Interview
with Edward Tidbury at RBLI
In your experience, does keeping people in work
keep them healthier and is there any evidence to prove this?
Yes absolutely, my experience is that being active physically
and mentally in the workplace has an empowerment value that cannot be under
estimated.
My belief is that everyone should be able to work and if you
want to get help to enable you to do so there are many organisations that can
help. A good starting place would be looking at the access to work scheme
website at https://www.gov.uk/access-to-work/overview.
What are the most common problems that you help
people with?
RBLI delivers a pan-disability service to help overcome
work-related needs as a result health conditional disability, this is led by
the needs of the individual so we help people in all sorts of ways and don’t
really have a most common difficulty that we help with.
Are we a ‘put up and shut up’ society?
In many ways yes but I think this stems from people not
knowing what help is available. There is also sometimes a feeling that if
someone asks for help they feel like a nuisance and think that this will be
seen in a bad light. It is my experience that employees generally want their
staff to be as efficient as possible so react well to requests for help. There
are also some very positive employees who make it their business that staff are
helped in this way and these companies reap the rewards of a motivated and
efficient workforce.
Keeping people in work and efficient in work,
is likely to make economic sense for the employer, can you provide examples to
show this?
There are many but I will put myself forward as one. I have
dyslexia and I have received excellent support from my previous employer and
also RBLI. I am in my ninth year with RBLI and run a large team that provides
assessments for the government run Access to Work programme in addition to our
independent company assessments.
As well as running the Access to Work assessment delivery in
the South I am also a customer of access to work and I have been provided with
specialist computer software that helps with my dyslexia. Without this support
I would find very difficult to carry out this role and could not contribute to the
economy as a whole.
For RBLI there is no question that providing the support we
do has very positive financial outcomes for the employer and the larger
economy.
How many of the people you help are ex-service
men or women?
We don’t know as my group does not ask if clients are ex-
service. That said RBLI has a very proud heritage of helping those who have
served their country and that is still a very large part of our work.
What advice would you initially give someone
who thinks they need some help at work to be more productive and comfortable?
I have been lucky in my career as I have always been open
about the difficulties that I have faced and received support that has helped
me be a productive employee. So my advice would try and be as open and honest as you can
about any difficulties you have and then be proactive in getting help so you can demonstrate how useful and what good
value for money you can be to your employer.
Support and help is available to everyone whatever disability
they have. The Access to Work website is very user friendly and has full
details on how to apply for a grant to provide practical help to enable you to
become or remain an efficient member of the workforce - https://www.gov.uk/access-to-work/overview.
He can help businesses and individuals who need help with
workplace assessments.
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