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Jonathan Mosen: Kia ora koutou. Welcome to the first episode of Mahi, The Disability Employment Podcast brought to you by Workbridge. I'm Jonathan Mosen and with so many podcasts for you to choose from, I really appreciate you giving this one a try. Here's what you can expect if you stick around for this and future episodes.

First, who is Mahi for? Mahi is for you if you're disabled or you have an injury or an illness and you're interested in employment issues. We'll be discussing issues from a job-seeker's perspective and hearing some first-hand accounts of what works and what hasn't worked for job seekers. If you're an employer who wants to make the workforce more diverse and you want to tap into a pool of talent that is far too often underutilised, then Mahi is also for you. We'll be featuring employer interviews and success stories. If you have an interest in Public Policy on Employment in the Disability sector, Mahi will be an important listen for you too.

We'll also be keeping you informed about what's happening right across the country at our Workbridge centres. We’re keen to make sure that Mahi isn't just a one-way thing that you listen to. We'd like this podcast to be interactive and for you to have your say. Why not get the ball rolling? If you'd like your voice to be heard, then you can record an audio file such as with the voice memo's app on your smartphone and attach that file to an email message which can be sent to podcast@workbridge.co.nz.. That's podcast@workbridge.co.nz or you can just give us a call at the Mahi Listener line and leave us a message. That number is 04-472-0200. That's 04-472-0200. If you're using a landline and you're calling from outside the Wellington region, then charges may apply. You can also write an email and send it to podcast@workbridge.co.nz.. That email address again, is podcast@workbridge.co.nz..

Today, I'll be speaking with Danielle Van Dalen of the Maxim Institute. She has prepared a couple of papers recently on the dire unemployment of disabled people in New Zealand, the latest and most comprehensive of these is called Creating Opportunity. And then, Workbridge has begun a new strategic planning process and we’re keen to know your views. I'll let you know how you can have your say and why it's important. Stay with us from Mahi, Episode 1.

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Jonathan: While we're an inclusive nation in many regards, we are failing to value people with disabilities and improve their ability to participate in society. That's a conclusion of a report called Creating Opportunity: Opening Doors to Employment for People with Disabilities. It's been produced by Danielle Van Dalen of the Maxim Institute. Prior to the publication of this latest paper, she also produced another piece of research on disability topics called Acknowledging Ability. Danielle joins me now from the Maxim Institute. Hi, Danielle.

Danielle Van Dalen: Hi Jonathan, it's such an honour to be talking to you today.

Jonathan: Great to have you here on the first episode. Look at you go.

Danielle: Yes, ecstatic.

Jonathan: Yeah. Tell me about the Maxim Institute. What does it do?

Danielle: We are a public policy think-tank that is a-- First, it's a little bit foreign in New Zealand, they’re more common in DC and London but we do research and policy analysis. We make policy recommendations and essentially, we try and help our nation's leaders make good decisions. We go away, do some research, talk to the people that are impacted by the areas that we work in. Parliament has a language of its own. I talk about the fact that we speak the parliament or can interpret for people the language of parliament.

Jonathan: When I read about the Maxim Institute, it's often prefaced in the media by language like right-wing think-tank. Is it fair to say that the Maxim Institute looks at social policy through a conservative lens?

Danielle: Yeah, I think so. It depends how you define that. I would say that we are a conservative organization. What we mean by that is we really believe in the dignity of every New Zealander and the value of every New Zealander. We believe that there are great ideas and background of history and thinking and we shouldn't just throw that away. We should actually pay attention and listen to those ideas. We're standing on the shoulders of giants. Let's pay attention to that and not make change for change's sake.

Jonathan: How did you come to write Creating Opportunity and Acknowledging Ability? Because the disability sector doesn't get a lot of research in this country. Actually, you make that point, that there's very little research that you could draw from when you put these reports together.

