The Y-generation is paving the way towards a more open society
Text: Kerti Kulper
Translation: Liina Martinson
The Y-generation is often accused of being lazy and exhibiting a lack of independence. Many of these young people still live with their parents, which reinforces the impression that the Y-generation youth do not have the drive, or desire to make the effort to earn money. However, there is one reason why this generation is way ahead of the others.
Volunteer work helps you to get to know yourself
Greta Kaupmees, magazine “Naised” (“Women”)
Translation: Liina Martinson, Helpific
What is the impellent power that motivates people to function? Do we only work to get paid? Do we only operate to get recognition or emotional charge? Why am I doing something? Every person has probably asked those questions from himself.
Keiu Roosimägi, who is a volunteer in three organizations – Helpific, Tallinn and Harju County Union of Disabled Women, Estonian Neurofibromatosis Union – explains what volunteer work means.
Diversity is our every-day reality
6:06:00 PM
Raising awareness needs contribution from everyone
This spring, diversity day was celebrated all over Estonia to take notice of diversity values and the importance and exceptionality of every single person in an organization and in the society. Helpific celebrated this day by supporting Jüri Lehtmets in his discovery trip to the Shopping Race of Tallinn Department Store, and by organizing interesting lectures.
Within the Diversity Day, the Estonian Human Rights Center invited people to participate in several activities organized by different companies, and encouraged companies and organizations to organize open or reserved events to send a message to their workers, clients, and partners of how important it is to support the different needs of every member of the society.
Helpific is already in its essence a standard of diversity. Our team is represented by different nationalities, men and women in different age groups, disabled and not disabled people. Supporting diversity is the central focus of our mission – in promoting the independent life of people with special needs and in contributing to the formation of stronger communities, we wish to give every single person an opportunity to live a more meaningful life no matter their age, sex or special need.
At a shopping race on a wheelchair
On April 12th, Jüri and Tom were headed to the Tallinn Department Store to make sure how accessible it is for people with special needs. Their trip was full of interesting discoveries, which clearly showed that even following the building requirements with best interests, does not always guarantee that the environment will be comfortably accessible to a person in a wheelchair.
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| Jüri tries to maneuver near the elevator |
Already when entering the Department Store, the young men noticed that as opposed to many other institutions, there are ordinary doors and to open them, they need the help of a co-shopper. Jüri stated that in order to find the elevator, he needed to look very high up, because the instructions were only high above the ceiling and the viewpoint of someone sitting down low in a wheelchair had not been taken into consideration. Also, the merchandise locators had not taken into consideration the fact that while reversing from the elevator, one could accidentally bump into the fragile goods on the shelves.
Jüri pointed out several ideas that could make moving around in the Department Store a lot safer and easier for the visually impaired and people in a wheelchair. For instance, it would be wise to mark the routes, doors, stairs and steep inclines in a contrast color and/or Braille stones to avoid fallings due to steep change of land form, or other dangerous situations. In the elevator and other places, sound as an important source of information, should not be underestimated.
Unexpectedly, it was a bit complicated to find and use the inva-toilet. At first, one needed to find a sign or an attendant who would point to that direction and when the toilet was found, it became clear that it was behind security gates and the attendant was not able to open these gates. In the end, the best accessible toilet was found in the Children’s World of the Department Store where quite a high threshold for an electric wheelchair needed to be crossed to enter.
As a conclusion of their shopping trip, Jüri stated that for a client in a wheelchair, the non-accessible environment strongly overshadows the shopping experience even when the service is very attentive and at a good level.
Lectures on diversity and involvement
The Helpific Office held two interesting lectures on Diversity Day. At first, the Head of Food Trade in Tallinn Department Store, Kadri Aguraiuja, talked about her own experience in hiring people with special needs and following that, PhD Student in Public Management from Tallinn Technical University, Kari Käsper, gave a lecture on diversity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and accessibility.
