Employer

Into Work’s employment support workers provide a valuable service both to those they are supporting and the employers.  In my own experience the support worker Lee eased our employee’s transition into the team. He gave me a better understanding of the support that was required from me as a manager, including the personal adaptations in my managerial style I needed to consider – something I would not necessarily have thought of without his specialist insight.

The employee who has cerebral palsy and mild learning difficulties, is a very capable young woman whose challenges are not always apparent.  The natural tendency therefore is to assume there are no difficulties.  Into Work’s understanding of the individual – and their coaching of me as a manager – has helped me to recognise some subtleties and adapt things to better support our employee the workplace.

We were approached by Intowork to enquire whether we would be interested in taking on one of their clients for work experience. The chap they had in mind had worked in a lab for a number of years and had Asperger’s Syndrome. An Intowork staff member accompanied the candidate for an interview, which helped with his confidence in the interview process. The interview went very well, and we took him on a one day a week basis for six weeks, at no cost to our business.

Once he settled in, he quickly demonstrated he had a particular set of skills which made him ideally suited for the meticulous work required in our lab. We enquired about taking him on as a full member of staff, which was accepted and he has now become an invaluable member of our team.

We can’t imagine the lab without him. He plays his very eclectic mix of music whilst he works and is always full of interesting and often astounding facts.

All and all this has been an extremely worthwhile endeavour for our company, and would recommend Intowork as real option to get much needed posts filled by very capable and willing individuals.

Training Keith is not challenging, it just needs to be on a one to one basis and we need to allow him a lot of repetition of the activity. But once he has it, he absolutely has it and he is always keen to take on new things.