Danielle: Yeah, that's right. We research or do research into a bunch of different areas. One of those, being poverty in New Zealand. My manager had spent about three years doing some research into poverty in New Zealand looking at meaning and definition and also what the key pathways are out of poverty. This is all before it was--a while ago. It's come up again in recent political conversations which has been really cool to see. Rather unsurprisingly, I suppose, they found that there are two key pathways out of poverty; and those being education and employment. When I came on staff, one of the things that I was employed to do was to begin looking at that employment stream and looking at particular areas underneath that because employment is a huge question just by itself. There were so many different areas that we could have looked at. But disability was one that was suggested to us actually by a public servant, as an area that the government were struggling to do anything useful in. We had a massive whiteboard full of post-its and I was trying to figure out what is it that really stands out that we want to be spending a couple of years researching and thinking and writing about and me in particular. This was one that keeps coming up and it was something that the more I thought and read about it, it really impacted me. I don't have any experience of disability, not personally anyway. But I realized how prevalent it is around New Zealand and how many New Zealanders are impacted by disability but aren't really talked about. For me, that's really powerful. We need to be talking about these kinds of things.

I re-thought some of my own experiences. My grandfather was legally blind in the last years of his life. I realized how he had this amazing support network around him. My grandmother and my mom, in particular, was able to drive him places to doctor's appointments he had, he could get to the supermarket to buy food or all the local things that he was involved in. He had tapes, he loved the newspapers, he'd have the newspaper delivered on tapes. He really was surrounded by that but as it was, life wasn't always easy but their support made a huge difference and it made me realize that for so many people who don't have quite so much support or-- My mum wasn't working so she was able to drive him around wherever he needed to be. Some people don't have that luxury. It opened my eyes, I guess, to the lack of what we're doing in New Zealand and our own need to do something more.

Jonathan: Disability is a really broad term.

Danielle: Yeah, it is.

Jonathan: It's interesting that some people don't self-identify as being a disabled person. Your comment about your grandfather is really poignant too because more people are expected to work longer. The idea that everybody's gonna retire at 65 is long gone and disability tends to onset with age so we can expect more disabled people than ever in the workforce. As a country, we might not be quite ready for that and that's certainly one of the things that your report indicates.

Danielle: Yeah, completely, it makes sense. As you get older, you've lived more life, you're more likely to be involved in an accident of some sort or have a health issue and as a result, have some sort of disability. In my grandfather's case, he had skin cancer and had an eye removed. As a result, he became legally blind. When that means that we're working longer or even if you are in your 40s and 50s and suddenly your life changes in quite a drastic way, you still need to be able to live and a big part of living, I believe, is working. There are huge benefits to work and if people want to be working and not able to, we've got a bit of a problem.

Jonathan: You made the point and many disabled people feel this way, I think based on what they're telling me that disabled people feel that their social policy issues are often forgotten about and other disadvantaged groups whose statistics are actually a bit less dire tends to get a little bit more attention. Why do you think that is?

Danielle: Yeah, it's a bit of a heartbreaking thing to realise. To put it bluntly, I think disability isn't sexy enough. It doesn't get the attention of the media in a way that it should. When I released my first research paper, Acknowledging Ability, the amount of media attention that it got in comparison to the other work that we've done was pretty abysmal. We had done more prep, setting up and having stories ready for the media to take and run with than we would even normally do. We got a little bit more for Creating Opportunity but that was in part because of some of the other stories that were just over in the ecosystem. It really highlighted to us the lack of interest of the New Zealand public.

Jonathan: I mean, there's nobody who's a prominent journalist or media presenter who identifies as having a significant disability, right? It's just not there.

Danielle: That's right. We did have Mojo Mathers, Green MP but she's no longer in Parliament so there's no disability representative there. Disability is a little bit invisible or not even a little bit. Actually, it just is to most people. The fact that I haven't even thought about my grandfather as being disabled and thought that it's a fact of old age is a clear example of that. Obviously, through this work, I've met a lot of people with disabilities and it's been an amazing opportunity to have some conversations and realize that we really need to be having more of them.

