At a time when businesses are shouting out for more workers, there’s a significant pool of employees just waiting for the right opportunity to come along.
In 2024, a Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre report found increasing employment of people with a disability by 10 per cent could produce an extra $16 billion in economic output each year.
For the past three years, one social enterprise – well known for its 31 op shops across Western Australia – has been attempting to make the most of this opportunity.
Good Sammy Enterprises is a diversified charity which has been working with people with disability for almost 70 years.
With a boost from the Paul Ramsay Foundation and an anonymous philanthropist, Good Sammy embarked on a journey to test ways to help disabled people move into work beyond the organisation, partnering with businesses including logistics company Centurion, state-owned utility Western Power and salary packaging provider Paywise.
The trials sought to shift Good Sammy’s role from a destination employer, where people with disability can build careers in a supported environment, to a pathway into wider employment for those who want it.
Together with The University of Western Australia’s Centre for Social Impact and UNSW’s Social Policy Research Centre, Good Sammy’s research suggests the benefits extend beyond individual workers to employers and their workplaces.
But it also shows training and experience alone are not always enough to secure a job at full award wages.
“The premise here was that the single biggest reason that people with disability, as reported by the Australian government, find difficulty into employment is the lack of training and work experience opportunities,” Good Sammy chief executive Kane Blackman said at the report’s launch in September.
The scale of the potential workforce is significant.
Good Sammy estimates around 100,000 with disability Western Australians of working age are unemployed, based on official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which show around one million across the country are in this position.
Samantha Berglin, a senior manager at the charity, said it wanted to demonstrate what people with disability could contribute when businesses were prepared to be more flexible.
“People with disability in Australia are twice as likely to be unemployed or work fewer hours compared to people without disability in Australia, and most people with an intellectual disability in Australia in paid work continue to work in disabilityspecific employment settings,” she said.
“A lot of those barriers around unemployment with people with intellectual disability are structural, systemic, and attitudinal barriers.”
Bridge to business
The open employment trials comprised two initiatives: a hybrid model that allowed participants to work both at Good Sammy and at an external business, and a training program offering nationally recognised qualifications and licences.
The hybrid model gave participants the chance to experience another workplace while retaining support from Good Sammy.
The training initiative focused on qualifications in areas including retail, hospitality and warehousing, as well as car and forklift licences.
More than 75 people expressed interest in open employment during the trial’s outreach, and 50 took part in goal-planning sessions.
The final evaluation recorded 33 traineeship starts, with 19 completions, and 42 people starting licence training, with 27 completions.
“Large businesses have a social obligation to offer opportunities,” Mr Blackman said.
Centre for Social Impact director Paul Flatau spoke alongside Mr Blackman at the launch, saying although the transition to open employment was difficult for many, the opportunities for both participants and employers were endless.
“We saw more options, increased income and work opportunities,” Mr Flatau said.
“We had trainees completing their training shift and getting their driver’s license.
“We also found that the employees on supported wages didn’t find it easy to shift to open employment.
“It’s not an easy transition, and we need to really support that where people are comfortable about making that shift.
“Not everyone has to make it.”
Mr Flatau agreed that businesses should be taking “social leadership” with inclusive employment.
But he also pointed out the age-old benefits trap built into the tax system which can deter people with disabilities from securing a job.
Disabled people receiving the Disability Support Pension, for example, will gradually start losing their entitlement to this benefit, the more hours they work.
Flatau said this meant they paid a higher effective tax rate on their earnings than their fellow workers.
“There’s a need for employers to take a stronger engagement in this area, but it is actually the whole systems thing that we have to look at here,” he said.
Increasing efficiency
Good Sammy’s partnerships with big business demonstrated collaborative approaches could deliver benefits for all parties involved.
Ms Berglin said the work available at Centurion was found through a collaborative approach with the logistics business.
“That one came from a really opportunistic place where we had one of our workers from Good Sammy doing a walkthrough of Centurion and starting to talk about what this might look like,” she said.
“They did a walkthrough and identified those roles and did some carving out of different jobs into specific roles that a person with disability could do.”
Tasks were carved out around preparing and cleaning truck equipment, including loading resources onto trucks before drivers departed.
At Western Power, a Good Sammy team sorted mail in the organisation’s mailroom.
Both cases pointed to a practical opportunity for employers, with the potential for inclusive employment to begin by examining everyday business processes and identifying work that can be grouped into a suitable role, with the right training and support.
Paywise provided an example of a pathway from a supported arrangement to direct employment.
A participant who had gained experience across Good Sammy’s e-commerce, call centre and corporate finance operations was interested in finance work.
Through the partnership, he began working part-time at Paywise with support from Good Sammy.
That support was gradually reduced over about six months, before Paywise employed him directly at full award wages.
