June 2021

The 2021 AGCAS ‘‘What Happens Next?’’ report uses data from the Graduate Outcomes survey to look at the outcomes of disabled students and ‘’provides real evidence of the effect of a disability on a graduate’s employment prospects.’’ It paints a familiar picture and reveals unsurprisingly that the proportion of disabled graduates in full-time employment is still lower than the proportion of non- disabled graduates.

To reverse this trend, we must all take responsibility to make time to understand the challenges faced by disabled applicants, and work to ensure that through our strategy, engagement and support, we are working to provide a level playing field where people can display their ability and talent and achieve their career potential.

So how do you effectively provide a disability confident service to the 15% of students who disclose a disability?

MyPlus Universities’ Club suggest 5 steps for you to consider

Step 1: Nominate a disability ‘champion’ within the team

Having a designated disability champion or lead adviser within the careers’ service provides valuable focus. Developing expertise and understanding the complexities of applying for jobs, internships and placements with a disability or health condition is mission critical. A key benefit is that there is a designated person who is responsible for gathering and signposting specialist information, careers events and resources that can be shared with colleagues and students.

Another benefit of having a designated disability lead is that they are able to foster relationships and partnerships both internally, for example with marketing and comms teams, and academic departments, and externally with organisations like MyPlus to develop their disability confidence.

Step 2: Work to embed disability confidence throughout the team

‘Best practice can only really be achieved if everybody at a service has experience of working with disability and it is embedded across that service’. Catherine Alexander; Careers’ Consultant and Disability Lead at the University of Cambridge

Finding a job is hard for everyone, however if you add in a disability or a health condition it becomes even more of a challenge. Disabled students look for jobs in the same way as their non- disabled counterparts and have similar questions about topics such as culture, career progression opportunities and training. However, they will also have additional questions and concerns that are specifically related to how to apply with a disability, and they are often unsure of where to start. It is vital that students have access to careers consultants who can equip them with the specialist advice and information enabling them to confidently apply for jobs, internships and placements and perform to the best of their abilities.

Step 3: Target & Engage

Cutting through digital noise is tricky and reliance on email campaigns, social media and newsletters is often no longer enough to engage with your target audience. Targeted communications are an effective way of marketing the careers service to a particular group. The key to success is identifying your audience and creating and sharing engaging, practical content.

Catherine Alexander, speaking at a MyPlus Universities’ Club webinar, says that the key to successful engagement at Cambridge has been working with the Disability Resource Centre. With student consent, the DRC shares student data with the careers service and this is then mapped onto their Handshake platform. A simple email is sent to ask students whether they would like to receive emails for the careers’ service about disability related resources and this email is reviewed and sent out annually.

Catherine also stresses the importance of ensuring that disability is normalised for all students by making sure that all standard communications are inclusive. This could mean, for example, asking if adjustments are needed when promoting an event via a blog. This not only sends a message that disabled students are not an ‘add on’, but it also helps to ensure that non-disabled students see disability as part of everyday life. As future managers, Catherine believes this is of utmost importance.

Step 4: Communication & Messaging

First impressions count. Promoting your commitment to disability to your students is about ensuring that all generic emails, newsletters, web pages, portals and platforms position your career’s service as ‘Disability Confident’. This can be as simple as one sentence that demonstrates the support that you offer all students, including the 15% who have a known disability, with links to further resources and support.

There is also the opportunity to create some designated resources on your careers’ web pages for disabled students that tackle some of the FAQs of applying with a disability, or direct them towards external resources such as the library of Disability Career Guides at MyPlus Students’ Club.

Promote disability confident resources and events on your social media channels and tag relevant student societies and academic departments asking them to promote and share.

Step 5: Collaboration-an opportunity to educate

Finally, disabled students will talk to people who they trust, and this can mean that their disability service manager or personal tutor will often be a first point of contact.

In her MyPlus blog, Lucy Crittenden, Head of Careers at Birkbeck, explains the benefits of close cross-collaboration between the careers and student services team. At Birkbeck 23% of full-time entrants have a disability and this approach has worked very well in terms of providing 2-way referrals, training, and support.

Birkbeck’s Ability Programme was borne out of research into students wanting to understand more about the challenges of getting a job with a disability and employers wanting to understand about recruiting disabled students. The successful programme has two key aims providing students with access to tailored careers advice & access to meaningful employment and for employers building confidence and putting in long term changes to be able to access best talent.

To read more about the Birkbeck Ability programme and the advice Lucy gives on how to build these relationships, please read her blog linked here.

The percentage of students who have disclosed a disability has risen from 11% in 2015/16 to 15% in 2019/20 *; this equates to 368,815 students in the UK. It has always been pertinent to provide these students with tailored careers advice to meet their specific needs however, with the current job market and economic climate being more challenging that it has ever been, providing this expert advice is more important than ever if they are to successfully transition into employment.

The MyPlus Universities Club programme aims to build capability and disability confidence within Careers and Employability teams, which will support them to enable disabled students to realise their career potential.

For more information, or to book onto a training webinar, please contact Emma Knox, University Partnerships and Marketing Manager at MyPlus at emma@myplusconsulting.com

*Data source: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/whos-in-he

In this guest blog, we hear from MyPlus Universities’ Club member Lucy Crittenden from Birkbeck University Careers and Employability team discussing the benefits of collaboration with Student Services to support disabled students navigate the employment landscape.

Birkbeck attracts a much larger proportion of disabled students than the university sector overall. More than 23% of our full-time entrants have told us about a disability compared to 13% in the sector (HESA 2017/18 data).