Jonathan: What's the cause? I think, when we look and drill down at the causes, one of the issues relates to this Catch-22 thing that we're in, which is that people want to work but they're not in large number. That means that disabled people are often highly-invisible and that means that a lot of potential employers don't know firstly about what the consequences are or the potential benefits are of employing a disabled person. Secondly, what assistance might be available to accommodate any greater costs that might ensue as a result of employing a disabled person?

Danielle: Yeah, exactly. I think you've hit the nail on the head. A lot of what we found has to do with perception. It's the fact that people with disabilities are invisible. The employers, when someone or say they come across their desk or they've got two CVs in front of them, one is of a person with a disability and one is of a person without a disability. There's all these fears that may come up about it being really expensive, really difficult, they might not work in the team or other people might react weirdly. They might have to put on all these ramps because according to a lot of people, really the only disability is someone in a wheelchair which is not the case at all. It definitely is one but it's not the only.

People have a misperception as to what disability is like and what it's like to employ a person with a disability. There is a cost sometimes to employing people with disabilities. Sometimes you do need to have adjustments made and you do need to put things in place. But as you say, there are supports available for employers and government are trying to make that better. Actually, there's a huge benefit to society but also to the employer for employing people with disabilities. What we found is that people with disabilities, when you employ them, they are more likely to stick around, the longevity. They're less likely to take sick days which seems unusual but they're incredibly loyal. They're beneficial because they encourage improvement of the systems and processes. Everything becomes more accessible essentially because of that person being in the place of work and that is beneficial for everyone, there's some beneficial-- It might be changes to processes, changes to becoming more flexible about when people turn up or leave work which is really beneficial for appearance. It can be changes to ramps and things, all that is beneficial for the person with the disability if they need that. But it's also beneficial to all the people if they need it and don't identify as being disabled but actually still need easier access to buildings. It's beneficial because you have a greater understanding of a huge proportion of New Zealand's population who are your customers.

Jonathan: Having defined the problem, you looked at some potential solutions. Obviously, there's the supported employment model that Workbridge strongly believes in. Workbridge is placing thousands of people every year but it can't be denied that the unemployment rate is still way above the usual national average. You talked about education campaigns and the benefit of those. One thing that's interesting is, and I guess this could come back to perhaps the conservative lens that Maxim Institute looks through but you were quite dismissive of the idea of quotas. I don't know whether you talked about the potential benefits or otherwise of subsidies or tax breaks so that actually, it becomes more attractive for an employer to go for a disabled applicant because it is less impactful on their bottom line than it otherwise would be. Did you have a view on not just quotas but also some sort of subsidy or tax break--

Danielle: Yeah, sure.

Jonathan:--modelled to stimulate the market in the right direction?

Danielle: Quotas, to be honest, my dismissal of that comes from some research looking at Europe and from the OECD and they're looking at the impact and effectiveness of quotas. What they found is that while quotas are helpful in getting the very capable people into work, it doesn't have a long-term impact. It results in what is called cream skimming. That means that the very capable people who probably are already in work are the people the employers end up employing. It also perpetuates misunderstanding of people with disabilities not being able to work because they are capable. It suggests that people with disabilities will only be employed because they have to be because government is telling a particular employer that they have to. In Europe, there are definitely a number of employers, depending on what their regulations around quotas are, who will stay part of that by just paying the fine. I don't think that solves the problem in the long-term. I think we can be--

Jonathan: [crosstalk] Right. Is it the case like affirmative action argument though? Would you also make that same argument, say, for racial minorities who, it has been said, do benefit from affirmative action even though it's controversial?

