Episode Notes

[Music] [Narelle] Hi and welcome to our latest Digital Access Show. Today, I have Brendan Somerville with us. Brendan is working with Spinal Life and his role in Spinal Life is to help employers bring on board people with disability. What you don't know, and you can't see I'll let Brendan tell you himself. However, thanks Brendan, thanks for your time today. [Brendan] Yeah, thank you for the invitation, Narelle. Looking forward to having a chat. [Narelle] Well, I've been looking forward to this one for a while because employing people with disability is a passion of mine. I don't see the barriers, but I know others do. Brendan, tell me a bit about yourself and your role at Spinal Life. [Brendan] Okay, so a little bit about myself is, I'm a Cauca, Caucasian male in, who uses the wheelchair. So, I have a disability of spinal bifida and hydrocephalus, which basically means that I was born with a portion of my lower spine that wasn't formed properly and it caused nerve damage to my spine when I was born. And, therefore, I have difficulty with walking and a whole host of, a lot of things that we won't talk mention here. [Narelle] No, please don't. [Brendan] But, yeah. And, and so yeah, I love going out you know, outdoors camping and I love, you know, advocating for people in terms of the employment side of things, which is why I'm working with Spinal Life Australia at the moment. So last year, I met Narelle doing this same project in the Mortone Bay Region and because we had good results last year, we've been extended to the Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay, now. [Narelle] That was fantastic. [Brendan] Yeah, and so the program has been funded by the Department of Tourism, Innovation and Sport this year. And it's all about mentoring small businesses about how to become more inclusive to their customers with disabilities and also to help those businesses in the tourism industry specifically, on the Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay to think about people with disabilities as additional talent pools when they're struggling to fill their roles. Yeah. [Narelle] What drew you to do this? It's definitely a little bit out of the norm. What, what was it that drew you to do this, Brendan? What attracted you? [Brendan] So personally it was my, my personal experience with long-term unemployment. And then also, one day when I was doing traineeship in business administration, just trying to find a skill set that would give me the broadest opportunity possible. So everybody needs an admin officer. Yeah, and I came across some resumes and I was helping one of the recruitment consultants at a group training organization to shortlist for some apprenticeships. And it just, a lightbulb went off in mind about the way that people were presenting themselves on paper. You know, using qualitative outcomes to demonstrate their value to an employer as opposed to just, you know, words on a piece of paper that say if they're done these certificates and, you know, worked here for this long kind of thing. It was really impressive. And so then, that spurred me on to do a Bachelor's Degree in Human Resource Management. And I was hoping that I could use those skills either as an employee or in a small business operations which I did, to help businesses to become again more inclusive by improving their recruitment practices and opening their minds to the possibility of, you know, the value of employing a person with disability to do roles from entry level admin roles to, you know, management and governance roles. [Narelle] That's actually quite interesting because you started off with talking about the fact that you were long-term unemployed. What were the barriers that you were having? Why, you know, considering that you, you know, you've got education, you've all presented. I must say, I assume that because I can't see. Are you well presented? [Brendan] I'm wearing my uniform, that's for sure. Yes. [Narelle] Fantastic. So, you know what I'm saying, [