Data from the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education Survey (Office for Students 2018) showed that six months after graduation, those declaring a disability were less likely to be in full time employment than those who did not. This is a sector wide issue, but particularly affects our mature students who often have multiple and more complex disabilities and are often long-term unemployed.

To address this, we developed the Ability Programme in collaboration with our Disability & Dyslexia (DDS) and Mental Health Advisory (MHAS) Services. Through a series of bespoke workshops alongside paid work placements, Ability helps disabled students navigate the ever-changing landscape of work and connect with disability confident employers.

Why did we feel it was important to collaborate?

With the above employment gap, continuing changes in student expectations from an HE provider and Office for Students (OFS) requirements, we knew it was important to ensure that we were providing a fully joined up service to support the entire journey of disabled students, both at Birkbeck and beyond. This could only be done by collaborating with the services that actively deal with disabled students on a day to day basis to learn from their expertise, experience and connections and get their support in actively promoting the programme.

How have we worked together?

• Regular meetings so that we are all aware of what each service is aiming to achieve, what activities are running, make sure we understand what we can provide to students and keep each other updated.
• Co-run workshops on topics such as openness statements and services available to students.
• Included members of DDS and MHAS in our employer roundtable event to share knowledge and best practice.
• Student referrals from DDS and MHAS to Birkbeck Futures where students could benefit from careers related support.
• Birkbeck Futures refers students to DDS and MHAS where support outside of careers is required and sign post services to students more generally.
• DDS shares information on the Ability programme, events etc with both current and prospective students.
• Working together to understand the adjustments and support required for students, both for workshops and work placements.

What advice would we give on how to build those relationships?

We had an advantage at Birkbeck in that our Student Services teams have traditionally had close relationships with each other, but some things we would suggest are:

• Get buy in from your senior leadership so that they support what you are doing and collaboration is encouraged.
• Understand what the services are doing and how that can link with student career journeys.
• Share your plans and ask for input and suggestions from the other services. Show them what you are planning/doing and the potential impact (or impact if it something you are already running).
• Services are likely to be stretched, especially at the current time, so identify ways in which you can collaborate without adding to workload. For example, we create content for DDS and MHAS to share on our behalf as part of their normal communications.
• Demonstrate that working together will not only benefit the students but also the HE institute as a whole, for example when recruiting students.
• Find people in the services who ‘get’ what you are trying to do and encourage them to get involved. Start small and build up once you have someone who can champion what you are doing.
• Invite people from the services to attend activities you are running so that they can see what you are offering.

We are still learning and will continually review our initiatives and ways of collaborating, but we would be more than happy to speak to anyone who would like to hear more about our journey. We would also love to collaborate with more institutions to address the issues faced by disabled students. You can get in touch with Lucy Crittenden and Anna Gordon at employability@bbk.ac.uk

Birkbeck Futures is a one-stop service that combines the Careers Service, Enterprise Pathways and Birkbeck Talent to support Birkbeck students and graduates in their future lives.

In a matter of weeks, the recruitment landscape has evolved beyond our wildest dreams. How best can we use the time to continue to support the 14% of students with disabilities in providing them with the tools and resources which will enable them to apply for jobs, internships, placements once the crisis has passed, or take advantage of the huge amount of volunteering opportunities which are currently available?

One of the main challenges for disabled students involves thinking about what ‘reasonable adjustments’ or support they will need in order to be able to access roles that they are more than capable of doing. Putting some thought into this now will yield dividends later as the more familiar a student is with discussing their requirements the easier it will become to articulate to employers down the track.

What can you do now?

Be proactive – download our detailed and practical eBook ‘Recruitment Process Adjustments’ which looks at the 5 most common questions surrounding accessing support:

• What is an adjustment?
• What adjustments do I need?
• How can I request them?
• Who do I contact about adjustments?
• Who pays?

Communicate the information to students – this content is freely available to download. Plan the ways in which you can share and promote this and other useful resources to disabled students while they are self-isolating. Sign post them to our practical exercise on creating an ‘Openness statement’ (also known as disclosure) which they can practice in the comfort of their own home and be ready to articulate to potential employers when normality resumes. Share on social media or via your career’s portal & newsletters.

Build your capability – join us on Thursday 30th April for our next webinar. For more information please click the link below and to book please contact emma@myplusconsulting.com

Providing students with disabilities to understand, and empathise with, the unique challenges they face as they search for disability confident employers and navigate the recruitment process.

Key challenges for students include, but are not limited to: how to position their disability positively, whether or not to inform an employer about their disability, what support and adjustments they can request, and how to account for differences in their application; differences such as lower grades or a lack of work experience.

So how do you navigate these challenges and ensure that you are able to provide the expert and specialised careers advice that your students require?

It’s not easy however Universities have a collective responsibility to support all students as they transition from education into employment, and it will involve challenging people’s perceptions of what is possible.

Key is getting the individual fully involved in university life in order to develop employability skills. Employers look for much more than just good academics; they look for leadership skills, examples of initiative, people skills, and you can only develop these if you get fully involved in university life.

And secondly there is building capability through the 5 Pillars of Disability Confidence:

• Understanding the employment challenges facing students with disabilities.
• My ‘Plus’: identifying your strengths to stand out from the crowd.
• The benefits of being open and how to be open.
• Applying for a job with a disability, and accounting for differences on your application.
• And Requesting adjustments.

What can you do now?

Share practical advice with your students – content on myplusstudentsclub.com is freely available to download. Plan the ways in which you can share and promote this and other useful resources to your students with disabilities including sign posting them to our free e.books which provide practical advice regards the key challenges.