Kari Käsper has been connected with diversity and involvement topics for several years and in the year 2009, he was one of the co-founders of the Estonian Human Rights Center. 72 companies have joined their Diversity Agreement, including Tallinn Department Store, Selver, Swedbank, SEB, Microsoft Estonia, Skype, and Transferwise. Käsper considers Helpific a very significant success story as it enables disabled people a better involvement in society through technology. When lecturing in Helpific, Käsper decided to focus mainly on three aspects:
- How technology is changing the society;
- What is the role of diversity and involvement in this;
- Topics related to accessibility and disabilities in these contexts.
Our communal structure and functioning is strongly dependent on the dominant technology – when technology changes, society also changes. We are living at an interesting time, at a breaking point where we have covered the installation phase of information- and communication technology (internet, social media, computer technology etc.) and it is time to start using it and to deal with the communal changes accompanying this. The environment, governance processes, and managing of companies is changing. Private enterprises adjust faster to changes, government organizations follow a bit later. The paradigm of the new thinking completely changes the behavior and structure of society, enterprises, and organizations. We are moving from mass production to a more personalized form of medicine, education, and other. We no longer need a certain critical mass of consumers in order to offer some services or goods. Information technology enables people to offer individual solutions at a low cost. You can no longer leave your brain at home when going to work – everyone is expected to use their head and to contribute to the organization’s work. This reveals that there is no average person – diversity is our everyday reality. Individuals who previously felt out of place, can now contribute and be equal and independent.
Changing society entails the restructuring of power relations. The world is somehow becoming smaller. We are living in a closely connected world. There are less and less countries with a closed system – what is happening in Ireland is affecting Estonia and vice versa. A huge part of our lives is transferring to an online-world that has no boundaries. Social media affects the thinking and behavior of the current generation in a significant way. We do not know yet, what will be the changes and dangers accompanying that. As opposed to the mass production paradigm, where effectivity is emphasized, new values will start to dominate. In a smaller world, minorities will become more visible and involvement will become more important than ever before. For some minority groups, life today is already much better.
Diversity and involvement helps us to switch to the new paradigm, because when using everyone’s brain, we can more easily take people’s specialties into consideration. The spectrum of potential candidates and talents has to broaden both in the Government as well as in private entrepreneurship. Today, there is not a single disabled person in the government, although 10 percent of the Estonian population is disabled. Representation of women and national minorities is also too low. We all have our subconscious prejudices and a fear of everything different from us, but in today’s society it has lost its function. When learning to communicate with people with a different skin color or people with disabilities, we can see that their values can be very similar to ours and very clear to us. For peaceful co-existence we need to communicate with different people even if it is not so easy in the beginning.
We see in politics, that the monopoly of authority is disappearing – in addition to their own government and people, countries are also influenced by international institutions and organizations, corporations, international NGO-s, and even individuals. There is a counter reaction to every reaction, progress always has setbacks. There is a fear that lack of hierarchy turns into an anarchy-like situation where nobody knows who is making the decisions and where. To move towards the right direction, we need a right amount of people who are thinking and moving towards that direction.
We, as a society need diversity, therefore we must guarantee everyone an opportunity to participate in this. Physical environment, work places, shops, and homes have to be designed in a way that everyone could have access to them. Services and goods need to be created in a way that they would be suitable to different people. This also applies to software. In reality, accessibility does not cost more if it is planned in the first stage. It is difficult and more expensive to make changes afterwards. The main problem in accessibility is not the lack of money, but the lack of awareness. The main thing that needs to change is the way of thinking. Raising awareness has to be dealt with in several angles, this work is not only for a single person, organization or government – everyone has to participate.
Edited by: Katrin Suik
Edited by: Katrin Suik
Translation: Liina Martinson
© Helpific
© Helpific
Special needs of
an employee have not entailed a single employment injury nor termination of
contract
Today it is
difficult for a person with special needs to equally compete on the job market.
