Once the learners have started in their placements, a Mencap skills coach comes in and works alongside them to help them learn the processes they need to follow. The skills coaches also provide some training for our line managers. They run sessions before learners start in their placements to help managers understand more about learning disabilities and what support a person with a learning disability might need. They’ll also speak with them about specific individual learners so they understand a bit more about that person and any individual requirements they may have. For instance, one learner we had on placement was not very confident at first, so we worked with the skills coach to identify someone in the team who could buddy up with them to help bring them out of their shell.
I think this all works really well. We’ve had some fantastic feedback about Mencap’s skills coaches in Birmingham around how she really integrated with the team, worked hard, and was like a second pair of hands. Gradually, the skills coaches step away as learners become more confident and more used to the work environment, but I think it’s really useful to have them on site at first to help integrate learners into the business.
I also continue to work closely with the local employer engagement officer to review how placements are going at the different sites. I get feedback from the teams to relay to the employer engagement officer and I work to understand from them if there is anything more we need to do to support the learners to make sure we’re doing all we can and so placements are successful and can lead to job outcomes. We had two of these outcomes in Birmingham last year and I'm hoping for more this year. I think we've got another two individuals in Birmingham and then we're putting another one in our Heathrow site and potentially another at our warehouse in Enfield. Once I'm comfortable that we can cope with one individual, then we can start to look at arranging placements for bigger numbers of learners.
N: What are you most proud of about working with Mencap and supporting people with a learning disability?
J: Being able to give back. It's been really rewarding to hear how we're making a difference in somebody's life however big or small and it's a pleasure to be able to do that.
I’m also proud of the progress we’ve been able to support people to make. For one of the learners we had last year, their placement with us started toward the end of their time on the supported internship programme.
The other placements he’d done in other organisations Organisations are groups like companies and businesses. hadn’t quite worked out and the placement with Evri was the last one he could do before his time on the programme would come to an end. What I heard from their team was that they came to us as a very shy, quiet individual, but now they are a completely different person. It’s been great to be able to offer them a paid job and to give them their first pay packet, but it’s also amazing that they’ve enjoyed the work so much and been able to achieve this with our support.
Another piece of feedback that I’ve had from one of our local managers was around how they’ve seen their team grow as a result of working with people with a learning disability. It gives them different skills like being able to support and mentor people. So, I'm also very proud of how we’ve been able to help people in our wider teams at Evri develop through working with Mencap.
If you'd like more information about our supported internship programme and how you can support people with a learning disability into employment Employment means having a job. , visit our webpage.
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