Danielle: I'm not sure, to be honest. This is how I've read the research. It seems to show that we can be more effective. Otherwise, the Ministry of Health did some investigating into the impact of quotas and the desire for quotas in New Zealand. Actually, both employers and people with disabilities were not particularly interested in having them and preferred things like supported employment like education campaigns which I think, there's a lot more that we can do before we need to go down that path. I'm not saying it's necessarily forever the wrong solution. I just think right now, we should be trying a whole lot of other things. And there are some very practical things that we can be doing that will be more effective.

Jonathan: What are your thoughts on subsidies or greater use of tax credits for example as a financial incentive to employers. Do you think that that's a viable option?--

Danielle: Yeah.

Jonathan: --Or does it also send those same negative signals that you're talking about in the context of quotas?

Danielle: I'm not sure about the negative signals. Sometimes, we do talk about wage subsidies at the end of the paper and currently, the government has been investigating the need to do that to raise the minimum wage exemption so that we can get rid of that essentially for people who are working in what are effectively sheltered workshops. Actually, I think, sure, I think we should be doing that. I don't think anyone should be paid $1 an hour when it costs more to get to work than to do the work. That doesn't make any sense to me. But we also have to recognize that the wage subsidies are for-- We're talking about a really small number of New Zealanders, about 1500, I think, and it will be quite expensive. But sometimes it's still the right thing to do. From what I see right now, I think that it's probably the right thing to do.

Jonathan: In the mainstream market though and obviously, sheltered employment is a very controversial area-- [crosstalk]

Danielle: Sure, yeah.

Jonathan:--for many disabled people who feel that it's exploitative. There are others who feel that well, it gives a certain group of people a sense of dignity and meaning that they otherwise wouldn't have--

Danielle: Yes, yes.

Jonathan:--and that debate will go on. But in the context of say, a situation where I don't know, it might be a position in retail or an office position involving, say, clerical work in front of a computer. Is it appropriate to say, "Okay, we've got to incentivize for the time being anyway, the employer to employ a disabled person by, in some ways, subsidizing or giving him a tax credit so that the option to choose a disabled person is more financially attractive"?

Danielle: I've read a little bit of that. I'm still convinced that the evidence is in our favour. It beneficial financially and in terms of business to employ people with disabilities. If we make that clear to employers, if we shift attitudes around that, I actually think that that's probably going to be more effective in the long-term. And more effective as a society about how we value people, how we see the person sitting in front of us as a person.

Jonathan: You talked about the Think Differently campaign as an example of an education campaign that could be expanded upon,--

Danielle: Sure.

Jonathan:-- as a template. For those who aren't familiar with that, talk us through what that did and why you consider that that was in fact, an effective campaign.

Danielle: Well, I think it was an effective-- I mean, it was a smaller campaign, I think. Just let me start by saying, I think we need a big scale campaign. The Think Differently campaign was really interesting. It's a series of little videos and parts that show people with disabilities in a range of different employment places and both the employer, the person with disability talking about how it works and how it is very normal and it's actually a great thing and it's been beneficial to them to employ people with disabilities. The example that I actually keep going back to...and I always forget his name, I'm finally starting to remember, which is terrible. I apologize but it's John Kirwan, the former [All Black?]. Clearly not a huge sports fan. The Depression campaign that he's done, that's how I know him, through TV ads and things like that. It's the linking, the fact with the knowledge that there is support and care available. I think we actually need something on that kind of scale. Something really huge that it removes that barrier in terms of people with disabilities are no longer invisible. They are incredibly visible to all of us on a day-to-day basis and it becomes normal to think, "Oh yeah, of course, I would employ someone with disability."

Jonathan: Right and that campaign probably worked because Sir John Kirwan is a household name, isn't he? Everybody knows who he is. Unfortunately, because of this Catch-22 we were talking about earlier, there aren't actually that many disabled people out there who are household names in New Zealand. I mean, you look at the UK for example and you'd immediately think, say, of David Blunkett who got all the way to Home Secretary. He was the Home Secretary during 9/11 actually and he was a blind guy with a guide dog and every time he changed his guide dog, it was national news. If you were going to do an education campaign, somebody like him who had a very high national profile there would be obvious. In New Zealand, we don't really have-- I'm trying to think of a disabled person who really could be described as a household name in New Zealand.

