We are thrilled to announce the success of our WorkFit team and their partner employer, GXO, at the British Association for Supported Employment (BASE) Awards 2023.
The BASE awards are an opportunity to celebrate the wonderful work that takes place across the Supported Employment community.
WorkFit is the Down’s Syndrome Association’s employment programme, which brings together employers and jobseekers who have Down’s syndrome. WorkFit won the Small Supported Employment Team of the Year Award. It recognised them as a small but highly effective team, who have no limits to their ambition to deliver inclusive recruitment in their areas.
The DSA provides support to people who have Down’s syndrome throughout their lives, from birth and into old age. Work is such a huge part of a person’s life experience, and it’s vital that anyone who has Down’s syndrome that wants to work should be supported to do so. We are delighted that the excellent work of our WorkFit team has been recognised by BASE with this wonderful award. Our results speak for themselves. People like Tom are getting into work and staying in work.
Carol Boys, Chief Executive at the Down’s Syndrome Association
GXO, the world’s largest pure-play contract logistics provider, won the Large Employer Award, recognising the company’s commitment to embedding disability inclusion into their policies, recruitment processes and training.
GXO has been working in partnership with WorkFit since 2018, providing meaningful employment opportunities to our candidates in a range of roles nationally, including warehousing, HR, retail and site support.
Tom works at GXO Widnes as a Warehouse Assistant. He’s one of more than 40 people who have Down’s syndrome who have been employed across GXO sites through WorkFit.
Tom has a very physical role, working in the tray wash area and bailing department. He’s been employed for more than two years now and says: ‘I like getting paid on a Friday. I like the people I work with. I like doing tray washes, and I like working hard’.
Tom says having permanent paid employment makes him ‘feel good about myself’. He says he would feel ‘lost’ without his job and enjoys being able to spend his wages on what he wants.
We are thrilled to have won the BASE Large Employer of the Year Award for 2023 through our commitment to the Down’s Syndrome Association WorkFit programme. As a result of the success of this programme GXO is now the largest single employer of adults with Down’s syndrome in the UK. We are incredibly proud of this, and the work that our teams do every day with the Down’s Syndrome Association to support people with learning disabilities entering the workplace and achieving paid, meaningful employment. This programme has helped us to embed disability, inclusion and belonging into our sites and our policies. It’s helped change perceptions, our recruitment processes and training and the award will spur us on to go even further.
Cathy Balding, Head of Diversity Inclusion & Belonging GXO UK and Ireland
The latest employment statistics by BASE (2021 – 2022) show that just 4.8% of adults with learning disabilities and autism, aged 18-64 and known to adult social care in England, were in paid work.
Although this figure is shockingly low, the DSA’s WorkFit team have been successful in exceeding these numbers, enabling many of our members to gain access to permanent employment opportunities. We are proud to say that 94% of candidates placed by WorkFit who have been in permanent paid work since 2021, continue to be employed. Our team continues to provide support as long as needed, to both the employer and the person who has Down’s syndrome and their family.
We are proud to see our partner employers and WorkFit candidates receiving this recognition for their work, which really makes a difference to people’s lives.
To find out more about WorkFit and how we support people who have Down’s Syndrome to access meaningful work opportunities that can benefit the rest of their lives, please contact the team on 0333 12 12 300
dsworkfit@downs-syndrome.org.uk
www.dsworkfit.org.uk
The DSA’s WorkFit team with GXO representatives