BT

Case study: BT and Remploy - Able to Work

BT’s 'Able to Work' project aims to increase the number of disabled people working within the company’s customer contact centres, engineering and finance departments. A key success factor of this project has been that they have worked in partnership with a range of internal and external groups. Consultation was undertaken with existing disabled employees, and BT partnered up with groups such as Remploy, RNIB and Scope. 

The key activities covered by the 'Able to Work' project include attracting disabled employees to apply to work for BT, for example by ensuring that all employment advisors and health professionals are very familiar with their requirements. This involved site visits, listening in to calls, visiting training classes and sitting the selection process themselves, to better advise their clients. To improve the visibility of 'Able to Work' for prospective candidates, BT also worked closely with Remploy to develop a pre-work vocational pipeline training course to equip people by providing some experience of working within a customer service centre environment, and to give potential candidates the best possible preparation for their assessment.

In addition to attracting and recruiting more disabled people, BT also supported their managers and trainers, for example by providing a half day bespoke disability awareness seminar. This gave people the confidence to know that they could deal with any issues that might arise and took away the fear of ‘doing the wrong thing’. BT also worked with disabled employees to produce factsheets on coping with specific disabilities which outline personal experiences of disabled people and how they work with their condition. 

BT have found a significant range of benefits arising from the 'Able to Work' project. These include lower levels of absenteeism, increased retention, with 67% of those who come via 'Able to Work' staying for more than a year in comparison to an average of 46%. BT also report that replicating their customer base has assisted their research and development through products such as the voice recognition and text to speech solutions. 

“We have found in general that our candidates coming in through Able to Work have been very motivated and talented individuals well able to overcome any barriers and also who tend to stay with us for longer.”
Jenny Day, Head of Able to Work, BT