[Title: Inclusive hybrid work]
[Text: What are you doing to support employees with disability?]
[Audio: Soft background music]
Female voice over: An interview.
[Visual: Chelsea enters the scene and sits on a chair.]
Chelsea: Some colleagues might describe me as I race ahead.
[Visual: Fiona enters the scene and sits on a chair.]
Fiona: He would think that I’m very driven. He knows that I like a challenge.
[Visual: Sam enters the scene and sits on a chair.]
Sam: My mum has always seen my creativity, has always encouraged it, doesn’t always get it, but knows that there are people who do.
[Text: We spoke to 3 employees with disability about their experiences with hybrid work in the Victorian public sector.]
Fiona: Hybrid work has offered me the flexibility to work from home more often, which has reduced my stress. Because of course, being at home for much of the last two years, I use a long cane to navigate. My cane skills are nowhere near as good as what they were a couple of years ago.
[Text: A person close to them watched on to learn more about their daily experiences.]
[Visual: The guests pensively watch their loved one’s videos.]
[Visual: Sam’s mum enters the scene and sits on a chair.]
[Visual: Chelsea’s friend enters the scene and sits on a chair.]
[Visual: Paul enters the scene and sits on a chair.]
Fiona: Having to walk from the tram stop to the office and unknowingly coming across construction or something like that, creates an extra barrier to my day that I don’t need to worry about if I’m working from home.
Sam: We have to allocate which days we will work from the office and which days we’ll work from home. Which is basically saying: ‘Please schedule which days you plan on being disabled.’
Chelsea: My brain has at least two songs going off at any time [laughs] and a conversation all the time. I also really struggled with open plan offices. I really did. That did create a lot of problems.
Sam: I struggle when people don’t turn their camera on. When I’m talking to people and I can’t see their facial expressions, I get really, really anxious.
Fiona: There was a staff event where it was decided we were going to go as a team to the movies, and I went and had a chat to my manager and said, ‘I’d really prefer not to go to the movies.’
It was the worst three hours of my life, really, in some ways. The disability wasn’t taken into account at all. It was just like, no, we’re going to do this as a team and if you don’t participate in this as a team, then you’re not a good team player.
Chelsea: Having a late diagnosis means that you’ve been told a lot of your life that your needs don’t matter. I need you to consider using planning software that you already have access to, but you’re not using. And you’re not using it because the other people in your team don’t have these challenges, don’t have these needs.
It’s very hard to say, ‘This is what I need’ to your manager and it’s even harder to have them not take it seriously.
Sam: It’s terrifying because you think about how it’s going to impact your ability to work. And there’s already so many things.
Fiona: That goes back to that whole thing of, you know, me not being comfortable with my disability. I’ll tell you what, if I had that same conversation today, I’d be like: this is not happening.
[Visual: The interviewees join their guests and share warm hugs. Later, the pairs are interviewed together. They sit in armchairs in a red brick office.]
Sam’s mum: Hello.
Sam: Hello.
Sam’s mum: Why do you always speak so well? People are happy that they can work from home. Most people are.
Sam: To me, I see it as giving everyone the best option.
Sam’s mum: Yeah.
Sam: And I think, you know, for me, having the option to have hybrid work is fantastic.
Chelsea’s friend: Sometimes people have disability, but they haven’t shared that. And it might be because they don’t want to share it at work because it’s personal.
Chelsea: It’s up to them to have the willingness or the ability to be curious themselves. If your needs are met, the work will flow.
Sam: I kind of have to share with you something that I would normally only share with my nearest and dearest. I need you to understand, because if you don’t understand, you’re not actually going to work with me on this.
Fiona: It’s not the person that’s the problem. It’s the society that’s not taking care of the people. Instead of making it an individual fight, making it something that we’re all aware of and something that we can all have an input into making everybody’s lives better.
Chelsea’s friend: I hope that we take the learnings from the last couple of years. The fit out is physically difficult for some people. I hope we will build back better.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Chelsea’s friend: Yeah, that’s my hope.
Chelsea: Oh, that’s a lovely, lovely hope. That’s great hope.
[Text: What are you doing to support inclusive hybrid work? Find out what you can do at vpsc.vic.gov.au/inclusivework]
[Text: Co-sponsored by]
[Visual: Department of Transport and Planning logo and Victorian Public Sector Commission logo]
[End of transcript]