Even though for years already, employers have been offered trainings connected
with hiring people who have disabilities. However, employment of people with
special needs is still a topic that needs promoting. On the other hand, there
are companies that lead a positive example. One of them is a limited company
“ISS Eesti” (ISS Estonia) that offers real estate maintenance services.
ISS Estonia has
broken free from the walls of prejudice and they can now rightly be called a
“Good Company”. During the last years, they have consistently developed
awareness about the working efficiency of people with special needs and about
the contrasts that need to be kept in mind while hiring them. Head of Human
Resources of ISS Baltics, Helo Tamme, told Helpific about the work that has
been done in their company to promote the employment of people with special
needs.
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| Helo Tamme: "Our wish is to ensure the person gets the most suitable work and work environment possible." |
How many people
with special needs work in ISS?
HT: ISS is a
company providing real estate maintenance services, where most people work in
cleaning services. We provide services on our clients’ sites and work is mainly
divided into internal and external work. We have about 250 people with
decreased working ability. We haven’t done any surveys about age groups, also I
am not able to say how many people with one or another diagnosis we have.
How is hiring a
person with special needs different from the usual hiring process?
HT: We hold an
individual conversation with every person to find out what we have to take into
consideration so that at the end of the day everyone would be satisfied – both
the client and the worker. Some people write down their special needs in their
CV so that we, as an employer, could take it into consideration. As we have
done a lot of publicity work, people are not afraid to let us know about their
special needs. In some cases, we have been contacted by the relatives of the
prospective employees who inform us about the applicant’s disability.
People are
generally very straightforward and talk about their problems. They are aware of
our company’s specialty and principally they know where they are applying for work.
We also have cooperation with the Unemployment Office, in the context of which
their event organizer will contact and inform us about a certain client’s
special needs. We in turn let them know if we currently have respective work to
offer the certain person. Our wish is to ensure the person gets the most
suitable work and work environment possible – if we forced the person to go to
an environment obviously not suitable for him/her, we would already create a
problem in advance and we could be sure that the person would stay there for
long.
People coming
through Unemployment Office also have a possibility to do trial days. This is
very important for people with decreased working capacity as the person himself
could want to work, but it might not be executable for him. Either the work
pace is too fast or some other unsuitable factors might appear. In that case we
can offer some other site right away. People might also have some idle fears
that either will get confirmation or rebuttal during the trial days. On our
form to start work we have a section where a person himself can write down if
he has been designated unable to work.
We consider
every person’s specialty – during the conversation we map the necessary
information, according to which we can choose the site suitable for the person.
We will send him to a place where there is no danger to him. As we are a big
company with a lot of clients, we can afford that. Paradoxically the company’s
size enables us flexibility.
What kind of a
worker is a person with special needs?
HT: We have
people who like simple routine work. Their training might take a bit longer
than of people without special needs, but in the end they are very sturdy, they
manage their work well and they are quickly embraced in the company. Our clients
are different and the required pace of work differs – in some places it is very
fast, in another a bit calmer.
We have seldom
had complaints from clients about people with decreased working ability. When
they have occurred, it has mainly been about insufficient working speed. In
that case we have found another site for the worker, where the load of work
matches more with his specialties.
We have been
asked about our employees’ loyalty. A study showed that the turnover of people
with decreased working ability is 20 percentage points smaller than in the case
of common employees. Therefore it can be stated that while hiring people with
special needs, we save expenses. Lately we also analyzed the topic of
employment injuries and it turned out that we have not had any employment
injuries with people who have special needs. Also no contract has been
terminated due to a mental- or behavioral disorder.
How do you train
your employees to work with people with decreased working ability?
HT: We
consciously started to deal with hiring people with decreased working ability
in 2012. Training of human resource officers and managers came to mind a bit
later, when different questions arose. For example, how to act with different
disabilities, how to react in certain cases etc. At that time there was no one
to learn from nor no one to ask help from. The first training for our human
resource officers and managers took place in 2013 in the Unemployment Office.
