Welcome to Martin's blog

The key to long-term satisfaction and retention? Job matching You’ve just landed yourself a new job. You feel valued. More confident about your future. Friends and family are happy for you, and celebrate your success. If you have a disability, the jubilation will often be greater. For families that might have only felt anxiety about an individual’s future, this new job can be l for everybody. But imagine that dreamt-of job quickly going pear-shaped and vanishing

  Supporting job seekers to stay focused How do we support our job seekers to stay focused on finding and maintaining employment? Do we take the time to find creative ways to keep them engaged? Hang on a minute: isn’t it up to job seekers to make sure they comply with conditions imposed by their social welfare benefits? They know the rules. They have to toe the line! However, there are myriad reasons why job seekers may

Support not subsidies for people with a disability Still fuming from reading in the  for employing people with disability might still be in fashion. Let’s look at it from a business perspective. You have a product. You begin by promoting it with a discount, or even as a freebie. No matter, if its low price is the selling point, where do you go next? This is what is happening when a disability employment service leads with

Quotas don’t work, support does The pernicious idea that quotas might be the solution for disability employment continues (‘How China trumps Australia when it comes to supporting disabled workers’ Canberra Times 4/1/17). Comparisons with China are ridiculous. A much more useful and realistic comparison is between where we are now and where we could be. But more to the point, my experience as the CEO of a large disability employment service is that quotas and

People with a disability must aim high We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: focus on ability. It’s so central to NOVA Employment that our annual short film competition showcases and celebrates the power of these three words. Each film gives us an example – and there are thousands more out there in the community – of what can be achieved when people with disability aim high with their goals. A pioneering company

A fair wage for a fair day’s work ‘We will no longer have workers with intellectual disabilities working in Dickensian conditions,’ Maurice Blackburn partner Josh Bornstein said on Friday. A triumph! Finally, a fair wage for a fair day’s work, even at Australian Disability Enterprises (ADEs). After years of nonsense hopefully the exploitation of people with disability will end. Mind you, some of this is a problem of the government and both political parties’ making.