Speaking Out - Employment Campaign launch
Employment and stammering - the work begins
By Andrew Harding
 To Employment index
BSA will be working with careers advisors and the Employment Service to reach people who are starting new jobs. BSA trustee and careers advisor Colin Marsh (left) with Graham Huggins from the Employment Service.
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The message that good communication involves a lot more than fluency is one of the most important parts of the BSA campaign to improve employer attitudes and practices.
What we are saying to employers
We suggest employers be as open as possible in discussing with the person their skills, needs and ambitions. How this is done, and to what extent will depend on how comfortable people are with stammering, and the culture within an organisation. There is some protection for people who stammer under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, that requires employers to make "reasonable adjustments" to any recruitment and employment practices that would disadvantage the disabled person.
Examples of reasonable adjustments for people who stammer would include: allowing a few more minutes at an interview if this was requested prior to the interview; changing a spoken test or assessment to a written assessment if verbal communication skills are not being assessed; providing adequate time and support for the person to prepare for presentations; exempting the person from non-essential presentations without penalty; negotiating the use of the telephone if it is a particular difficulty and not essential to the job; chairing meetings so that the person who stammers can contribute without too much interruption; and sponsoring the person to attend a speech therapy course.
Public education: The BSA website is now an important resource for information on stammering. BSA webmaster Allan Tyrer.
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What we are saying to people who stammer
Being more open and upfront about stammering with interviewers, managers or colleagues has helped many people to reduce anxiety in the long term. However, being open about stammering, especially at work, is quite unrealistic for some people, and irrelevant for others who find other people's intolerance to be the main problem, so we are giving practical suggestions on how to prepare for interviews, how to talk about stammering and how to overcome difficulties during the course of a job.
Publicity
We are working with large employer and disability organisations to offer them specialist resources. With BSA assistance the Employers Forum on Disability are producing a briefing paper on stammering to be made available to their 370 members and to people who attend their training sessions and events.
We will be using trade magazines of unions and careers advisors, and personnel, recruitment and interviewing magazines to target our publicity.
There are three areas on which we want to focus:
1) Giving talks. Employers have often said that meeting and talking with a person with a particular disability was how they understood the issues for the first time.
2) Train the trainer. Independent trainers help staff from a variety of organisations to be more aware of the disabilities they may encounter in their work.
3) Signposting. We will be establishing contacts in the following organisations:
The Employment Service, careers advice bodies, trade unions and the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD)
From the Autumn 2001 edition of Speaking Out
Update (Jan 2002): the Employers Forum on Disability Briefing Guide 14 on employment adjustments for people who stammer is now available. See the EFD website to order it.
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