Today it is much
easier for employers: The Unemployment Office has programs addressed to work
ability reform, which specifically deal with companies’ needs for consultations
and trainings. This is very good for companies who are just starting to deal
with this matter.
Our human
resource officers participate in different trainings, where they learn to
better notice a disability or special need. For example at the end of April,
one recruiter will participate in a two-day training “Person with a mental
disorder – what would be useful to an employer to know”. Training helps to
prevent possible problems or to deal with them at the right time.
Who are your
partners?
HT: Our main
partners are the Unemployment Office, Tallinn Mental Health Center, Astangu Vocation Rehabilitation Center, NGO Abikäsi (Helping Hand), Tugiliisu - Support Association for People with Special Needs, and Estonian Chamber of Disabled People. Through them, we have spread our messages to raise awareness related to
employment of people with disabilities. Through the Unemployment Office, we
have organized briefings for other employers.
What could the
State do to help entrepreneurs and to promote the employment of people with
special needs?
HT: Today the
process has been made relatively favorable for employers. People with special
needs mainly work for us part time, as was suggested by the Mental Health
Center. This does not entail additional taxes for us, because for part-time
workers, whose salary is less than the minimum 390 euros, which is the basis
for social tax, Government pays the social tax.
A
well-functioning support person system is lacking. In some cases, a support
person would be needed for even a month to shape out the work routine for
youngsters with special needs and for encouragement. This is because the
youngster’s parents are working and are not able to come to work with him.
The Work Ability Reform obligates the person to
be active on the job market, but people with special needs could easily be
intimidated by a couple of refusals. State help would be needed to create
support networks, through which to simplify the finding of these companies that
are ready to hire people with special needs. A diversity label is being created
for companies, whose purpose is to encourage people with special needs to apply
for work in a company carrying the label.
We have been
able to have a say in the Work Ability Reform and I can say that problems arise
from insufficient awareness. The starting of the reform depends mainly on
employers because they need to have the readiness. Fears and rumours need to be
demolished which the Unemployment Office is efficiently working on by offering
different consultations and trainings. More and more possibilities will be seen
instead of restrictions. Also Astangu Vocation Rehabilitation Center holds very
good, one-day trainings where different disabilities are introduced.
Unfortunately, there has only been a slight interest in these and due to lack
of resources, it is not possible to organize them in a sufficient frequency.
Why are
employers afraid of people with special needs?
HT: The main
reasons are rumours and fears, sometimes also negative experiences. When
dealing with people who have special needs, different aspects need to be
considered. One is that they are often slower in working.
Companies often
state that due to the nature of their work, they are not able to hire people
with decreased working ability. It is always wise to listen to experts’
recommendations and go to more trainings – raising awareness always helps.
There are specialists in the Astangu Vocational Rehabilitation Center and
Unemployment Office who can explain how to change the working environment to be
more suitable for hiring people with special needs. The Unemployment Office
often compensates the expenses made for adjusting the work environment to be up
to 100 per cent. The opinion that hiring people with special needs brings by
excessive expenses, might not be true as ISS experience shows.
Today, we don’t
need to think whether our managers are able to communicate properly with people
who have special needs. We don’t think if this certain person is suitable for a
certain site. Instead, we think in a human-centered way and evaluate whether one
or another site will be suitable for a certain person. Of course, the changes
will not take place overnight – fears will not vanish as quickly as we want
them to, it is a longer process. It seems like people are becoming more
tolerant, a nice example of it are the shops. We have chain shops where it is
very common to known how to deal with people who have special needs. It is
encouraging to see that the young generation is very understanding about
differences. I guess it is better to say that they don’t make a difference or
sometimes won’t even notice that a person is different.
In conclusion I
can say that positive experience-stories give courage and strength. We have not
written down these stories in our company, they circle as oral folklore helping
us to move forward.
Interviewed by Ene Kaju, Helpific volunteer
Edited by Katrin Suik
Translation: Liina Martinson