Danielle: Yeah. I'm not a comms person, to be honest, but I agree we don't...that I can think of. But sometimes, campaigns don't have to be just a face. They can be satirical, they can be a lot of faces. It's bringing to the attention of the public the kinds of people that make up this beautiful country.

Jonathan: You talked about anti-discrimination legislation. This is a tough one, isn't it? Because most modern jurisdictions have it but increasingly, discrimination is quite difficult to prove. One of the things that is challenging and I don’t think anyone would suggest that it should be lawful again to discriminate on the grounds of disability but it’s hard when the discrimination goes underground. I know that with job interviews that I've done, because I'm totally blind and I'm walking in there with a white cane, so it’s pretty jolly obvious that I have a disability and if my disability hasn't come up by the end of the interview, I will volunteer it when they get to the section that says, "Do you have any questions for us?" And I'll say, "Well, you may be wondering how I would do this job since I can't see and here are some of the tools and techniques I would use." It's hard, isn't it?...when the discrimination could be happening but people are sensitive to the fact that they can't do it and so it's harder to prove now.

Danielle: 100%, it's really difficult. We have some anti-discrimination legislation. I can't or I haven't been able to see a way that makes that smoother or easier other than through making that employment process easier. Disclosing whether and when you decide to disclose that you have a disability, it's a huge question that people will have to come to grips with and figure out for themselves and really difficult. For me, going into an interview, it's hard enough. I don't have that question to contend with. But when you do, yeah, it's much more difficult.

One of the things...I guess, this is moving a little bit into the recommendations that we've made, about some of the recommendations we've made specifically around that. One of those being the employer's support passport. The idea behind that is that you have your CV but you also have this kind of passport. I'm not sure exactly what it would look like, a piece of paper or it could look really cool. Some document that you'd give to an employer when you're applying for a job to say, "I have a disability. I've worked in this place or I've had work experience here. These are the supports that I've had there and this is how that worked," or "These are the supports that I would be eligible for." In that way, an employer sees immediately rather than hearing, "Oh, you have a disability. Oh no, how is this gonna go? I can't do this, this is too difficult." They see immediately, "Oh, these are some of the supports that would work." There's immediately a solution to those questions.

Another thing that we talked about was human resource practices. For some people with disabilities, that question of "Do you have a disability?" or "Do you have any assistance needs?" things like that, when you're applying for a job, can be really off-putting. You can say that, "Oh well, I'm not gonna bother applying for that. They're just gonna immediately rule me out. There's just no point." Actually, re-learning or educating HR teams to figure out and make that more inclusive, that process.

Jonathan: The driver's license is a big one too, isn't it?

Danielle: Yeah, totally.

Jonathan: Because the employer is interested in somebody getting from A to B and they conclude based on their own experience that the way to do that is by having a driver's license--

Danielle: It's such a Kiwi attitude.

Jonathan:--and making sure that the individual can drive.

Danielle: Yeah.

Jonathan: And yet I'm just as able to jump in a cab or an Uber as somebody who doesn't drive and get from A to B in my job and the effect is the same as far as the employer is concerned. I've got from A to B but when that driver's license requirement is observed in a job interview, it disincentivizes disabled people who don't have a driver's license from even applying.

Danielle: Yes, that's right. Those kinds of things are some of the very practical things that we can begin to shift if we learn that actually, there are different ways. People with disabilities are amazing at working with what they have and the supports around them. We definitely need to improve some of that. There's no question there. But I don't think we can say that someone, just because they don't have a driver's license is unable to do a job.

Jonathan: You made the point, I think, in one of your reports that the nature of work is changing in a couple of ways. First, that people are just graduating to flexible hours anyway--

Danielle: That's right.

Jonathan:--but also that you know the fibre infrastructure that New Zealand has means that work from home opportunities and doing really extensive work from home being logged-in to a virtual private network or whatever, it's absolutely possible and it's being done a lot. And that would benefit people either who perhaps are best at working at specific times of the day in terms of managing their disability or perhaps just have a challenge getting into a physical office but they're absolutely capable of doing the work.

Danielle: Yeah, exactly. We talked about flexible work. It's quite a common thing to talk about these days. We talked about it as being beneficial to parents or to people who don't want to do long commutes. Well actually, it's a huge benefit to people with disabilities that transport--question is, it's a bit of an issue. And the idea of being able to work from home for a number of hours or to work hours that are best suited to energy levels or appointments or anything, the life outside of that. It's really powerful.

Jonathan: If a disabled person does something differently but gets the job done in the end, then an employer doesn't necessarily have to understand how it was done. What they really need to measure is, did the outcome get delivered that I'm employing this person to deliver? Because sometimes, an assistive technology or alternative techniques are just so outside the experience of many employers that they struggle to understand how is the disabled person going to do this? But if they can be assured, "Don't worry about how I get it done, it will get done."

Danielle: That's right.

Jonathan: That may well help.

Danielle: Oh yeah, completely. That requires trust on the part of the employer and it requires learning and understanding that that is a possibility. That requires not just the employer having that trust and understanding but the direct manager or the team around them. It is not just managers or employers that need to be learning about this. It's New Zealand as a whole.

Jonathan: I imagine you will have been heartened by the announcement recently that the government does intend to put an employment action plan in place and no doubt your report and the thoughts of many will form a part of the consideration that leads to that action plan.

Danielle: Yeah, yeah, that's really exciting. That's the hope that's why we do this work. We've certainly had really positive feedback from people within government. I really hope that we see some positive outcomes in this country.

Jonathan: I appreciate your being on the first episode of Mahi, Danielle. That is Danielle Van Dalen. She is from the Maxim Institute. If you would like to read the papers that we've been talking about, they are available online, the PDFs are accessible, maxim.org.nz is where you will find them. That's maxim.org.nz.. We also have a link to the papers in the show notes. Having had a read or even just heard this interview, what do you think? Do you think the Maxim Institute is on the right track? Do you have an alternative view? Are there things that were overlooked in the paper that you think are relevant to this discussion? Have your say and remember, there are a couple of ways in which you can do that. You can attach an audio clip or just write an email down and send it in to podcast@workbridge.co.nz.. That's podcast@workbridge.co.nz or you can phone the Mahi Listener line and that is 04-472-0200. That number again, 04-472-0200 and we'll play a selection of your comments on the next episode.

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Jonathan: I hope you've enjoyed this first episode of Mahi. This podcast is just one of a series of initiatives we've been working on to communicate with you in new ways and to improve the service that we deliver to you. I took up the role of Workbridge as Chief Executive at the beginning of June. Since then, I've been taking time to become familiar with the way Workbridge currently operates, what we're doing well, where we're falling short and how we can do better. That involves meeting staff from all 22 Workbridge centres across New Zealand as well as talking with many other individuals and groups who have an interest in making an even bigger dent in the unemployment statistics that plague our sector. And those meetings will be ongoing as long as I occupy this role.

As part of this improvement process, Workbridge has published a green paper on some of the strategic issues we face. It's publicly available from our website now and it gives you an opportunity to think about how we can best achieve our goals of maximising opportunity and outcomes for disabled New Zealanders and those with an illness or injury.

Please visit our website at workbridge.co.nz.. That's workbridge.co.nz or you can follow the link in the show notes to the page containing the green paper. We're excited about all the initiatives that we're working on and we very much look forward to receiving your thoughts.

There you have it, Episode 1 of Mahi, New Zealand's disability employment podcast brought to you by Workbridge. You can find out more about us by going to workbridge.co.nz or you can give us a call at 0508-858-858. That number again is 0508-858-858.

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